Saul Bellow RIP

[Otis Westinghouse]

Another member for the VIP enclosure, Saul Bellow. Nobel prize winner, huge literary giant of the 20th century. I've only read a few of his, starting with The Victim as an undergrad, which I thought was really good. Most recently read The Adventures of Augie March, which took me a hell of a long time to get through (but then most books do these days, this was just longer and a bit slower than most), but was a great read all the same. Great characters, powerful sense of time and place, some fabulous descriptions, sentences you'd go back and read five times just to savour their meticulous and potent construction.

[Who Shot Sam?]

I really liked "Humboldt's Gift" and "Henderson the Rain King". Never got to "Augie March" or "Herzog" though.

[bobster]

For some reason, never even felt tempted to read one of his, though I suppose I'll try to get around to him eventually. Don't know why, but he's so identified with American Jews that, I suppose he came a bit too pre-approved for me to be interesting, if that makes any sense.

[BlueChair]

This is rarely mentioned, but despite being regarded as a Jewish-American titan, he was actually born in small-town Quebec before establishing his career as a writer and professor in the U.S.

RIP

[bobster]

Lots of great Jews from Quebec (Mordecai "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" Richler, another writer I've never read, comes to mind). Also, my friend's Nobel prize winning scientist dad. And I almost forgot...Leonard Cohen (well, I know he went to McGill).

[Otis Westinghouse]

Someone was praising him on Radio 4 this morning, and said very accurately that he did faces really well, which is very true, and part of the reason his characters live so vividly. They cited a great quote: 'His eyebrows were like two caterpillars on the tree of knowledge.'

[Mr. Misery]

Thanks for the thread, Otis, I got the news from you. I believe Bellow's literary legacy will survive the inattention of Bobster. Kingsley Amis did faces even better, but as you know Bellow was a mentor and inspiration to Kingsley's son Martin.

One of his best observations was that modern critics and professors have appropriated to themselves the place of the great authors and books they critique. A good biography of him remains to be written. A bulky one was published some years ago but the author was so scornful of Bellow's mind and manner that little light was shed on the subject. One wonders why he undertook this task feeling as he did!

My favorite Saul Bellow novels happen to bookend his writing life. His first, Dangling Man, concerning a man waiting to be drafted into the second world war; and his last, Ravelstein, about a classics professor.

[bobster]

I believe Bellow's literary legacy will survive the inattention of Bobster.

I don't know. I've also ignored the literary output of Lynne Cheney.

[alexv]

Bellow is one of my favorite writers. He lived to a ripe old age, and by all accounts had a blast to the end. He will be missed. I ran into him one night in the 80s in a restaurant in the Upper East Side (we sort of bumped into each other while leaving) and all I could say, at a time when I had read all his books, was that I loved Humboldt's Gift (his most popular book). That's when you want to dig up the most obscure work you can think of. I choked.

He wrote many books and towards the latter end of his career the quality fell off quite a bit, but I agree with Mr. Misery that Ravelstein is terrific novel. Interestingly, the classics professor that Mr. Misery refers to as being at the center of that book was Allan Bloom, who was Bellow's close friend, and who was the conservative scholar who wrote the popular "Closing of the American Mind". Bloom as it turns out was a closeted homosexual who died of AIDS. Bellow's book paints a great and thoroughly surprising portrait of Bloom.

I am not as negative as Mr. Misery on the biography of Bellow done by James Atlas in 2000. It is true that you get the definite sense that Atlas does not like Bellow as a person (and there is a lot of evidence that he was not a very nice man, particularly to women, and he did get in trouble with the PC police when he defended Western culture by asking whether the Zulus had a Tolstoy) but I think he is fair in the assessment of his work, which he praises in an even manner.

There is a fun book out there written I think by a guy named Mark Harris who tried to get Bellow to authorize him to do his biography, got rejected and then went ahead and wrote a book about anyway,which really was a book about how crazy Harris was/is. I recommend it. I think there's also one by a woman recording her relationship with Saul. Bellow did have a knack for attracting odd characters.

By the way, Blue Chair is right to point out that he was born in a suburb of Quebec, but at age 9 his family emigrated to Chicago, and it is fair to say that Chicago is the city with which he is most often associated. But I can follow his lead and point out that Italo Calvino, the great Italian writer, was born in La Habana, Cuba. Chalk up another one for the Cubanos.

[werunandhit]

Personally I hope the fucker burns in hell.

[King Hoarse]

Hahahaha

Because he was a) Saul Bellow b) Jewish c) a writer?


RIP, btw.

(I read Herzog years ago and liked it, but I thought the Swedish translation probably wasn't that great. never got around to reading a second book of his in English, but will. Which one, do you think?)

[Otis Westinghouse]

Dangling Man, maybe? Last night they repeated a programme shown at the time of Ravelstein's publication of M Amis interviewing Bellow. It's a nice programme, with a sense of huge respect from the generaly quite arrogant seeming Amis towards this great literary mentor, and even implications of Bellow as a surrogate father figure, in a literary sense at least, given K Amis's famous dismissal of his son's work, but also in a more literal one with photos of Martin with his baby in his arms relaxing in summer gear with a smiling Bellow's arm around his shoulder. They discuss the issue of both of them being accused of demeaning women, with Amis copping out by saying smart, careerist women don't fit into his dark comedy, only vamps. There's some hilarious footage of Martie settling down in his plush hotel room with a Carlsberg, a rollie and a volume of Bellow. Bellow comes across as gentle and with a nice sense of humour.

[invisible Pole]

I was a big Saul Bellow fan back in my early 20's and read almost everything that was available on the Polish market.
My favourite book is Henderson The Rain King - very funny, very uplifting, and with a brilliant main character.