Interviewer: What do you read nowadays, when pleasure dictates? Bellow: Well, I did a strange thing. I went to the Brookline Library and looked up a writer named Altsheler. Altsheler was a writer of the boys books that I liked when I was a kid in Chicago. . . .I went through the entire shelf. He wrote about the frontier and the struggles with the Indians. He seems to have known a lot about the Iroquois - he even knew their language it turns out. Marvelous writer. I ordered up a lot of them from libraries all over the area. The latest editions of the books are around 1929 or so . . . In the late 20's I was reading them- Interviewer: What's that like? Bellow: Well, of course they're foolish to read now. But I can see why they were terribly attractive. They were about freedom, strength, ingenuity, patience, learning the lore of the forests, going it alone with only your gun, a bow and arrow, or a knife, a few fishhooks in your pocket, escaping from terrible dangers. . . shades of Fenimore Cooper. I read these books when I'm in the pits, when I can read nothing else.