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

The Swedish Nobel Committee described Bellow’s writing as combining exciting adventure stories with thoughtful analysis of culture. His work includes dramatic and tragic events, as well as deep conversations. These stories are guided by a narrator who uses clever language and understands the challenges that influence people’s actions. His most famous books are 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 the character Eugene Henderson, from Henderson the Rain King, was most like himself. Bellow was born to immigrant parents from Quebec. Christopher Hitchens noted that Bellow’s characters often reflect his desire to achieve greatness, overcoming not only difficult living conditions but also the mental challenges faced by people in minority groups. Bellow’s main characters struggle with what Albert Corde, a character in The Dean’s December, called the large-scale problems of the 20th century. According to Hitchens, Bellow believed that achieving greatness, if possible, required strong learning and a focus on noble values.

Biography

Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents, Lescha (née Gordin) and Abraham Bellows, moved from Saint Petersburg, Russia. He had three older siblings: a sister named Zelda (later Jane, born in 1907), and two brothers, Moishe (later Maurice, born in 1908) and Schmuel (later Samuel, born in 1911). Bellow’s family was Lithuanian-Jewish; his father was born in Vilnius. Bellow celebrated his birthday on June 10, but records from the Jewish Genealogical Society-Montreal suggest he was born on July 10. In the Jewish community, it was common to record birthdays using the Hebrew calendar, which sometimes differs from the Gregorian calendar. Bellow wrote about his family’s move:

His parents often spoke about how they felt they were falling from a better life. They had been wealthy and well-traveled in Saint Petersburg. His mother often talked about her family’s summer home and the life she once had, but now she worked in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. She had once had servants in Russia, but she used humor to cope with her difficult situation.

At age eight, Bellow became very sick with a respiratory infection. This experience taught him to be self-reliant and also gave him more time to read. He later said he decided to become a writer after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

When Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, a place that inspired many of his novels. His father, Abraham, worked as an onion importer, a baker, a coal delivery man, and a bootlegger. Bellow’s mother, Liza, died when he was 17. She had wanted her youngest son, Saul, to become a rabbi or a concert violinist. However, Bellow rebelled against what he called the "suffocating orthodoxy" of his religious upbringing and began writing at a young age. He learned Hebrew at age four, which sparked his lifelong love for the Torah. He also read Shakespeare and 19th-century Russian novelists as a child.

In Chicago, Bellow studied anthropology at the Anthroposophical Society of Chicago. He attended Tuley High School, where he became friends with Yetta Barsh and Isaac Rosenfeld. In his 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King, Bellow based the character King Dahfu on Rosenfeld.

Bellow attended the University of Chicago but later moved to Northwestern University. He originally wanted to study literature but felt the English department was unfair to Jewish students. Instead, he graduated with honors in anthropology and sociology. Some believe his study of anthropology influenced his writing style, and he often included references to anthropology in his books. He later studied at the University of Wisconsin.

John Podhoretz once said that Bellow and his friend Allan Bloom "inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air," meaning they read and thought deeply.

In the 1930s, Bellow worked with the Chicago branch of the Federal Writers’ Project, a group that included future writers like Richard Wright and Nelson Algren. Many in the group supported communist ideas, though Bellow was a Trotskyist, a different political group. He often faced teasing from others in the group.

In 1941, Bellow became a U.S. citizen after discovering he had moved to the United States illegally as a child. In 1943, Maxim Lieber became his literary agent.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine and wrote his first novel, Dangling Man (1944), while serving. The book follows a young man waiting to be drafted for the war.

From 1946 to 1948, Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1947, after promoting his novel The Victim, he moved to a large house in Minneapolis.

In 1948, Bellow received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to move to Paris and write The Adventures of Augie March (1953). Critics noted similarities between this novel and the 17th-century Spanish classic Don Quixote. The book begins with one of American literature’s most famous opening lines and follows its main character through many adventures. Written in a simple yet thoughtful style, the novel helped Bellow become a well-known author.

In 1953, Bellow translated Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer from Yiddish into English.

In 1958, Bellow taught again at the University of Minnesota. During this time, he and his wife, Sasha, received psychoanalysis from a professor named Paul Meehl.

In 1961, Bellow taught creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico. One of his students was William Kennedy, whom Bellow encouraged to write fiction.

Bellow lived in New York City for many years but returned to Chicago in 1962 as a professor at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. The committee aimed to help professors work closely with students on a wide range of subjects. His students included the poet Tom Mandel. Bellow taught there for over 30 years, alongside his close friend, the philosopher Allan Bloom.

Bellow moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago with his third wife, Susan Glassman. He described Chicago as "vulgar but vital" and more representative of America than New York. In a 1982 profile, his neighborhood was described as a high-crime area in the city’s center, and Bellow said he chose to live there as a writer to "stick to his guns."

In 1964, Bellow’s novel Herzog became a bestseller. The book is about a middle-aged college professor who writes letters to friends and scholars but never sends them. Bellow later explored mental instability and its connection to genius in his 1975 novel Humboldt’s Gift. He based the novel’s main character, Von Humboldt Fleisher, on his late friend and rival, the poet Delmore Schwartz. Bellow also included ideas from spiritual science, called anthroposophy, in the book. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.

After the success of Humboldt’s Gift, Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Personal life

Saul Bellow was married five times. All of his marriages except the last one ended in divorce. His wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra (Sondra) Tschacbasov (daughter of painter Nahum Tschacbasov), Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea, and Janis Freedman.

His son from the first marriage, Greg, became a psychotherapist. He wrote a book titled Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir in 2013, about ten years after his father's death. His son from the second marriage, Adam, wrote a nonfiction book called In Praise of Nepotism in 2003. His son from the third marriage, Daniel, is a potter, writer, and former journalist. In 1999, when he was 84 years old, Bellow had his fourth child and first daughter with Janis Freedman.

He supported Woodlawn Tap, a popular tavern in Hyde Park that many writers and academics visited.

Themes and style

Saul Bellow's writing often explores the confusion in modern society and how people can overcome their weaknesses to reach success or understanding. He criticized aspects of modern life, such as the spread of madness, materialism, and incorrect ideas. The main characters in his stories often have the ability to be heroes and face challenges from harmful parts of society. Many of these characters are Jewish and feel disconnected or different from others.

Jewish culture and identity play an important role in Bellow's stories, though he disliked being labeled a "Jewish writer." His work also shows respect for America and interest in the special energy and diversity of American life.

Bellow's stories include many references to famous authors like Marcel Proust and Henry James. However, he balanced these references with humor. He also included parts of his own life in his stories, and some of his main characters were believed to be based on himself.

Assessment

Martin Amis said that Saul Bellow was "the greatest American author ever, in my view."

Bellow's writing feels powerful and heavy, more than any other writer's. He is like a strong natural force. He often breaks common rules in writing. In his stories, the people he writes about feel real, but the way he looks at them helps readers understand bigger, universal ideas.

Linda Grant wrote that Bellow's stories showed readers that life is worth living.

Bellow's work was full of energy, humor, and deep thinking. He focused on real ideas, not the simple, overused phrases found in mass media or from some groups on the left. By the 1960s, these ideas began to upset him. It is easy for someone to write about important causes, but Bellow wrote about deeper topics—like how people struggle to survive in big cities, how they seek love, and how they try to understand what matters in life.

Some people who criticized Bellow thought his writing was old-fashioned, like it tried to copy 19th-century European novels. In a private letter, Vladimir Nabokov called Bellow a "miserable mediocrity." Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist and writer, said that Bellow's book Ravelstein (2000) was the only one that showed his best writing. Rosenbaum explained that earlier books often tried to mix two parts of Bellow's style: the clever, street-smart tone of a Chicago writer and long, complex philosophical ideas. This mix sometimes felt forced and unclear.

Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis's father, did not think highly of Bellow. In 1971, he said that crime writer John D. MacDonald was a better writer than Bellow.

In 2007, Sam Tanenhaus wrote in The New York Times Book Review about Bellow's flaws, such as long, slow parts, discussions about strange topics like religion, and characters who do not grow or change. He also mentioned Bellow's exaggerated descriptions of his own life, like his past marriages.

Tanenhaus then said that while Bellow had flaws, no one is perfect. He compared Bellow to Walt Whitman, who was full of ideas and energy, even if they seemed random.

V. S. Pritchett praised Bellow, saying his shorter works were his best. He called the novella Seize the Day a "small gray masterpiece."

Political views

As he grew older, Bellow moved away from left-wing politics and became known for supporting traditional cultural values. Bellow briefly became involved in the difficult topic of African American–Jewish relations. According to Alfred Kazin, Bellow once said: "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read him." Bellow later said these remarks were made quickly and without much thought, but he acknowledged the controversy was created by reporters. He still believed in opposing political correctness, writing:

In a society that values freedom, the foolish idea of punishing people for making small, hurtful comments about groups like the Papuans and Zulus would be laughed at. Taking such matters too seriously in this way is similar to the strict control seen under Stalin, a system many older people remember. Today, anger is seen as important and powerful. It is the opposite of careful, calm behavior and is considered a sign of strength. Anger from people like rappers and protesters assumes that the majority of society is guilty for past and present problems, and it depends on others admiring the strong emotions of those who are angry. However, anger can also be used to control or silence others.

Although Bellow was connected to Chicago, he avoided some of the city's more traditional writers. In a 2006 interview with Stop Smiling magazine, Studs Terkel said of Bellow: "I didn't know him well. We had political disagreements. When Norman Mailer, Robert Lowell, and Paul Goodman marched to protest the Vietnam War, Bellow was invited to a meeting that opposed their protest. He said, 'Of course I'll attend,' but made a big deal about it. I wrote him a letter, and he did not like it. He called me a Stalinist. However, we remained friendly. He was a talented writer, and I admire his book Seize the Day."

Efforts to name a street after Bellow in his Hyde Park neighborhood were stopped by a local official, Toni Preckwinkle, because Bellow had made comments about the neighborhood's residents that some found racist. Instead, a one-block section of West Augusta Boulevard in Humboldt Park was named Saul Bellow Way in his honor.

Bellow supported U.S. English, an organization created in the 1980s by John Tanton and former Senator S. I. Hayakawa, which advocated for English to be the official language of the United States. He stopped being part of the group in 1988.

Awards and honors

Bellow's portraits are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. These include a photograph by Irving Penn, a painting by Sarah Yuster, a bust by Sara Miller, and drawings by Edward Sorel and Arthur Herschel Lidov. A copy of the Sara Miller bust was placed at the Harold Washington Library Center in 1993. Bellow's personal papers are stored at the University of Chicago Library.