Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow 1915-2005, American novelist, b. Lachine, Que., as Solomon Bellow, grad. Northwestern Univ., 1937. Born of Russian-Jewish parents, he grew up in the slums of Montreal and Chicago. His fiction features uniquely telling characterizations and is frequently darkly comic. His novels typically deal with large philosophical issues: the search for meaning, the conflicts between moral anomie and the quest for a personal ethic, and the tensions between the imaginative individual and a sometimes indifferent, sometimes entangling world. One of the most distinguished novelists of the mid-20th cent., he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. His novels include Dangling Man (1944), The Adventures of Augie March (1953; National Book Award), Seize the Day (1956), Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964; National Book Award), Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970; National Book Award), Humboldt's Gift (1975; Pulitzer Prize), The Dean's December (1982), and Ravelstein (2000). He also published four books of stories, Mosby's Memoirs (1968), Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984), Something to Remember Me By (1991), and Collected Stories (2001); a novella, The Actual (1997); a memoir, To Jerusalem and Back (1976); a play, The Last Analysis (1964); and an essay collection, It All Adds Up (1994). Bellow taught at a number of universities, including Northwestern Univ., the Univ. of Chicago, and Boston Univ.

Bibliography: See G. L. Cronin and B. Siegel, ed., Conversations with Saul Bellow (1994); biography by J. Atlas (2000); studies by I. Malin (1969), M. Harris (1980), D. Fuchs (1984), P. Hyland (1992), G. Bach, ed. (1995), G. Bach and G. L. Cronin, ed. (2000), and M. A. Quayum (2004); bibliography by G. L. Cronin and B. H. Hall (2d ed. 1987).

Bellow, Saul (1915–2005), writer, teacher.A writer who grounded his work in the urban American experience, Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada, the fourth child of Russian Jewish parents. In 1924, the family moved to Chicago, the background for much of Bellow's fiction. A novelist of ideas, Bellow in his work work puts in comic perspective the split between personal ambition and the claims of the spirit.

His first published novel, Dangling Man (1944), whose protagonist is waiting to be drafted during World War II, explores the conflict between the real world of compromised action and the ideal one of thought and feeling. The Victim (1947) addresses the issue of anti‐Semitism and the nature of moral accountability. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) marked a breakthrough to a freewheeling style combining elevated philosophy, slang, and esoteric allusion that translates the American myth into contemporary linguistic and social possibilities. It received the National Book Award, as did the self‐lacerating Herzog (1964) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Other notable Bellow works are Henderson the Rain King (1959), Humboldt's Gift (1975), and the novella Seize the Day (1956), in all of which striving heroes, often aided by teachers in the guise of confidence men, come to recognize the obligations of love and the sustaining power of family. The Dean's December (1982) and More Die of Heartbreak (1987) moved away from the earlier exuberant comedy toward a more somber assessment of contemporary culture. He also published several collections of short fiction, including Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968) and Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), and three late novellas: The Bellarosa Connection (1989), A Theft (1989), and The Actual (1997). He returned to the full‐length novel form with Ravelstein (2000). It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future (1994) is a selection of his nonfiction. He taught at the University of Minnesota (1946–1949) and, beginning in 1963, at the University of Chicago. Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976.
See also Literature: Since World War I.

Bibliography

Stanley Trachtenberg, ed., Critical Essays on Saul Bellow, 1979.
Peter Hyland , Saul Bellow, 1992.

Stanley Trachtenberg

Bellow, Saul (1915– ) US novelist, b. Canada. His novels, usually set in Chicago, are concerned with the conflict between the private and the public, and the sense of alienation in 20th-century urban life. His debut novel was The Dangling Man (1944). Bellow won National Book awards for The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), and Mr Sammler's Planet (1970). He won a Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift (1975). Other works include the novella Seize the Day (1956), The Dean's December (1982) and Something to Remember Me By (1993). He was awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in literature.