biography

have you read the james atlas bellow biography and do you think it spent too much time on his personal life and not enough time on literary analysis?. Of course bellow had a very complicated personal life and much of it found its way into his books. (He had a happy ending - a baby named rose and a wonderful marriage.) It's interesting to compare his books to Philip Roths books and Roth's life. They were both urban, jewish, attached to the university of chicago at some points, and had complicated love lives.

Roth and Bellow were good friends. While I did not read Atlas' bio of Bellow I did read his bio on Delmore Schwartz;The Life of an American Poet who was the role model for Humboldt's Gift. It is an engrossing read about a failed and doomed life.

I've just finished Atlas's book and considering that Bellow doublecrossed several biographers including Ruth Miller, a close friend, I think Atlas did a good job of Bellow's life, not necessarily explicating his books. That is left for the academics. Bellow read the proof of this book and face to face gave an okay to it. I think it's the closest thing to an authorized biography you're going to get for Bellow. And consider that most of his heroes, ie, Augie March, Herzog, The Dean, etc. are fashioned out of whole Bellow cloth. There's the explication.