Saul Bellow
The novelist in search of a literary father.
Remembrance of riots past.
Our resident scholar joins us to talk about her recent essay on the novelist Saul Bellow and to expand on her sense of him as a full-fledged Jewish intellectual.
The novelist’s sole work of nonfiction.
His reputation will fall and rise with his people’s.
The great theme of his work is resistance to spiritual constraint, the soul’s freedom as the highest value.
Bellow’s whole career as a writer was devoted to this dichotomy, sometimes veering toward one pole, sometimes toward the other, but never losing sight of both.
The Jewish writer who became America’s most decorated novelist spent his early years prodding the nation’s soul. Then, sensing danger to it, he took up the role of guardian.
A new volume highlights the work of Saul Bellow’s friend and lover.
Did his deracinated outlook subvert his own literary career?
The second volume of a new biography sheds some light on the question.
And his struggle to break into, and remain in, the literary establishment.
He was no “is descendant of Machiavelli.”
Broadway Billy and the amnesia of a people once known for their memory.