Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer who is considered one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.
Much of his work was closely associated with his hometown of Chicago, which served as the setting for many of his novels. During his career, Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award and, on three occasions, the National Book Award.
Born Solomon Bellow in 1915 in Lachine, Quebec, he was the son of Russian emigres to Canada. The family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago when Bellow was 9-years-old.
Bellow grew up in a childhood steeped in Jewish tradition. His mother wanted him to become a rabbi or a concert violinist. But, Bellow eventually rebelled against what he described to The New York Times as “suffocating orthodoxy.”
He attended the University of Chicago but two years later transferred to Northwestern University because it was cheaper. He wanted to study literature at Northwestern but, according to the Times, he decided against it because of what he saw as the “tweedy anti-Semitism” of the English Department. He graduated in 1937 with honors in sociology and anthropology. He later did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He left his graduate studies after a couple of months and eventually went to work for the Encyclopedia Britannica, where, according to the Times, he worked on Mortimer Adler’s “Great Books” series.
He became a U.S. citizen in 1941. When World War II began, he joined the merchant marines after being rejected by the U.S. Army because of a hernia. During his time in the service, he finished his debut novel, Dangling Man, which was published in 1944.
Following the award of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948, Bellow moved to Paris where he began writing his breakout novel, The Adventures of Augie March.
With the publication of The Adventures of Augie March in 1953 and then Henderson The Rain King in 1959, Bellow’s reputation as a major literary figure was firmly established.
Bellow received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. The Royal Swedish Academy cited his “exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion.”
According to his obituary in the Times, Bellow was often lumped together with Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud as a Jewish American writer but he rejected the label, saying he didn’t want to be part of the “Hart, Schaffner & Marx” of American letters.
He moved from Chicago to Brookline, Mass., in 1993 in order to teach at Boston University. He died at his home in Brookline on April 5, 2005 at the age of 89.
Bellow is buried in the Jewish cemetery Shir HeHarim in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Bibliography
- Dangling Man (1944)
- The Victim (1947)
- The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
- Seize the Day (1956)
- Henderson the Rain King (1959)
- Herzog (1964)
- Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970)
- Humboldt’s Gift (1975), won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize
- The Dean’s December (1982)
- More Die of Heartbreak (1987)
- A Theft (1989)
- The Bellarosa Connection (1989)
- The Actual (1997)
- Ravelstein (2000)
- To Jerusalem and Back (1976) – Memoir
- It All Adds Up (1994) – Essay collection
Articles about Saul Bellow:
October 25, 2011
Saul Bellow on being a Jew and a writer — Part II
The New York Review of Books published the second of a two-part series that excerpted a lecture given by Saul Bellow in 1988 on being a Jewish writer in America. As you may expect, there’s a lot to chew on … Continue reading
October 18, 2011
Saul Bellow on being a Jewish writer in America
The New York Review of Books has published for the first time excerpts from a talk given in 1988 by Saul Bellow. It is, as you may expect, a very nuanced speech that catalogs Bellow’s thoughts on being a Jew, … Continue reading
December 10, 2010
Chinese professor devotes life to Jewish lit
This story was too good to pass up. The National Post had a piece about a Chinese university professor who became enthralled with Jewish literature shortly after Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. Now, 33 years … Continue reading
November 15, 2010
David Bergen: Emulating Saul Bellow too much?
There’s been some controversy lately over how closely David Bergen’s new novel, The Matter With Morris, emulates Saul Bellow‘s Herzog. Bergen’s book, which had been shortlisted for a Giller Prize in Canada, does not seem to hide the obvious influence … Continue reading
October 28, 2010
Interviews with Roth, Bellow, Singer, more
If you’ve got a few hours to spare in order to get lost online, you could do worse than to wander around in The Paris Review’s newly public Interviews section. The first issue under the new editor, Lorin Stein, just … Continue reading
October 22, 2010
Saul Bellow’s letters: A taste
In writing about the anticipated publication of Saul Bellow’s letters next month, Guardian writer Rachel Cooke noted last week that with “[t]he digital world being what it is, this could well be one of the last collections of letters by … Continue reading
July 1, 2009
Saul Bellow quotes
Saul Bellow quotes come from his writing as well as his lectures, most notably his Nobel Prize lecture, in addition to interviews he gave throughout his career. Feel free to use these in your projects or whenever you need to … Continue reading
April 15, 2009
Goodbye, Portnoy? I don’t think so.
There’s a fairly new ‘web exclusive’ article on the Vanity Fair Web site and it talks about the rise of the ‘New Yiddishists.’ The terms refers to “today’s talented crop of young Jewish writers, such as Nathan Englander, Michael Chabon, … Continue reading
June 17, 2008
To read the Pacific Northwest, turn to Malamud
The Guardian published an interesting piece this weekend about what to read while “going on holiday this summer.” The article was a survey of opinions from prominent writers about what books they recommend as “perfect literary travelling companions.” I was … Continue reading
January 3, 2008
A new Alfred Kazin biography
If any critic were to be considered the supreme inspiration for Jewish Literary Review.com, it would be Alfred Kazin (pictured right). When I was kicking around the idea of starting this site, I actually tried to get the domain name … Continue reading
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