Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow
Photo portrait of Bellow from the dust jacket of Herzog (1964)
Photo portrait of Bellow from the dust jacket of Herzog (1964)
BornSolomon Bellows
(1915-06-10)June 10, 1915
Lachine, Quebec, Canada
DiedApril 5, 2005(2005-04-05) (aged 89)
Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.
OccupationWriter
Citizenship
  • United States
  • Canada
Education
Notable works
Notable awards
Spouse
Anita Goshkin
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(m. 1937; div. 1956)​
Alexandra (Sondra) Tschacbasov
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(m. 1956; div. 1959)​
Susan Glassman
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(m. 1961; div. 1964)​
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(m. 1974; div. 1985)​
Janis Freedman
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(m. 1989)​
Children4, including Adam Bellow
Signature

Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005)[1] was an American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts.[2] He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times,[3] and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.[4]

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."[5] 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 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 wrestle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century."[page needed] This transcendence of the "unutterably dismal" (a phrase from Dangling Man)[page needed] is achieved, if it can be achieved at all, through a "ferocious assimilation of learning" (Hitchens)[citation needed] and an emphasis on nobility.

  1. ^ "Saul BELLOW, son of Abraham BELLOWS of Vilna". Jewish Genealogical Society-Montreal. Retrieved November 11, 2022. Date of birth was 10 June per his wife, Janis Bellow, in her Preface to Bellow's Collected Stories; wouldn't she know his birthdate?.
  2. ^ "NATIONAL MEDAL OF ART RECIPIENTS". University of Chicago News. Retrieved December 16, 2022.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference winners was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters". National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
  5. ^ "Nobel Prize in Literature 1976 – Press Release". nobelprize.org. Retrieved August 26, 2015.
  6. ^ Gussow, Mel; McGrath, Charles (April 6, 2005). "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 August 26, 2015.
  7. ^ Christopher Hitchens (2011). Arguably: Shortlisted for the 2012 Orwell Prize. Atlantic Books. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-85789-257-7.
  8. ^ Christopher Hitchens. "Jewish American titan from the ghetto". www.thejc.com. Retrieved December 16, 2022.