Reply
Tue 5 Apr, 2005 07:48 pm
Saul Bellow dies aged 89
Hillel Italie in New York
Wednesday April 6, 2005
The Guardian
Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy whose novels both championed and mourned the soul's fate in the modern world, died yesterday. He was 89.
Bellow's close friend and lawyer, Walter Pozen, said the writer of Herzog and Humboldt's Gift had been in declining health but was "wonderfully sharp to the end". Bellow's wife and daughter were at his side when he died at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bellow was the most acclaimed of a generation of Jewish writers who emerged after the second world war, among them Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick.
"The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists - William Faulkner and Saul Bellow," Roth said yesterday. "Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century."
He was the first writer to win the National Book Award three times: in 1954 for The Adventures of Augie March, in 1965 for Herzog and in 1971 for Mr Sammler's Planet. In 1976, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift.
The same year Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, for his "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture".
The son of Russian immigrants with Hebrew as his first language, he was born Solomon Bellows in 1915 in Quebec. When he was nine, his family moved to Chicago.
After teaching for many years at the University of Chicago, Bellow stunned both the literary and academic world by leaving the city with which he was so deeply associated. In 1993, he accepted a position at Boston University. He kept writing into his 80s.
He had five wives, three sons and, at age 84, a daughter.
It's been some time since I read anything of his, but I did love and respect what I read.
I was hoping someone would start a thread on this. It's also been a while since I read him, but now I think I'm old enough to appreciate what he was about. I want to start by rereading "Herzog" and then read for the first time "Mr. Sammler's Planet."
The obit in the NY Times today is amazing...
If you are going to die, as we all are someday, Mr. Bellow didn't do to badly.
He got to die in his own bed, with people he loved at his side, with all his mental faculties intact, a well loved and respected person who had recieved many awards for all he did and will be remembered fondly by those whos lives he touched with his writing....
May we all go out with near this much respect and dignity.
Rest in peace.
I took a class called Jewish Writers, under the 'number' for 20th C American novels when I was working on my master's in English. The university ran on the quarter or 11 week term system. We read 10 novels and wrote two papers in 11 weeks. I was introduced to Bellow during that class but it brought back to me a thought I had as an overly serious student of 10 to 12 or so, walking past the book rack at either a Federal's Dept Store or a Montgomery Ward's in suburban Detroit. I saw the then current Bellow novel and wondered whether a best seller could be literature.
The irony is that the professor, Arnold Goldsmith at Wayne State University, used exactly that question to introduce Bellow in class. I read The Dean's December and Humboldt's Gift -- both of which I loved -- after I was married. My former husband read them as well and hated them both as he found the characters hateful.
Funnily enough, plainoldme, I read Bellow in a Jewish American Novel course in grad school, too. I recall we read "Herzog".
Speaking about being termed a J.A. writer, Bellow once requested that he not be lumped together with Roth and Malamud to form a "Hart, Schaffner and Marks of American literature." Pretty good line...
Hi ya, D'Artagnan, long time, no read!
I had a friend at that time, the husband of professor in the English department, who used to pick up his wife after her day was done. He's wait in the faculty/grad student lounge and that's how I got to know him.
He was Jewish but he thought the name of the class, Jewish writers, was ridiculous. "You might as well have a class called, 'men writers,' " he said.
The funny thing is that I needed a class with the Victorian writer number. That semester, the university offered a class in Shaw. I really don't consider him, "Victorian." The catch was that while a student could register for more than 5 hours credit with a $20 deposit and then pay the rest of the tuition by installment, each class carried four hours credit. So, I signed up for the Jewish writers class, despite having no academic need for another class in 20th C American writers.
The Shaw class was annoying. The prof, while basically an old sweetie, said, "ah-ah-ah," between syllables. He's get stuck on an "ah," and all I wanted to do was knock a book off my desk to shock him into finishing the word. I lived in a building with the drama students, who took the same class in a day-time section. One of my friends said he pronounced, "Shaw," with three syllables.
Anyway, I was going to drop the Jewish writers class, after I paid for the classes (this was a state uni in the 70s, when the cost of living hadn't gone out of sight). After all, I was working a full time job and was a member of a food co-op and taught First Day School at the local Quaker Meeting. The Jewish writers class was so much better than the Shaw class, that I had to stay.
I enjoyed my course, too, plainoldme, and I probably took it at about the same time you did. Also at a state u, in fact. I was heavily concentrating my studies on 19th C American authors, so this course was a nice break. Living writers, for the most part. Now, except for Roth, all dead...
I have only read several pages of "Herzog", it's still too difficult to me, I don't get it at all.
I also bought his "seize the day"(second hand), which I heard is about mortality, which I'm really interested in, although I haven't read it yet, it's been gathering dust for a long time.
I read Herzog too long ago to remember it although I must have liked it as I went on to read lots of Bellow (I seldom read more than one book by any author as too many write the same book, calling their characters by different names, over and over).
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace