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Seize the Day Reader's Guide. By Saul Bellow. Category: Literary Fiction Fiction Classics. Seize the Day Reader's Guide. Share: Share on Facebook. Share on Tumblr. Abstract: The society that Saul Bellow (1915-2005) depicts in his novel Seize the Day (1956) is overwhelmed with materialism, which. In Seize the Day, Saul Bellow Might has tried to highlight the way of life in the Capitalist America. Wealth and power have come to mean everything' (Roof Beam reader, 2012, para. Top Ten Best Saul Bellow Books 1. The Adventures of Augie March 3. Humboldt's Gift 4. Seize the Day 5. Sammler's Planet 6. Henderson the Rain King 7. The Victim 8. The Bellarosa.

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Preview — Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity.
Published May 27th 2003 by Penguin Classics (first published November 15th 1956)
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Popular Answered Questions
This question contains spoilers…(view spoiler)[The following question is a spoiler.
Is Wilhelm about to have a heart attack at the end? (hide spoiler)]
Matt Whiteford(edit: spoilers included in answer)
No, Wilhelm is coming to terms with the only fateful resolution with which life can offer him: the deprivation of…more
(edit: spoilers included in answer)
No, Wilhelm is coming to terms with the only fateful resolution with which life can offer him: the deprivation of life itself. While he is not about to have a heart attack, he has finally realized that the depth of human suffering only ceases with the termination of the contract. Wilhelm pauses and reminds us of the similarities between the aged corpse and himself, the greyed, streaking hair and the pangs of sorrow hidden, welting in the man's eyes. Wilhelm then proceeds to break down in the middle of the crowd, understanding the frailty of the human condition and weeping in an unwitting culmination of the emotions building silently throughout the course of the novel(la). (less)
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Rating details

Dec 09, 2012s.penkevich rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: novella, new_york_state_of_mind, nobel-prize-winners
'Nature only knows one thing, and that’s the present. Present, present, eternal present, like a big, huge, giant wave – colossal, bright and beautiful, full of life and death, climbing into the sky, standing in the seas. You must go along with the actual, the Here-and-Now, the glory -
Following the success of his lengthy, 1953 National Book Award Winning novel The Adventures of Augie March, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow returned in 1956 with the very slender Seize the Day. Called ‘the most Russian
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This novella about the morning hours in the life of a man which is falling apart is authentic New York narrative AND somber urban fable.
Written in '56, it is still supremely relevant and I bet there are dozens, perhaps thousands, of Tommy Wilhems out there in the world, and they are all MODERN MEN; Wilhem is a man confused and, in the same vein as lame-o Holden C., one very unhappy with his placement in society, while also questioning his duties as a 'man.' The episode between Wilhem and his fa
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Jul 30, 2016Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: nobel-lit, novels, fiction, american-20th-c
If there was ever a character as neurotic as Alexander Portnoy - it was Wilhelm Adler. Following him around for a day in this short but great novella, I laughed and cried. At times, well most of the time, he is pathetic but as in nearly all of Bellow's protagonists, there is a diehard optimism that keeps him going towards self-realization. This book is a breath of fresh air and will bring you a smile. Carpe diem!
May 02, 2015Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Time flies, it is hard enough to catch a moment… Is it possible to Seize the Day?
If Saul Bellow isn’t cynical then he is surely sarcastic.
Cynicism was bread and meat to everyone. And irony, too. Maybe it couldn't be helped. It was probably even necessary. Wilhelm, however, feared it intensely. Whenever at the end of the day be was unusually fatigued be attributed it to cynicism.

Tommy Wilhelm is a hopeless dream chaser – all his life he was chasing his romantic dreams but couldn’t catch any. He i
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Nov 02, 2012Jimmy rated it really liked it · review of another edition
There is a strikingly pathetic point in Saul Bellow’s novella Seize the Day, when the protagonist Wilhelm (let’s call him Tommy, his Hollywood alias) Adler laments how the latter half of his existence will be occupied by analyzing the failures that occurred in the first half. In the depths of his dour fatalism he opines, “A person can become tired of looking himself over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of your first ha...more
Oh, Good Grief!
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.
― Tennessee Williams
Bellow's fourth novel, published in 1956, follows sad sack Tommy Wilhelm (real name, Wilky Adler), who is in his mid-40s, lives in a Manhattan residential hotel with his retired dad, separated from his kids and a frigid wife who will not grant him a divorce, unemployed af
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I'm on a bit of a novella reading binge at the moment, in preparation for a class I'm teaching next fall. And if this temporary obsession brings me to more books like SEIZE THE DAY, maybe it will become a lasting obsession.
Reading Saul Bellow is dangerous business for a writer because unless you are one of about five living authors I can think of, your sentences will never be as beautiful as Saul Bellow's. In fact it might be best just to say that out loud before sitting down to write. As in 'I
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Jul 02, 2013AC rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This is Bellow.
Not the early, picaresque Bellow of Augie (1953) – which I do not much like – writing a clunky, poorly edited, Americanized, Depression-Era Bildungsroman…, with the so-unBellow-like voice of sentences made in endless *largo*… but the Bellow that has found his voice, for better and even, sometimes, for worse…. A Bellow that is modern, urban, postwar, a scratchingly desperate New York Manhattan Bellow…, not the yuppified, gentrified, Ed Kochified Manhattan of Annie Hall, but the Man
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Jul 29, 2012Erik F. rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Astonishingly powerful novella structured around a day in the life of an actor manqué as he deals with a shrewish ex-wife, an untrustworthy 'psychiatrist' who entangles him in the stock market, an icy father who (understandably) has grown tired of helping his middle-aged son out of financial binds, and with assorted feelings of acedia, alienation, and desperation. In a brief number of pages, Bellow builds a very convincing miniature panorama of a single man adrift in an urban and emotional waste...more
Sep 29, 2017Chrissie rated it liked it
Shelves: classics, philo-psychol, nyc, audible-uk, 2018-read, humor, usa, 2-itunes-library
I cannot sum up the book better than the one line of the GR book description:
'Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one (middle-aged) man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity.'
I have underlined what should be stressed and added in parenthesis what is lacking.
Addendum:
*Jewish NY humor at its best.
*Bellow captures with pathos how it feels to be middle-aged.
*Carpe diem is for some beyond one's fingertips.
Grover Gardne
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Aug 09, 2017Nicola rated it liked it · review of another edition
2 1/2 stars
My first Saul Bellow and not really to my taste. It's not badly written, I can see why he is a respected author, but, no, just not my bag. It reminded me a little bit of Death of a Salesman in its depressing tone as Tommy Wilhem is another American Man driven on by the demons of social and financial success and the pressures of family expectations. It was all very moving but I don't really enjoy bleak stories like this - I 'enjoyed' Death of a Salesman but after studying it in school
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It's been about a week since I finished this book, and have picked up two new books in the meantime, so my first thoughts are a bit hazy and lost to other curiosities. However, the thing about the book that has stuck with me - and will no doubt lead me to re-reading it in later years - is its examination of American ideals and the internal grapplings of a human soul. How wonderfully fresh and true this story remains today, over 50 years after it was written! Tommy, the novel's protagonist, must...more
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Nov 10, 2013Ali Nazifpour rated it did not like it · review of another edition
I'm afraid I couldn't like this novel although I wanted to. Yes, the writing is fantastic, the humor is cutting, the psychology of the characters is perfect - however, what I'm missing here is the point, the plot, the actual novella. It seems like an opening rather than the complete work. OK, we know Tommy. His life sucks and he's a loser. Cool. So what? The novel never goes beyond a portrait of its protagonist and its supporting characters. And just when you expect the story to begin, for the n...more
Aug 22, 2010Lobstergirl rated it really liked it · review of another edition
Bellow is a treat even if you don't completely swoon over every novel in its entirety. His descriptions, his dialogue, his portrayals of humanity are so rich. This novella is told from the point of view of the increasingly shabby and morose failed actor and salesman, Tommy Wilhelm, but Bellow also lets us in on what his disapproving father, Dr. Adler, thinks.
Then Wilhelm had said, 'Yes, that was the beginning of the end, wasn't it, Father?'
Wilhelm often astonished Dr. Adler. Beginning of the end
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'Be here now....'
Part Wilhelm Reich lecture, part Seinfeld television episode featuring a guest appearance by Ram Dass.
I'm not ashamed to say that half of this novella floated over my head or passed through my brain without sticking. I loved the funny bits in the other half though.
Jul 01, 2013David rated it liked it
A deeply psychological novel, Seize the Day follows the middle-aged man in the life of a single day in New York City. 'Psychological'... 'single day'... Bellow's ante into the pool of single-day novels, alongside Joyce's Ulysses and Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is a much slimmer volume than its fellow one-day wonders, but carries perhaps no less of a whollop. The story follows Tommy Wilhelm, a middle-aged man, a failed actor, a failed salesman, a husband whose wife refuses him a divorce but takes his...more

I started another of Bellow's novels, Herzog, years ago at Uni and gave up about one third through it as it all felt a bit slow and ponderous and although fairly well written, didn't grab me enough really. Maybe I'll give that one another go some time but with Seize the Day, I did manage to finish it at least, but it seemed hard work, especially as it's such a short book. Bellow seems to be quite a long winded chap and likes to say something over the stretch of a page that could be summed up in
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Oct 21, 2018Ericka Clouther rated it really liked it
Shelves: own-read, 0-own, own-fiction, fiction, read-kevin, author-male, classics, book-club-kevin, 1950s, literary
This book sort of reminds me of Death of a Salesman. It's easy to relate to Wilhelm even while judging him (and while judging myself by association). The sentences are wonderful and still very relevant to modern life. I also appreciate that the book is on the shorter side. Bellow packed a lot into a small space and nothing is belabored.
Apr 20, 2019Tuti rated it it was amazing
Shelves: 2019-top, 2019-top-top, modern-classics, 2019
one fateful day in the life of tommy wilhelm, living in new york in the same hotel (gloriana) as his old father, after having lost his job as sales representative for a kids furniture company and left his wife and desintegrating marriage. he is in an acute need of money - unfortunately he trusts dr. tamkin with investing his last 700 dollars at a brokarage office he doesn’t understand much about. exquisite, bitter, wise, humorous, deep, sad, humane portrait of a man taking one wrong decision aft...more
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May 20, 2009Jim rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Apolgies in advance for skipping over the plot summary, but here's what I think I learned from this book:
1) Bellow, like Banville, is a master of characterization, the expression of character through movement, reaction, idiosyncrasies, etc. It's not just what they look like and what they're wearing (though this is important) it's what these things say about the character and how they're expressed through speech, interaction with others, moments of isolation, etc. It can't be all wooden descripti
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Jul 01, 2014Jan rated it really liked it
Shelves: social-commentary, 20th-century-mid, literature-jewish, literature-north-american
The little novella ‘Seize the Day’ is rightly called a masterpiece.
Like a modern Greek tragedy, we have in Tommy Wilhelm a protagonist who is facing the world closing in on him. Instead of shutting down, giving in or giving up, he feels very deeply. What he ask for is just a bare minimum of human understanding, of compassion
Sadly, his father, who is fiercely aloof, can’t provide this and regards him as a loser. He ex-wife demands even more alimony. He is swindled out of the little cash he has b
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The inner talk provides a whole other dramatic dimension. Brilliant portrait of despair, self-recrimination, anger, despair....
Feb 09, 2019Melissa rated it it was ok
Sorry, hated it.... well written, but it was like listening to your ex whine about how horrible the world is to him and the whole time you just want to say....maybe, just maybe if you treated people better they’d treat you better, because the one common denominator in all of these woe is me stories is you. 🤷♀...more
Well, I have been reading Philip Roth for a long time now (the long time amounting to only twelve books read out of an outstanding thirty or so Roth books), and reading Saul Bellow was nothing but help; nothing but completion, and comprehension (already many things!). As soon as you start reading this book you feel as if you're reading Roth, but a Roth who is in a more moderate mood. Not much anger, not much ridicule, not a 'howl', but very moving all the same.
Saul Bellow's human understanding (
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May 31, 2012Frankie rated it really liked it · review of another edition
I'm reading Saul Bellow backwards. I should've read Augie March, then Seize the Day, then Herzog. Instead I read Herzog first, the tale of a man at rock bottom. Now I've read about Wilhelm, a man who thinks he's at rock bottom but isn't. I have yet to read Augie March, but my impression is that he's a superego-type character. Perhaps for Bellow it shows his progress from the shallow heroes to the complicated. At any rate, I should get back to chronological order for Bellow's books.
One of the st
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I couldn't decide between 3 or 4 stars, so I went with generosity. This is my first Saul Bellow book and I am interested in him as an American New Yorker philosophical novelist.
'Seize the Day' takes place in the course of a day as Wilhelm, a middle age Jewish man, reflects on his state of affairs, the life he has chosen, and his regrets. It certainly is not an uplifting book, but Bellow is such a keen observer and his writing is sparse, yet pungent.
I particularly enjoyed city descriptions, and
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Dec 29, 2012Alan rated it really liked it
In my five-book intro to lit class taught at a community college, I often included this novella or Alice in Wonderland or Tom Sawyer or Slocum's Sailing Alone. You can see I was not adhering to either chronological or authorial order or pigeonholing.
Bellow's short work evokes the America that Reagan and Bush advertise, the Market, the go-getters... New York in a word. (And, aware of current candidates from both US parties, I should add, the Losers.) Yet being Bellow, he raises essential questi
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Jul 10, 2013Aban rated it it was amazing
Actually, the first time reading a piece of life caused me such a severe headache, and I’m yet waiting to take my catharsis pill!
Cruel and naked is the realism, with which Saul Bellow illustrates a one-day life of a confused and lonesome man, who is ruined by a failed marriage and an unfulfilled love, plus by the the heavy sense of duty to support his two sons.
This novella, in fact, is the story of a hard epiphany which should take place so Tommy Wilhelm be purged from a kind of midlife crisis
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May 16, 2016Jim Peterson rated it it was ok
I expected more. Likeable characters would've been a good start, but a likeable story would've been even better.
Dec 20, 2018tortoise dreams rated it it was ok · review of another edition
Just not for me. Didn't like this. Seemed pointless. Why was it written? I thought it was a famous must-read. So before a tiny nobody like me gives a Nobel Prize winner 2* in perpetuity (there's those delusions of grandeur!), I'm going to do a re-read before writing a review. I hope in the second read I'll see what I missed ...
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Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marines during World War II.
Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was p
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More quizzes & trivia...
“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half. ” — 121 likes
“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.” — 75 likes
More quotes…
BornSolomon Bellows
10 June 1915
Lachine, Quebec, Canada
Died5 April 2005 (aged 89)
Brookline, Massachusetts, United States
OccupationWriter
NationalityCanadian/American
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Northwestern University
University of Wisconsin
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
1976
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1976
National Medal of Arts
1988
National Book Award
1954, 1965, 1971
SpouseAnita Goshkin (1937–1956)

Alexandra (Sondra) Tschacbasov (1956–1959)
Susan Glassman (1961–64)
Alexandra Bagdasar Ionescu Tulcea (1974–1985)

Janis Freedman (1989–2005)
Signature

Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 June 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts.[1] He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times[2] and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.[3]

In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited 'the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age.'[4] His best-known works include The Adventures of Augie March,Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift and Ravelstein. Bellow was widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest authors.[5]

Seize The Day By Saul Bellow Pdf Editor

Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself.[6] Bellow grew up as an immigrant from Quebec. As Christopher Hitchens describes it, Bellow's fiction and principal characters reflect his own yearning for transcendence, a battle 'to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses.'[7][8] Bellow's protagonists, in one shape or another, all wrestle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, called 'the big-scale insanities of the 20th century.' This transcendence of the 'unutterably dismal' (a phrase from Dangling Man) is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a 'ferocious assimilation of learning' (Hitchens) and an emphasis on nobility.

  • 1Biography
  • 6Bibliography

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows[9][10] in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents, Lescha (née Gordin) and Abraham Bellows,[11] emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia. [9][10] He had three elder siblings - sister Zelda (later Jane, born in 1907), brothers Moishe (later Maurice, born in 1908) and Schmuel (later Samuel, born in 1911).[12] Bellow's family was Lithuanian-Jewish;[13][14] his father was born in Vilnius. Bellow celebrated his birthday in June, although he may have been born in July (in the Jewish community, it was customary to record the Hebrew date of birth, which does not always coincide with the Gregorian calendar).[15] Of his family's emigration, Bellow wrote:

The retrospective was strong in me because of my parents. They were both full of the notion that they were falling, falling. They had been prosperous cosmopolitans in Saint Petersburg. My mother could never stop talking about the family dacha, her privileged life, and how all that was now gone. She was working in the kitchen. Cooking, washing, mending ... There had been servants in Russia ... But you could always transpose from your humiliating condition with the help of a sort of embittered irony.[16]

A period of illness from a respiratory infection at age eight both taught him self-reliance (he was a very fit man despite his sedentary occupation) and provided an opportunity to satisfy his hunger for reading: reportedly, he decided to be a writer when he first read Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

When Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels.[10] Bellow's father, Abraham, had become an onion importer. He also worked in a bakery, as a coal delivery man, and as a bootlegger.[10] Bellow's mother, Liza, died when he was 17. She had been deeply religious and wanted her youngest son, Saul, to become a rabbi or a concert violinist. But he rebelled against what he later called the 'suffocating orthodoxy' of his religious upbringing, and he began writing at a young age.[10] Bellow's lifelong love for the Bible began at four when he learned Hebrew. Bellow also grew up reading William Shakespeare and the great Russian novelists of the 19th century.[10] In Chicago, he took part in anthroposophical studies at the Anthroposophical Society of Chicago.[17] Bellow attended Tuley High School on Chicago's west side where he befriended fellow writer Isaac Rosenfeld. In his 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King, Bellow modeled the character King Dahfu on Rosenfeld.[18]

Education and early career[edit]

Bellow attended the University of Chicago but later transferred to Northwestern University. He originally wanted to study literature, but he felt the English department was anti-Jewish. Instead, he graduated with honors in anthropology and sociology.[19] It has been suggested Bellow's study of anthropology had an influence on his literary style, and anthropological references pepper his works.[citation needed] Bellow later did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.

Paraphrasing Bellow's description of his close friend Allan Bloom (see Ravelstein), John Podhoretz has said that both Bellow and Bloom 'inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air.'[20]

In the 1930s, Bellow was part of the Chicago branch of the Works Progress Administration Writer's Project, which included such future Chicago literary luminaries as Richard Wright and Nelson Algren. Many of the writers were radical: if they were not members of the Communist Party USA, they were sympathetic to the cause. Bellow was a Trotskyist, but because of the greater numbers of Stalinist-leaning writers he had to suffer their taunts.[21]

In 1941 Bellow became a naturalized US citizen, after discovering upon attempting to enlist in the armed forces that he had immigrated to the United States illegally as a child.[22][23]In 1943, Maxim Lieber was his literary agent.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine and during his service he completed his first novel, Dangling Man (1944) about a young Chicago man waiting to be drafted for the war.

From 1946 through 1948 Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota. In the fall of 1947, following a tour to promote his novel The Victim, he moved into a large old house at 58 Orlin Street SE in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis.[12]

In 1948, Bellow was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to move to Paris, where he began writing The Adventures of Augie March (1953). Critics have remarked on the resemblance between Bellow's picaresque novel and the great 17th Century Spanish classic Don Quixote.[citation needed] The book starts with one of American literature's most famous opening paragraphs,[24] and it follows its titular character through a series of careers and encounters, as he lives by his wits and his resolve. Written in a colloquial yet philosophical style, The Adventures of Augie March established Bellow's reputation as a major author.

In 1958, Bellow once again taught at the University of Minnesota. During this time, he and his wife Sasha received psychoanalysis from University of Minnesota Psychology Professor Paul Meehl.[25]

In the spring term of 1961 he taught creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras.[26]One of his students was William Kennedy, who was encouraged by Bellow to write fiction.

Return to Chicago and mid-career[edit]

Bellow lived in New York City for a number of years, but he returned to Chicago in 1962 as a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. The committee's goal was to have professors work closely with talented graduate students on a multi-disciplinary approach to learning. Bellow taught on the committee for more than 30 years, alongside his close friend, the philosopher Allan Bloom.

There were also other reasons for Bellow's return to Chicago, where he moved into the Hyde Park neighborhood with his third wife, Susan Glassman. Bellow found Chicago vulgar but vital, and more representative of America than New York.[27] He was able to stay in contact with old high school friends and a broad cross-section of society. In a 1982 profile, Bellow's neighborhood was described as a high-crime area in the city's center, and Bellow maintained he had to live in such a place as a writer and 'stick to his guns.'[28]

Bellow hit the bestseller list in 1964 with his novel Herzog. Bellow was surprised at the commercial success of this cerebral novel about a middle-aged and troubled college professor who writes letters to friends, scholars and the dead, but never sends them. Bellow returned to his exploration of mental instability, and its relationship to genius, in his 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift. Bellow used his late friend and rival, the brilliant but self-destructive poet Delmore Schwartz, as his model for the novel's title character, Von Humboldt Fleisher.[29] Bellow also used Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, anthroposophy, as a theme in the book, having attended a study group in Chicago. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.[30]

Nobel Prize and later career[edit]

Propelled by the success of Humboldt's Gift, Bellow won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1976. In the 70-minute address he gave to an audience in Stockholm, Sweden, Bellow called on writers to be beacons for civilization and awaken it from intellectual torpor.[29]

The following year, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Bellow for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Bellow's lecture was entitled 'The Writer and His Country Look Each Other Over.'[31]

From December 1981 to March 1982, Bellow was the Visiting Lansdowne Scholar at the University of Victoria (B.C.),[32] and also held the title Writer-in-Residence.[33]

Bellow traveled widely throughout his life, mainly to Europe, which he sometimes visited twice a year.[29] As a young man, Bellow went to Mexico City to meet Leon Trotsky, but the expatriate Russian revolutionary was assassinated the day before they were to meet. Bellow's social contacts were wide and varied. He tagged along with Robert F. Kennedy for a magazine profile he never wrote, he was close friends with the author Ralph Ellison. His many friends included the journalist Sydney J. Harris and the poet John Berryman.[citation needed]

While sales of Bellow's first few novels were modest, that turned around with Herzog. Bellow continued teaching well into his old age, enjoying its human interaction and exchange of ideas. He taught at Yale University, University of Minnesota, New York University, Princeton University, University of Puerto Rico, University of Chicago, Bard College and Boston University, where he co-taught a class with James Wood ('modestly absenting himself' when it was time to discuss Seize the Day). In order to take up his appointment at Boston, Bellow moved in 1993 from Chicago to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he died on 5 April 2005, at age 89. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery Shir HeHarim of Brattleboro, Vermont.

While he read voluminously, Bellow also played the violin and followed sports. Work was a constant for him, but he at times toiled at a plodding pace on his novels, frustrating the publishing company.[29]

His early works earned him the reputation as a major novelist of the 20th century, and by his death he was widely regarded as one of the greatest living novelists.[34] He was the first writer to win three National Book Awards in all award categories.[2] His friend and protege Philip Roth has said of him, 'The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists—William Faulkner and Saul Bellow. Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century.' James Wood, in a eulogy of Bellow in The New Republic, wrote:[35]

I judged all modern prose by his. Unfair, certainly, because he made even the fleet-footed—the Updikes, the DeLillos, the Roths—seem like monopodes. Yet what else could I do? I discovered Saul Bellow's prose in my late teens, and henceforth, the relationship had the quality of a love affair about which one could not keep silent. Over the last week, much has been said about Bellow's prose, and most of the praise—perhaps because it has been overwhelmingly by men—has tended toward the robust: We hear about Bellow's mixing of high and low registers, his Melvillean cadences jostling the jivey Yiddish rhythms, the great teeming democracy of the big novels, the crooks and frauds and intellectuals who loudly people the brilliant sensorium of the fiction. All of this is true enough; John Cheever, in his journals, lamented that, alongside Bellow's fiction, his stories seemed like mere suburban splinters. Ian McEwan wisely suggested last week that British writers and critics may have been attracted to Bellow precisely because he kept alive a Dickensian amplitude now lacking in the English novel. ... But nobody mentioned the beauty of this writing, its music, its high lyricism, its firm but luxurious pleasure in language itself. ... [I]n truth, I could not thank him enough when he was alive, and I cannot now.

Personal life[edit]

Bellow was married five times, with all but his last marriage ending in divorce. His son by his first marriage, Greg Bellow, became a psychotherapist; Greg Bellow published Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir in 2013, nearly a decade after his father's death.[36] Bellow's son by his second marriage, Adam, published a nonfiction book In Praise of Nepotism in 2003. Bellow's wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra (Sondra) Tsachacbasov, Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea, and Janis Freedman. In 2000, when he was 84, Bellow had his fourth child and first daughter, with Freedman.[37]

Themes and style[edit]

The author's works speak to the disorienting nature of modern civilization, and the countervailing ability of humans to overcome their frailty and achieve greatness (or at least awareness). Bellow saw many flaws in modern civilization, and its ability to foster madness, materialism and misleading knowledge.[38] Principal characters in Bellow's fiction have heroic potential, and many times they stand in contrast to the negative forces of society. Often these characters are Jewish and have a sense of alienation or otherness.

Jewish life and identity is a major theme in Bellow's work, although he bristled at being called a 'Jewish writer.' Bellow's work also shows a great appreciation of America, and a fascination with the uniqueness and vibrancy of the American experience.

Bellow's work abounds in references and quotes from the likes of Marcel Proust and Henry James, but he offsets these high-culture references with jokes.[10] Bellow interspersed autobiographical elements into his fiction, and many of his principal characters were said to bear a resemblance to him.

Criticism, controversy and conservative cultural activism[edit]

Martin Amis described Bellow as 'The greatest American author ever, in my view'.[39]

His sentences seem to weigh more than anyone else's. He is like a force of nature ... He breaks all the rules ... [T]he people in Bellow's fiction are real people, yet the intensity of the gaze that he bathes them in, somehow through the particular, opens up into the universal.[40]

For Linda Grant, 'What Bellow had to tell us in his fiction was that it was worth it, being alive.'

His vigour, vitality, humour and passion were always matched by the insistence on thought, not the predigested cliches of the mass media or of those on the left, which had begun to disgust him by the Sixties ... It's easy to be a 'writer of conscience'—anyone can do it if they want to; just choose your cause. Bellow was a writer about conscience and consciousness, forever conflicted by the competing demands of the great cities, the individual's urge to survival against all odds and his equal need for love and some kind of penetrating understanding of what there was of significance beyond all the racket and racketeering.[41]

On the other hand, Bellow's detractors considered his work conventional and old-fashioned, as if the author were trying to revive the 19th-century European novel. In a private letter, Vladimir Nabokov once referred to Bellow as a 'miserable mediocrity.'[42] Journalist and author Ron Rosenbaum described Bellow's Ravelstein (2000) as the only book that rose above Bellow's failings as an author. Rosenbaum wrote,

My problem with the pre-Ravelstein Bellow is that he all too often strains too hard to yoke together two somewhat contradictory aspects of his being and style. There's the street-wise Windy City wiseguy and then—as if to show off that the wiseguy has Wisdom—there are the undigested chunks of arcane, not entirely impressive, philosophic thought and speculation. Just to make sure you know his novels have intellectual heft. That the world and the flesh in his prose are both figured and transfigured.[43]

Sam Tanenhaus wrote in New York Times Book Review in 2007:

But what, then, of the many defects—the longueurs and digressions, the lectures on anthroposophy and religion, the arcane reading lists? What of the characters who don't change or grow but simply bristle onto the page, even the colorful lowlifes pontificating like fevered students in the seminars Bellow taught at the University of Chicago? And what of the punitively caricatured ex-wives drawn from the teeming annals of the novelist's own marital discord?

But Tanenhaus went on to answer his question:

Shortcomings, to be sure. But so what? Nature doesn't owe us perfection. Novelists don't either. Who among us would even recognize perfection if we saw it? In any event, applying critical methods, of whatever sort, seemed futile in the case of an author who, as Randall Jarrell once wrote of Walt Whitman, 'is a world, a waste with, here and there, systems blazing at random out of the darkness'—those systems 'as beautifully and astonishingly organized as the rings and satellites of Saturn.'[44]

V. S. Pritchett praised Bellow, finding his shorter works to be his best. Pritchett called Bellow's novella Seize the Day a 'small gray masterpiece.'[10]

As he grew older, Bellow moved decidedly away from leftist politics and became identified with cultural conservatism.[29][45] His opponents included feminism, campus activism and postmodernism.[46] Bellow also thrust himself into the often contentious realm of Jewish and African-American relations.[47] Bellow was critical of multiculturalism and according to Alfred Kazin once said: 'Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read him.'[48][49] Bellow distanced himself somewhat from these remarks, which he characterized as 'off the cuff obviously and pedantic certainly.' He, however, stood by his criticism of multiculturalism, writing:

In any reasonably open society, the absurdity of a petty thought-police campaign provoked by the inane magnification of 'discriminatory' remarks about the Papuans and the Zulus would be laughed at. To be serious in this fanatical style is a sort of Stalinism -- the Stalinist seriousness and fidelity to the party line that senior citizens like me remember all too well.[50]

Despite his identification with Chicago, he kept aloof from some of that city's more conventional writers. In a 2006 interview with Stop Smiling magazine, Studs Terkel said of Bellow: 'I didn't know him too well. We disagreed on a number of things politically. In the protests in the beginning of Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night, when Mailer, Robert Lowell and Paul Goodman were marching to protest the Vietnam War, Bellow was invited to a sort of counter-gathering. He said, 'Of course I'll attend'. But he made a big thing of it. Instead of just saying OK, he was proud of it. So I wrote him a letter and he didn't like it. He wrote me a letter back. He called me a Stalinist. But otherwise, we were friendly. He was a brilliant writer, of course. I love Seize the Day.'

Attempts to name a street after Bellow in his Hyde Park neighborhood were scotched by local alderman on the grounds that Bellow had made remarks about the neighborhood's current inhabitants that they considered racist.[51] A one-block stretch of West Augusta Boulevard in Humboldt Park was named Saul Bellow Way in his honor instead.[52]

Awards and honors[edit]

  • 1948 Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1954 National Book Award for Fiction
  • 1965 National Book Award for Fiction
  • 1971 National Book Award for Fiction
  • 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  • 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature
  • 1980 O. Henry Award
  • 1986 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates[53][54]
  • 1988 National Medal of Arts
  • 1989 PEN/Malamud Award
  • 1989 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award
  • 1990 National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
  • 2010 Inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[55]

Bellow is represented in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery with six portraits, including a photograph by Irving Penn,[56] a painting by Sarah Yuster,[57] a bust by Sara Miller,[58] and drawings by Edward Sorel and Arthur Herschel Lidov.[59][60][61] A copy of the Miller bust was installed at the Harold Washington Library Center in 1993.[62]Bellow's papers are held at the library of the University of Chicago.[63]

The Last Analysis Saul Bellow

Bibliography[edit]

Novels and novellas[edit]

  • Dangling Man (1944)
  • The Victim (1947)
  • The Adventures of Augie March (1953), National Book Award for Fiction[64]
  • Seize the Day (1956)
  • Henderson the Rain King (1959)
  • Herzog (1964), National Book Award[65]
  • Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), National Book Award[66]
  • Humboldt's Gift (1975), winner of the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction[67]
  • The Dean's December (1982)
  • More Die of Heartbreak (1987)
  • A Theft (1989)
  • The Bellarosa Connection (1989)
  • The Actual (1997)
  • Ravelstein (2000)

Short story collections[edit]

  • Mosby's Memoirs (1968)
  • Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984)
  • Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales (1991)
  • Collected Stories (2001)

Plays[edit]

  • The Last Analysis (1965)

Library of America editions[edit]

  • Novels 1944–1953: Dangling Man, The Victim, The Adventures of Augie March (2003)
  • Novels 1956–1964: Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog (2007)
  • Novels 1970–1982: Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, The Dean's December (2010)
  • Novels 1984–2000: What Kind of Day Did You Have?, More Die of Heartbreak, A Theft, The Bellarosa Connection, The Actual, Ravelstein (2014)

Translations[edit]

  • 'Gimpel the Fool' (1945), short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Bellow in 1953)

Non-fiction[edit]

Saul Bellow Pdf

  • To Jerusalem and Back (1976), memoir
  • It All Adds Up (1994), essay collection
  • Saul Bellow: Letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor (2010), correspondence
  • There Is Simply Too Much To Think About (Viking, 2015), collection of shorter non-fiction pieces

Works about Saul Bellow[edit]

  • Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir, Greg Bellow, 2013 ISBN978-1608199952
  • Saul Bellow, Tony Tanner (1965) (see also his City of Words [1971])
  • Saul Bellow, Malcolm Bradbury (1982)
  • Saul Bellow Drumlin Woodchuck, Mark Harris, University of Georgia Press. (1982)
  • Saul Bellow: Modern Critical Views, Harold Bloom (Ed.) (1986)
  • Handsome Is: Adventures with Saul Bellow, Harriet Wasserman (1997)
  • Saul Bellow and the Decline of Humanism, Michael K Glenday (1990)
  • Saul Bellow: A Biography of the Imagination, Ruth Miller, St. Martins Pr. (1991)
  • Bellow: A Biography, James Atlas (2000)
  • Saul Bellow and American Transcendentalism, M.A. Quayum (2004)
  • 'Even Later' and 'The American Eagle' in Martin Amis, The War Against Cliché (2001) are celebratory. The latter essay is also found in the Everyman's Library edition of Augie March.
  • 'Saul Bellow's comic style': James Wood in The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel, 2004. ISBN0-224-06450-9.
  • The Hero in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Saul Bellow and Don DeLillo , Stephanie Halldorson (2007)
  • 'Saul Bellow' a song, written by Sufjan Stevens on The Avalanche, which is composed of outtakes and other recordings from his concept album Illinois
  • The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915–1964 (2015), and The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005 (2018), Zachary Leader

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^University of Chicago accolades – National Medal of Arts. Retrieved 8 March 2008.
  2. ^ ab'National Book Award Winners: 1950–2009'. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
  3. ^'Distinguished Contribution to American Letters'. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2012.
  4. ^'Nobel Prize in Literature 1976 - Press Release'. nobelprize.org. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  5. ^Obituary: Saul Bellow BBC News, Tuesday, 5 April 2005
  6. ^'The New York Times, Mel Gussow and Charles McGrath[2005], in Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life into American Novel, Dies at 89'. nytimes.com. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  7. ^Arguably: Essays, Christopher Hitchens[2011], 'Saul Bellow: The Great Assimilator', Atlantic Books, 2011ISBN9780857892577
  8. ^'Jewish American titan from the ghetto' By Christopher Hitchens, 30 December 30, 2011
  9. ^ abLibrary of America Bellow Novels 1944–1953 Pg.1000.
  10. ^ abcdefghMel Gussow and Charles McGrath, Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89, The New York Times 6 April 2005. Retrieved 21 October 2008.
  11. ^Atlas, J. (2000). Bellow: A Biography. Random House. ISBN9780394585017. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  12. ^ abLeader, Zachary (2015). The Life of Saul Bellow: to fame and fortune, 1915-1964. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 64. ISBN978-0-307-26883-9. OCLC880756047.
  13. ^'Greg Bellow: My father, Saul Books The Guardian'. theguardian.com. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  14. ^'Great author, terrible father: Memoir portrays Saul Bellow as an egotistical womaniser who drove his son into therapy - Features - Books - The Independent'. independent.co.uk. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  15. ^The New York Times obituary, 6 April 2005. '...his birthdate is listed as either June or July 10, 1915, though his lawyer, Mr. Pozen, said yesterday that Mr. Bellow customarily celebrated in June. (Immigrant Jews at that time tended to be careless about the Christian calendar, and the records are inconclusive.)'
  16. ^Saul Bellow, It All Adds Up, first published 1994, Penguin edition 2007, pp. 295–96.
  17. ^'Saul Bellow: Letters'. www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  18. ^'Isaac Rosenfeld's Dybbuk and Rethinking Literary Biography'Archived 3 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Zipperstein, Steven J. (2002). Partisan Review 49 (1). Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  19. ^The New York Times obituary, 6 April 2005. 'He had hoped to study literature but was put off by what he saw as the tweedy anti-Semitism of the English department, and graduated in 1937 with honors in anthropology and sociology, subjects that were later to instill his novels.'
  20. ^'Saul Bellow, a neocon's tale'. timesonline.co.uk. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  21. ^Drew, Bettina. Nelson Algren, A Life on the Wild Side. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991
  22. ^Slater, Elinor; Robert Slater (1996). 'SAUL BELLOW: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature'. Great Jewish Men. Jonathan David Company. p. 42. ISBN0-8246-0381-8. Retrieved 21 October 2007.
  23. ^Hitchens, Christopher. 'Remembering Saul Bellow'. Slate. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
  24. ^'Saul Bellow, An Appreciation : NPR'. npr.org. Retrieved 26 August 2015.
  25. ^Menand, Louis (11 May 2015). 'Young Saul'. The New Yorker. New York, NY. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  26. ^Bellow, Saul (2010). Saul Bellow: Letters. redactor Ben Taylor. New York: Viking. ISBN9781101445327. Retrieved 12 July 2014. ... Puerto Rico, where he was spending the spring term of 1961.
  27. ^The New York Times Book Review, 13 December 1981
  28. ^Vogue, March 1982
  29. ^ abcdeAtlas, James. Bellow: A Biography. New York: Random House, 2000.
  30. ^'Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B'(PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
  31. ^Jefferson Lecturers at NEH Website. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
  32. ^'Visiting Lansdowne scholar, Saul Bellow'. University of Victoria Archives. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  33. ^Colombo, John Robert. 'Canadian Literary Landmarks'. Google Books. Dundum (1984). p. 283. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  34. ^'He was the first true immigrant voice' The Observer, Sunday 10 April 2005
  35. ^Wood, James, 'Gratitude', New Republic, 00286583, 25 April 2005, Vol. 232, Issue 15
  36. ^Woods, James (22 July 2013). 'Sins of the Fathers: Do great novelists make bad parents?'. The New Yorker. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
  37. ^'Saul Bellow's widow on his life and letters: 'His gift was to love and be loved', by Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
  38. ^Malin, Irving. Saul Bellow's Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969
  39. ^Martin Amis Author of Yellow Dog talks with Robert Birnbaum 8 December 2003, by Robert Birnbaum
  40. ^Martin AmisAuthor of Yellow Dog talks with Robert Birnbaum, Identity Theory, December 8, 2003, by Robert Birnbaum
  41. ^'He was the first true immigrant voice' Linda grant, The Observer, Sunday 10 April 2005
  42. ^Wood, James (1 February 1990) 'Private Strife.'Guardian Unlimited.
  43. ^Rosenbaum, Ron. 'Saul Bellow and the Bad Fish.' Slate. 3 April 2007
  44. ^Tanenhaus, Sam (February 4, 2007) 'Beyond Criticism.' New York Times Book Review.
  45. ^Review: The Joan Peters Case, Edward W. Said, Journal of Palestine Studies, 15:2 (Winter, 1986), pp. 144–150. Retrieved 27 March 2008.
  46. ^'The New American McCarthyism: policing thought about the Middle East'(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 20 October 2005.Cite uses deprecated parameter dead-url= (help)
  47. ^Ahmed, Azam and Ron Grossman (5 October 2007) 'Bellow's remarks on race haunt legacy in Hyde Park.'Chicago Tribune.
  48. ^John Blades (19 June 1994). 'Bellow's Latest Chapter'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  49. ^https://www.newcriterion.com/print/article/10322
  50. ^Saul Bellow (10 March 1994). 'Papuans and Zulus'. New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  51. ^Ahmed, Azam and Ron Grossman (October 5, 2007) 'Bellow's remarks on race haunt legacy in Hyde Park.'Chicago Tribune.
  52. ^Borrelli, Christopher. 'Walking through Saul Bellow's Chicago'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  53. ^'Saint Louis Literary Award - Saint Louis University'. www.slu.edu. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  54. ^Saint Louis University Library Associates. 'Recipients of the Saint Louis Literary Award'. Archived from the original on 31 July 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
  55. ^'Saul Bellow'. Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. 2010. Retrieved 8 October 2017.
  56. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  57. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  58. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  59. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  60. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  61. ^'Saul Bellow'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  62. ^'Bellow's Defection No Match For Affection From Hometown'. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  63. ^'Guide to the Saul Bellow Papers 1926-2015'. www.lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  64. ^'National Book Awards – 1954'. National Book Foundation (NBF). Retrieved 2012-03-03. (With essay by Nathaniel Rich from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  65. ^'National Book Awards – 1965'. NBF. Retrieved 2012-03-03. (With acceptance speech by Bellow and essay by Salvatore Scibona from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  66. ^'National Book Awards – 1971'. NBF. Retrieved 2012-03-03. (With essay by Craig Morgan Teicher from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)
  67. ^'History'. Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 30 March 2012.

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Saul Bellow
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saul Bellow.
  • Works by Saul Bellow at Open Library
  • Works by or about Saul Bellow in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
  • Saul Bellow at Find a Grave
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