Just found this, buried in Saul Bellow’s collected letters — he’s writing from Chicago about one of his buddies who spent some time down in C-U:
“What the hell is the idea of two towns [Champaign and Urbana]?”
Bellow himself came to C-U at least once, around 1960 — just after his classic Henderson the Rain King was published — to give a talk and attend a lunch hosted by the U of I’s now-departed literary quarterly, Accent. This was about 20 years after he wrote the letter — enough time, apparently, for him to reconcile himself to the idea of twin cities.
For what it’s worth, Bellow’s mastery of that ancient art form known as letter writing makes his collected letters well worth the read. Check out what NPR has to say about Bellow’s letters — most of which, by the way, don’t have anything to do with C-U.
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134432921/saul-bellows-guide-to-good-old-fashioned-letters