Bellow Be Gone

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Saul Bellow, Nobel Laureate, died this Tuesday.

I’ve been writing the entry in my head for a few days, but reality intervened, and so it’s at this late date (three days late) that I comment on the event.

Or more properly, to share my thoughts on Bellow.

Bellow is a mixed bag for me – I think he is one of the giants of 20th Century literature, but I have not read as much of him as I would like to. And I tend to rank his literary output differently than the “experts” (whomever they may be…).

I think Bellow is on par with Hemingway and Faulkner as the greats of 20th Century American writers (yes, I know Bellow was born in Canada). Steinbeck’s star has fallen, with only a handful of his works today rating as “very important” (The Grapes of Wrath remains one of the books of the 20th century, especially in American Lit).

Bellow is probably the most literary of the this trio – a writer’s writer. As such, he is often overly scholarly, often too didactic for most non-English major types. Faulkner is equally unreadable, but in different ways (can you say page-long paragraphs??).

Yet Bellow remains a favorite (for this yes-I’m-an-English-major type).

My favorite Bellow invention is The Adventures of Augie March – while the ending is (to me) somewhat of a letdown, an over-all brilliant and entertaining book. I rank it higher than the book most view as Bellow’s best, Herzog – another personal favorite, don’t get me wrong.

How can you not resist the following?

I am American, Chicago-born — Chicago, that somber city — and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

 –The Adventures of Augie March, opening lines.

OK, maybe you can resist, but … you shouldn’t.

Bellow’s significant literary output was in the 1950s-1970s or so; he really hasn’t been relevent since. But a brilliant writer.

And I just thought of something – Bellow, born in Canada, wrote his best works about America (such as the Chicagoan Augie March).

Hemingway – probably my favorite American writer – really didn’t write much about America. Huh. Interesting. I never really thought about it before. With the exception of his early short stories – The Nick Adams Stories – Hemingway writes pretty much exclusively about Europe and Africa. I’m just glancing at my bookshelf now and here is what I’m seeing:

  • A Farewell to Arms – Italy mainly

  • Green Hills of Africa – Uh, Africa

  • For Whom the Bell Tolls – Spain during the Spanish Civil War

  • The Sun Also Rises – France and Spain

  • The Snows of Kilimanjaro (short stories) – Mainly Africa

  • A Moveable Feast – France, mainly Paris

Odd, I guess, for such an Amercian author. I never really thought about it before. Faulkner, of course, pretty much never left Mississippi in his work, and Steinbeck did a lot of West Coast centric writing.

But we’ve lost Saul Bellow.

For those of you who’ve never read it, a subtle, incredibly underrated Bellow novel is More Die of Heartbreak. Odd, warm, slim.

Read.