Saul Bellow is a name I used to get confued with John Saul, the horror writer and wonder why (old) people I wouldn't normally associate with horror were such great and fevered fans.
But now I know a little better.
He died today in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Bellow, 89, still had the writing bug, and is lucky enough to have completed a biography in Nov. 2003: Bellows: a Literary Life. More importantly he is lucky enough that people care to read his biography.
The Canadian-born Saul Bellow took on Chicago as his bailiwick and first started writing about the Windy City in 1944: The Dangling Man.
Great literature is great life - and powerful literature is that which doesn't paint a picture for you - but gives you enough so you can create your own pictures and allows your whims and wonders to follow their own twists and downfalls.
Sadly, I feel now that 2005 is the Year of Death and I know we're very close to the death of Ray Bradbury, my literary hero, who is about 86.
Bellows will be quite the change of pace from the Wu Tang Clan Manual I'm currently reading, which is shallowly perceptive but a lot of fun. But I will return.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
First, he was born Bellows, but renamed himself Bellow, and "writing bug" is so NOT the right phrase; that's like saying Michael Jordan would shoot baskets now and then or Orson Welles was a film buff. Bellow was a major novelist who won more honors than just about any American writer, including the Nobel. I am NOT a huge fan of his, but come on, credit where it's due.
I am intrigued to hear about this book Bellow: a Literary Life. I wasn't aware it existed, and a memoir by him would have been an event, as was James Atlas' controversial biography of him. The listings of this book on the web are most mysterious; it's on amazon and barnesandnoble, but with extremely scant information, and no reader reviews whatsoever. Apparently the New York Times never reviewed it, which just isn't fathomable given Bellow's stature. What gives?
2 - Mark Saleski
bellow was one of those author's that i always felt should be on my "yea, i've read him" list.
but every time i made the attempt i just couldn't get anywhere (last attempt was Ravelstein, i think)
...had the same experience with joyce carol oates.
3 - Eric Olsen
he is very much one of my favorites and I read most of his books in my 20s. Mr. Samler's Planet and Henderson the Rain King are my favorites and I recommend them highly
4 - Michelle
Please stop talking about Ray Bradbury's "impending" death! I saw him speak at a First Amendment Panel Discussion in Long Beach, CA a few weeks ago and he was even asked what he would like the newspaper headline announcing his death to say and to describe the vessel in which he'd like his remains placed. I'm 38 and I don't like thinking about my death. I expect to like it even less as I grow older. It is important that we support the writers we enjoy, regardless of their placement on bestseller lists, while they are alive and to remember them and continue to read their works after they have passed away.
5 - ClubhouseCancer
Bellow is a giant, as Eric says. Henderson, Herzog, Humboldt and Augie March are the toushstones, but a good first read, as it's a great, compact distillation of so many of Bellow's themes (which are the themes of the 20th Century -- alienation, consumerism, identity, the culture mash) is the novella Seize the Day. File it in the same midcentury Curdled American Dream folder as "Death of a Salesman."
But none of his stuff is tough to get through. His prose is warm, witty and rigorous, and his psychological insights are truly refined, with much more nuance than I could hope to convey here.
A friend once told me I love Bellow's novels so much because they're all about a smart, self-reflective, overly analytical guy who gets fucked by love and everything else. That's a pretty good gloss on much of Bellow's output.
6 - freddie
SB was perhaps the only writer I know of who could have a central character that was an intellelctual (see, for example, Herzog) and make the ideas and the character come alive and maintain our interest without the stiltedness of boring a reader with the ideas that are dealt with
7 - Rodney Welch
I've read a lot of Bellow, I respect certain novels, but truly, I've never much liked him. I guess it's a matter of personal taste -- some people read him and they think they're listening to the literary equivalent of Charlie Parker, and then there are people like me who tend to think of him as a windbag.
8 - Eric Berlin
Nice concise look back on Bellow's life and death, Temple.
9 - Temple Stark
Thanks. A little too concise IMHAHO, but really meant as an announcement more than anything.
10 - Mark Saleski
for the record, i picked up "seize the day" over the weekend.
11 - Melissa
I have to do a paper on Bellow's book Seize the day and i absolutely hate the book. I have a thought process forming about how to write my paper but I just can't seem to sit down and do it. I have no clue where to get resources on who hates the book. Every analysis I've read on the book sounds the same, as if they all thought with one brain. I hate the book but i need a paper. Any suggestions?
12 - Bob A. Booey
I nominate "Rain King" by the Counting Crows as the best example of a pretentious song that refers to literature without saying anything smart about it written by a hippie English major dropout from Cal Berkeley.
Quiz for everyone: what controversial scholar (and real life friend of Bellow's who also died of AIDS) was Ravelstein based on? Easy one.
That is all.
13 - alpha
Thank you for the announcement, Temple. It is the passing of a great figure in modern American literature and a writer of genius.
Phooey, Booey.
Someone might want to refer to a post of mine on Saul Bellow: The December of the Dean . My ode to a man of great writing nearing the end of his life at Bellow
14 - alpha
I messed up the link. This one works.
Bellow
15 - josen
i cannot understand what people are talking about!some say they dislike saul bellow's brilliant works,i think it is totally wrong!
16 - Jiten Nongthombam
Bellow's Revelstein is the best novel I ever read.