1915: Saul Bellow - Resources and General Discussion

(1915–2005)

Saul Bellow was born in Canada and became a naturalized US citizen in 1941. In 1976, he won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Bellow has been named one of the 20th century's greatest authors, and has had a "huge literary influence. A returning theme in the novels of Saul Bellow is his characters' struggle with "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century."

At least six novels by Saul Bellow feature on 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I've read the following novels by Bellow:

The Adventures of Augie March
Henderson the Rain King
Humboldt's Gift
Herzog

I've listed them in my order of preference. There's a big gap between the first two, which I liked, and the other two which I didn't. I guess it shows I prefer stories in which the protagonist struggles against his fate rather than those in which he just cringes and whimpers.

I have the following three novels on hand and plan to read them this year:

Seize the Day
Dangling Man
The Victim

A Ha I have also read those four novels by Bellow and I would reverse your oder of preference. I have just checked and I have no others of his and so I will have to buy one to read this year.

I have at least 9 books by Bellow on my tbr, but will not announce what I intend to read, as I am not sure I can make it. However, I intend to read as many of them as I can manage.

I would sure like to hear your take on Seize the Day. The book did not interest me, and I could not really make much of it. I read it twice, but still could not really see why it is supposedly such a great work. Wonder what you make of it.

I will most likely read:
Dangling Man
The Victim
Ravelstein

Ravelstein has been called his most accessible novel. It is based on the real person, Allan Bloom.

This may seem like an odd question, as I don't believe writers of Bellow's stature fall into a "writer for men" or "writer for women" category, but does it strike readers of Bellow that his reading audience is primarily male, after the first one or two books have been read? It has been a long time since I have read anything by him other than essays, but essays aside, this has always been my feeling. Since it has been so long, I will read at least one book by him this winter. Maybe my reaction will have changed.

The only thing of Bellow's that I have read was A Theft, given to me by my ex-husband. It was about the loss of an emerald ring belonging to successful woman with lots of exes and so of course, it's about so much more. It was mildly interesting and based on other reviews not Bellow's best work, so I may have to try something else of his.

>5 SassyLassy: I can see where you are coming from Sassy Lassy and I will bear that in mind when I read my next Bellow.

Then, again, Sassy, do you have the same feeling when you read V. S. Naipaul?

>7 baswood: Thanks bas, I started reading Dangling Man last night and so far it's going well.

>8 edwinbcn: Interesting comparison. I have never had that feeling with Naipaul. I think the only other author who gives me that feeling is Philip Roth and I've managed to overcome it with his later books. I read Norman Mailer quite happily and consider his thoughts as one more point of view, without thinking of him as the macho swaggerer many consider him to be.

Ah, I see. Mailer had six wives, and "other relationships.

Would it be a coincidence that they are all writers of Jewish descent.

(Mind you, Roth is one of my all time favourite authors. To me, David Kepesh obsession is just too funny.)

>10 edwinbcn: I've been thinking about your question, and have read Dangling Man in the meantime. The answer that has come to me is that perhaps Bellow and Roth do not fit well into the world of a teenage girl, which is when I mostly read and dismissed them. I have read more Roth in recent years, which leads to your question about writers of Jewish descent. I feel more aligned now with what Bellow and Roth have to say, but feel there is an almost inexorable despair in their writings, even when leavened with humour, which perhaps is not present in other American writers of their times whom I enjoy and who were every bit as pessimistic, but were just not quite as ready for the abyss. Whether or not this relates to the history of their times I don't know, but it would be entirely reasonable if it did.

Also, >7 baswood: I don't feel as strongly now that perhaps Bellow and Roth speak primarily to men, but rather find they offer a view from that side which everyone could appreciate. I will try to read more Bellow as the year goes by.

I am nor sure about the inexorable despair in the work by Bellow, as I haven't read enough, yet.

Perhaps the reason I like Philip Roth so much is that essentially he is so honest about what is the most important part of his body, and his obsession with that part of his body is a source for endless variation and humour. There is no doubt that countless other (male) authors have that same fascination, but they pretend otherwise. Except, perhaps gay authors, but since their libido is not a threat to women, the similarity goes unnoticed.

Saul Bellow's heart. A son's memoir
Finished reading: 2 January 2015



It is perhaps safe to say that the work of Saul Bellow does not get the attention it deserves, as many people still feel that Saul Bellow deserves little or no attention. Bellow is a Nobel Prize Winner, but his work is barely read, and not included in school or university curricula. This is not based on demerit of the work, but of the man. Saul Bellow died somewhat quietly in 2005, his death received little attention, as in the past 25 years his work had received little attention. For the truth is that academia had spat him out.

The 1960s and 70s witnessed Bellow's multiple marriages and divorces, five marriages and four divorces, all as a consequence of his unbriddled hedonism. Then, in the 1980s he associated himself with the ideas of Alan Bloom and in the discussion about the cornerstones of civilization blurted out that Western culture has demonstrated itself to be superior, as Western culture has brought forth classical music, literature, etc, whereas Bellow claimed other cultures had not. Naturally, this type of racism and cultural bias were strobgly condemned in academic circles. Bellow was rowing against the tide, and met the full force of feminism, and left-oriented activism. He never recovered from deep-seated suspicion.

Critics and great, contemporary authors agree that the work of Saul Bellow belongs to the greatest among Twentieth Century literature. Bellow seems to have had the bad luck of standing in the spotlight at the wrong time. He won the Nobel Prize in 1976. Surely, there must have been writers with an equally bad track record in their relations with women, for instance Hemingway, or, more recently V.S. Naipaul, but they were never criticized that severely.

As a result, a full appreciation of Bellow's work has not (yet) taken place. There is only a modest amount of critical literature, and a full biography, Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas only came out in 2012, but has received very little attention so far. Another interesting publication, also in 2012, are Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Ben Taylor. In addition to these, several memoirs have been published, some by the children of Saul Bellow.

One of these memoirs, Saul Bellow's heart. A son's memoir was written by Bellow's oldest son, from his first marriage, Greg Bellow. As the title suggests, not the work, but the man takes central stage in this memoir, and in line with his profession, Greg Bellow is not concerned about his father's soul, but his father's heart. This concern for the heart is somewhat troubling. Early in the memoir, Greg Bellow writes that his book is not an academic work, but aims to be a personal memoir. The author also claims to have waited long, and hesitated, but felt he still had a valuable contribution to make.

Saul Bellow's heart. A son's memoir, Greg describes how the young Saul Bellow was an idealistic and cheerful person, while the older Saul Bellow became a grumpy, and pessimistic person. As can be expected, the author does not draw a sharp line of division. Saul Bellow was born in 1915, this year exactly 100 years ago. That means that in 1976, he was 61 years old, and his sexual escapades took place in the decades before, and after that. Not a very convincing construct.

Greg Bellow does not claim any academic objectivity. In fact, the author is much too involved with his subject. Greg Bellow has a considerable chip on his shoulder, and an Oedipus complex that fills out the room. Greg Bellow's professional career is that of a psychotherapist, but it is remarkable how little insight he apparently has in the undigested anger and disappointment he has in his father. The memoir is at least as much about Greg as about Saul.

However, the angry Greg does provide the reader with an honest picture of Saul, the man, and given the biographical history of Saul Bellow that may just be needed. Besides the biography of Bellow and a detailed description of the various marriages, Greg Bellow describes Saul's life and the creation of his various works. Therefore, at about 240 pages, Saul Bellow's heart. A son's memoir is a reasonably sizeable biography of Saul Bellow.

I've mentioned this book elsewhere, but Saul Bellow is discussed as one of eight writers who "transformed American literature in the turbulent twentieth century", in Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth Century American Writers, due out in March from NYRB Classics. It looks like it will certainly contribute to discussions of his work.

In my latest venture into books about books The new Lifetime reading plan by Clifton Fadiman there are 36 authors in section 5 which covers the 20th century and I am delighted to say that both D H Lawrence and Saul bellow are included. The book was first published in 1960 and so that may be part of the reason why these two deeply unfashionable authors are secure in their place with the all time greats. (Since the original publication in 1960 there have been four editions; the last being 1997 and so far they have not been culled).

Both of these great authors have suffered horribly because they have been branded as "politically incorrect" and their view of the world and society is no longer in tune with popular and academic opinion, but this does not stop them from being great writers.

yep, totally agree, baz.

interesting dicsussion - and great review from edwinbcn - about one of my favourite 20th century writers.

Sassylassy makes some interesting points, and I would add that it's important to remember that all of Bellow's novels have a male protagonist and are told from first person singular, or at least are heavily focalised through the male protagonist: they are thus very male oriented. So one has to be careful with confusing Bellow's views with those of his protagonists. But I think the themes he touches on are universal, or at least universal for people who like to think deeply about the mess we're in. It seems to me the reason why Bellow's star is low that most people now don't think deeply - readers here excepted of course. :) As Sassylassy says: 'he doesn't fit well into the world of a teenage girl,' which is about the intellectual level of the mass of readers today…(Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?)

Roth is a pale imitation of Bellow, imo. I'ts more profitable to compare him to Pynchon, who also writes novels of comaprable ambition and seriousness, but in a completely different way - or Patrick White. Bellow is the most European of the American Greats in that he writes in the shadow of European writers - he will more likely reference Dostoevsky than Hollywood, for example. In many ways, the European wirter he most resembles is Thomas Mann.

Bellow's prose is matchless: he can swerve from the lofty inflections of Melville and Hawthorne to slang from the Chicago streets, often in one sentence. That's why I read him, for the sheer pleasure at the level of language. in that sense, his writing is very democratic without being dumbed down for a mass audience: he elevates the level of the street - which is where most of his characters come from - to the level of the intelligentsia, rather than dragging down the latter to the level of the former.

Augie March, which I am rereading now after an interval of 15 years, is probably his best work, closely followed by Humboldt's Gift. Seize the Day is his most accessible, Fitzgeraldian work. I have a special affection for Henderson the Rain King for its satire of Hemingwayesque machismo/American imperialism, but I know that one is not everyone's cup of tea.

>16 QuentinTom:

I haven't read much of Bellow's--Seize the day, Dangling man, some non-fiction (his trip to Israel) and either Herzog or Humboldt's gift--or maybe both, can't remember. I agree with you about his gift. I think he appeals especially to the intellectual reader, if perhaps for reasons a little too obvious (exactly that erudition, those associations, Dostoevskian quotations).

As Sassylassy says: 'he doesn't fit well into the world of a teenage girl,' which is about the intellectual level of the mass of readers today…(Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?)

Uh... Sassy was talking about HER teenage experience of Bellow. Does she strike you as someone who even at that age was--sorry, the implication is there--too stupid or shallow for him? I think it's more reasonable to wonder why Bellow may not appeal to a girl, or indeed a woman of any age, even clever ones. Or, why there could be an ambiguous stance, divided between sympathy and antagonism (I admit, this would be my case).

The thing is that you as a man don't have to do what women have to do when we read the same "great" books: endure the punishment of an unbelievable amount of misogynistic crap. I enjoy erudition, I wanted to enjoy Bellow's erudition, but at the same time I had to endure a blistering contempt for women and the vomiting of his hatred for whichever ex had maddened him at the moment (thinking here especially of one of the H books--Herzog or Humboldt's gift). It's not pleasant. It's truly horrible to encounter, wounding, destabilising and depressing, and that book after book, century after century, the treatment of women as inferior, subhuman, as sex toys, as objects, as slaves, with or without the talent and brilliant erudition--even worse when they are there.

You may not feel it yourself, but I hope you can understand the conflict when someone else points it out.

>10 edwinbcn:

Would it be a coincidence that they are all writers of Jewish descent.

That's an interesting observation. I can't remember reading anything discussing that generation of Jewish writers qua Jewish writers, but it seems like there would be a lot of that sort of analysis around.

Orthodox Judaism is marked by a relentless misogyny but as far as I know none of these writers were rooted directly in that background or particularly religious themselves. I'd speculate that their misogyny, like everyone else's, was part of their upbringing and times (the Zeitgeist, with the ever-more-pronounced gender war, rising feminism and responding anti-feminism, is almost sufficient to explain these attitudes), with--maybe--something added from the conflict with gentiles, the dominant class and culture. One thing that strikes me is that in almost every book by these authors (that I read) there are tales about desiring, seducing, conquering, marrying, divorcing (repeat ad lib.) the "shiksas", and concurrent tales about escaping the (often "fated") Jewish girl, who is repellent because too much of a mother, too much of a sister, too known, too similar. Seducing women is then entangled with a construction of male identity in a more complex way than for other, gentile, men. It's not just erotic combat, but a race and class war. I could be wrong (it's been VERY long) but if I recall at all correctly, Roth makes this flagrant in his autobiography, this sense of not just fucking, in the act, a given woman, but her whole tribe.

And, they were writers, the dweebiest, most insecure of male figures, forever fingering their penis pens and hoping jacking off would amount to creation. Writing is probably the only profession in which women pose a serious threat to male domination--on the most basic level, all one needs for writing are WORDS--no expensive education, no rare job, no promotion, no special regard by the boss, no networking and old boys' club are necessary to write a masterpiece, to BE a master. I stopped being surprised that the worst misogyny comes from those who are presumably more sensitive, cultured and questioning than the average; I'm only surprised when I find them still taken for such.

oh you're reading too much into what I was saying about Sassy Lassy's post. Actually, I think all teenagers of whatever gender are too shallow for Bellow. He's a writer who demands some maturity in a reader.

Thanks for wading in anyway, I've often wondered about how women feel about Bellow's work. Guess you answered the question about whether Bellow is a man's writer, then.

You may not feel it yourself, but I hope you can understand the conflict when someone else points it out.

I hear you, I hear you. You preaching to the converted. :)

>19 QuentinTom:

Oh, please don't take anything I say for an answer to "whether Bellow is a man's writer", which is not the sort of question I'd ever contemplate, with the dubious views it implies of men, women, AND literature. But more to your point, perhaps, as I said above, I haven't read all that much by him and therefore kept my points general. Incidentally, I have Augie March on my TBR pile, it was given to me almost fifteen years ago by a lesbian feminist friend and a Bellow fan (presumably she still is--we haven't discussed him since), your posts made me dig it up and I hope to get to it soonish.

I might get back then to your notion about the "maturity" needed to read Bellow (assuming it's got the same context as the other books I've read). If you mean that the psychology of sex, let alone adult sexual life and marriage, are likely to be largely inaccessible to a teenager--I agree, although that could be (and is) frequently raised whenever people talk about teaching classics. Why bother with any, if it's all useless without personal experience etc.

But, taking the risk I might be riffing off about something unrelated to your point, if the "maturity" also concerns the authors' own, when I think of the views of women expressed in male-authored literature in general and of that era--50s/60s/70s--in particular, "maturity" isn't a category I'd think of first.

In fact, what strikes me rather often reading that generation of male authors, is their puerility and the hysterical fear/hatred of women they betray--not something I'd regard as hallmarks of "maturity". But it's such a common symptom (cue more musings about the Zeitgeist etc.) that could be mistaken for "normal", just like marrying half a dozen times, obsessive adultery etc. are frequently mistaken for "loving" women and not being able to live without women, when it's obviously the result of the opposite--these men CAN'T live with women, can't stand women, and would probably be much happier fucking rubber vaginas, raw livers, or--(it's really obvious sometimes)--other men. But their own ideas of masculinity and aspirations to machismo flog them on in the detestable (detested) pursuit of pussy, which, unfortunately for everyone concerned, comes attached to women. (Roth's autobiography is, again, interesting in noting more or less overt competitions between fellow authors for the biggest banger title.)

oops, too long; later!

>18 LolaWalser: Yes no doubt all this is true from your own personal perspective and it would seem that some people might agree with you. However it would seem to me that if a book/writer is approached by a reader with a set agenda and if that writer fails the test, then it is only reasonable to condemn that writer from your own personal point of view. My fear is that personal point of view can hold sway with the criticism of the writers work in general and in effect blind us to the qualities of writers that have been labelled as puerile or machismo by some sections of the community.

>21 baswood:

"set agenda", "writer failing the test"--this is meaningless to me. Care to explain?

We all read with a personal point of view, and yours is no more or less important than anyone else's. The question is whether we are capable of seeing others' point of view.

We all read with a personal point of view, and yours is no more or less important than anyone else's. The question is whether we are capable of seeing others' point of view.

Couldn't agree more.

"set agenda", "writer failing the test"--this is meaningless to me. Care to explain?
No

Spec for Murr:





Les cousins, Claude Chabrol, 1959

Well, this IS an interesting discussion, especially for someone who has never read Bellow. But I want to comment on the maturity part. I read adult books when I was a teenager and thought I understood them. But having come back to some of them in my 40s and 50s, I find I have different takes on them. For example, I had a completely different view of Anna Karenina (the character) when I reread the book in my 40s, and when I read War and Peace as a teenager I skipped the war parts, but later on found them to be some of the most interesting parts of the book. And then there were books I couldn't get through as a teenager but later loved, for example, The Magic Mountain and In Search of Lost Time. So, this is all to say that, at least for me, maturity plays a role in what you think of a book, but may not mean that you didn't get something out of it in earlier years.

>25 rebeccanyc:

I think of it as just one part of the perspective. We don't just "mature" (whatever that means), we change in different ways, at least until we start ossifying (which for most people starts happening in their twenties). I think old people tend to be too harsh on youngsters, forgetting how much strength youth has. They lack experience, but they have better brains, fresher outlook, more creativity. And, they are NEW people, existing in conditions different from ours, with concepts and knowledge of all kind we didn't have. It may be I'm thinking only of a minority (and we may remember readers in general are always just a small minority of the population), but I could be more interested in what a sharp fifteen year old takes away from the first reading of Bellow, than a sixty-five year old, distinguished only by age, incapable of anything but knee-jerk reaction of the worst kind--no change, no growth, no empathy, no new understanding ever again.

Of the authors I'm glad I re-read when older (not that I ever "hated" anyone--too much of a book nerd for that, thrilled by the sheer vast diversity of voices), I think Flaubert is the most important, the one in whom I found most pleasure after an indifferent first encounter.

>24 LolaWalser:
lol

>20 LolaWalser:
If you mean that the psychology of sex, let alone adult sexual life and marriage, are likely to be largely inaccessible to a teenager-

Well, not so narrowly as that, Augie March is not all about marriage and sex, nor is Humboldt's Gift, as I recall, they're about a whole lot of other things as well. I agree with you about the lit of the 506070s in general especially in the Anglo world, but I would not lump Bellow together with Mailer, Roth, or Durrell-Miller etc.

>25 rebeccanyc:, >26 LolaWalser:

oh yes, of course I totally agree. Lola, I think you have a far too rosy outlook on today's teenagers, but maybe i'm overly cycnical. As for myself, if i'd started reading Augie March or Seize the Day, for example, at 15 or as a teen, I wouldn't have made it past the first two or three chapters. Nothing really happens, until you realise of course that everything has been happening. Like life itself I suppose.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to your thoughts on AM, Lola. I love it even more the second time round.