Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005), was an acclaimed Canadian-born American Jewish writer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and is best known for writing novels that investigate isolation, spiritual dissociation, and the possibilities of human awakening. While on a Guggenheim fellowship in Paris, he wrote most of his best-known novel, The Adventures of Augie March.

Criticism

Although not as widely acclaimed as some of his novels, Bellow's later works include the powerful and well-crafted collection of short stories entitled Him with His Foot in His Mouth.

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Bellow's story lines are led by the personal quests and crises of his protagonists rather than by action. Our introduction to a Bellow protagonist is often at a point of deep crisis in the character's life. Whether romantic, financial or sparked by other causes, the turmoil experienced by a typical Bellow protagonist leads to deep existential questioning. Bellow artfully manages to reference the teachings of great philosophers and thinkers within many of his novels, usually without damaging their readability or disrupting story flow. One remarkable example of this technique is seen within Mr. Sammler's Planet, Bellow's novel about a curmudgeonly Holocaust survivor living in New York City amid the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Related Topics:
Mr. Sammler's Planet - 1960s

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Bellow's detractors considered his work conventional and old-fashioned, as if the author was trying to revive the 19-century European novel. The characters in his later novels did not ring true, his critics said. Herzog, Henderson, and the other "larger than life" characters in his later novels seemed to be fashioned from the author's philosophical obsessions, not from real life. His characters were seen as vehicles for his philosophical brooding or opportunities to display his erudition.

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In an interview in the March 7, 1988 New Yorker, Bellow sparked a controversy when he asked, concerning multiculturalism, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" The taunt was seen by some as a slight against non-Western literature and philosophy. Writing in his defense in the New York Times, Bellow said, "The scandal is entirely journalistic in origin ...I may be one of the few people who have read a Papuan novel... Always foolishly trying to explain and edify allcomers, I was speaking of the distinction between literate and preliterate societies. For I was once an anthropology student, you see."

Related Topics:
New Yorker - Multiculturalism - Tolstoy - Zulus - Proust - Papuans - New York Times - Journalistic

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