Saul Bellow

Full disclosure: I have never understood Saul Bellow, and reading Humboldt's Gift back in the Seventies is the reason. He may have also contributed to my giving up writing fiction when I was young enough to have learned how to write properly. 

Having said all that, I went back to him when I was in prison: Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, The Adventures of Augie March, and Seize the Day. Out of that list, I suggest starting with Augie March; it has a life I find missing in the latter-day novels. It is also where the world started paying attention to Bellow. The downside is that now it probably reads like a historical novel - especially if my friend KH is right that Americans now no longer know their history. 

I wish the following had been available to me 50 years ago. For some reason wholly beyond my memory, I pictured Bellow as being more like Norman Mailer: big and obnoxious. He was nothing of the sort. He even has more of a sense of a humor than I recall in anything but Augie March. 

Having listened to the man, I find myself more than a little chagrined at my small-mindedness. Fifty years ago, I thought if what he was writing about was what was expected of modern American writers, then I was S.O.L. His world and people were beyond my horizons, beyond my knowledge, and, frankly, not terribly interesting to me. What missed is that he was writing honestly and beautifully about his America; its warts and its strangeness and its beauties. The trick I missed was that this was I supposed to do with the world and people I knew.

 An interview with Saul Bellow:

Zachary Leader on Saul Bellow, with Martin Amis, Nov. 12, 2018:

Melvyn Bragg talks to Saul Bellow about his book Humboldt's Gift and his career:

 A Tribute to Saul Bellow:

A documentary/interview with Bellow:

 

Saul Bellow in Life & Letters with Joyce Carol Oates and Benjamin Taylor:

 

 

sch 10/9

 

Today, I ran across The Saul Bellow He Didn’t Want the World to See, which takes on Herzog and Bellow's violence towards his then-current wife, which underlies the novel. I could not find why the writer thought Herzog should still be read for its faults in presenting Bellow's marriage, and for his inadequate treatment of women in his fiction. Another case that should go under Bad People, Good Art - except there seems to be no explanation why Herzog is good art.

 

sch 10/17