Bellow: A Biography

by James Atlas

James Atlas is a little self-conscious about having spent 10 years writing Bellow: A Biography, but it's hard to imagine how the job could have been done any more quickly. Clearly Bellow, in addition to being one of the 20th century's most acclaimed and prolific novelists, was also one of the most peripatetic. Not the least of his maneuvers were his efforts to dodge biographers, though Atlas's determination eventually wore him down ("He realized that you weren't going away," Bellow's son tells Atlas). The result is a full-scale biography in the tradition of Richard Ellmann's James Joyce--in other words, the biography that a writer and cultural figure as important as Saul Bellow deserves.

Bellow fans won't be surprised by the details of Bellow's life, many of which are familiar from his novels and essays: youthful Trotsky clubs; waiting to be called up into WWII; lifelong enthusiasm for anthropology, philosophy, European literature, and other Great Books; sarcastic wit that verges on the malicious; friendships and rivalries with Delmore Schwartz, Isaac Rosenfeld, Edward Shils, Allan Bloom, Ralph Ellison, and other literati; innumerable wives, lovers, divorce lawyers, child-custody battles, and alimony struggles; big-shot brothers who disparage intellectuals; and of course, his beloved city of Chicago. Atlas, himself a Chicago native from the generation behind Bellow, covers all of this with patience and considerable authority, balancing Bellow's lively, fictionalized accounts with a helpful amount of historical background.

Atlas is also very good at establishing parallels between the tone of Bellow's novels and his mood at the time of writing them. Often the two are so closely intertwined it's not clear which came first: the freewheeling style of The Adventures of Augie March, for example, or the exhilarating period in Bellow's life that accompanied it. ("The book just came to me," Bellow wrote. "All I had to do was be there with buckets to catch it.") Similar parallels include the Flaubertian perfectionism of the early novels, the cuckold's outrage that inspired Herzog, the fame and loss that pervade Humboldt's Gift, the despair of The Dean's December, and the senescent recollection of The Actual and Ravelstein.

In a preface, Atlas, who is also the editor of the Penguin Lives biography series, describes the most discerning biographies as those "imbued with a profound sympathy for their subject's foibles and failings--imbued, to put it plainly, with love." One suspects that Atlas began this biographer-subject marriage with more love than remained when he finished; his disappointment with Bellow's character flaws (such as Bellow's tendency to portray himself as a blameless victim and his stubbornly anachronistic attitude toward women) is palpable. But his criticism of Bellow the man is always measured, and it has the nice effect of placing some of the more unsavory elements of Bellow's fiction in a kind of context. Bellow might not inspire a complete rethinking of Bellow's work, but it's a compelling reminder of its many pleasures. --John Ponyicsanyi

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

704 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

James Robert Atlas was a writer, especially of biographies, as well as a publisher. He was the president of Atlas & Company, and founding editor of the Penguin Lives Series.
He was born in 1949 outside Chicago, and attended Harvard University, studying under Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop with the intention to become a poet. He later attended Oxford University and studied under Richard Ellmann as a prestigious Rhodes Scholar. Here, he decided that he wanted to become a biographer.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it really cool for a grown man to be poking and prodding around in another man’s sex life, I ask you? And another man to be reading about it? Huh? Is biography just gossip with footnotes? This has been the year of literary biographies for me, and I do feel a bit of a sleazehound reading about Mailer stabbing his wife & getting off the charge, and Barthelme’s 2nd wife defenestrating herself, and so on. Doesn’t stop me reading though. Well, I have a shelf of books called "Verysleazyfun" so, you know, I have few moral standards where it comes to reading about stuff. I just wanna know.

So, now I am able to make some serious comparisons between these three major figures, Barthelme, Bellow and Mailer.

WIVES

MAILER : 6 + a perpetually orbiting Kuiper’s Belt of girlfriends
BELLOW : 6 + “girlfriends stashed everywhere”
BARTHELME : 4

MONEY AND SUCCESS

MAILER : Got a handful of bestsellers (Naked & Dead, Executioner’s Song) ; earned millions, spent millions. Always had 3 mansions and 42 dependents. A rock star amongst novelists. Typical quote:
He had already received $1.4 million, and the contract called for an additional $2.5 million for the final two novels of the trilogy

BELLOW : ducked and dived like Barthelme (“at 45, Bellow was still living the way he’d lived when half his age : itinerant, unattached, provisional in his living arrangements, without a real job.”) until a freak giant hit in 1964-5, Herzog (why? Why?) which was No 3 in both years; after that, rich rich rich.

BARTHELME : Never made any money from writing, even from his one mild hit (Snow White); took a teaching job

Royalty statement s show that Snow White, the one book that had remained steadily in print, earned Don anywhere from 30 to 300 dollars a year. For all his other books combined, he was liable to make, in any given year, less than a thousand dollars.

MENTIONS IN EACH OTHERS’ BIOGRAPHIES

In the Bellow bio : Barthelme once, a walk-on part;
Mailer seven times but all name-checks

In the Barthelme bio : Bellow 13 times including a 4 page section – this is the same event as the single mention of Barthelme in Bellow’s bio but o how different here – it’s a big deal to sit at the feet of the great Bellow for young Don and he kind of resents the damning-with-faint-praise he got – result was a lifelong resentment of SB ;
Mailer six times, all namechecks except the big PEN conference where DB AND Norman AND Bellow were all there speechifying and deciding the future of American literature

In the Mailer bio : Barthelme, one mention, as organiser of the conference;
but Bellow is a fairly big thing in the Mailer biography, and strangely enough, not the other way round. He gets 13 mentions – the second is a devastating putdown of SB’s limitations – Norman thought he was “too easily pleased by his ability to elegantly repeat the pieties and paradoxes of high culture figures such as Freud, Proust and Henry James” – ouch, but later fulsomely praises Henderson the Rain King, ah but then concludes Bellow “is too timid to become a great writer” – again ouch; Bellow responds huffily which is not mentioned in the SB bio. But Mailer comes back again:

I admire the novel Herzog very much. But it is not a novel of ideas. There is nothing intellectually new in it. Bellow is mindless. There is depth of feeling in his novel. His humanity gets to you. But his mind is that of a college professor who has read all the great books and absorbed none of them. He is… a hostess of the intellectual canapé table.

None of that is mentioned in the Bellow bio!

Later on Norman sends a telegram (those were the days) of congrats when SB wins the Nobel Prize.

WHO DID I LIKE BEST?

1. Donald Barthelme – way out in front. Cool, modest, funny
2. Norman Mailer – he was awful but so loud and energetic it was hard NOT to like him even though I tried.
3. Saul Bellow – nah, not my kind of guy at all. Way too self-satisfied.

OKAY, THEN BELLOW?

Bellow declined to enter the family business of wheeling and dealing & always thought of himself as a Great Writer, always, even before he’d written anything. So his family naturally looked on him as a terrible failure. His first novel sold around 1600 copies and his second around 2300. Augie March was a revelation, to SB as much as to its readers. The floodgates had opened for him : “The book just came to me. All I had to do was be there with buckets to catch it.” But that one didn't make him rich.

This book passes very harsh judgements about Bellow’s private life, his dealings with wives, girlfriends and his sons. He was rubbish! (“It was customary for men to pursue younger women and praise their physical endowments at the expense of their intellects. If Bellow was extreme in this regard, he was still well within the normal range of male chauvinism for his day.”) Also, he wasn’t any good in bed. This is stated about five or six times! But the women still came flocking round.

He doesn’t come across as such a nice man.

After the first drink he was anti-black (said the critic Leslie Fiedler), after the second anti-Jew; after the third anti-women; after the fourth anti-the human race.

And he couldn't write women characters (well, this is a very common complaint going back to Dickens - which male novelist does write great female characters except for James Joyce?)

There is a sameness to the wives and girlfriends who populate his books, harassing his women-baffled heroes. From the bitter Iva of Dangling Man to the brutal emasculating Madeleine of Herzog, the wives in Bellow all come off as harpies, while the mistresses - the buxom, lingerie-sporting Ravenna in Herzog, the hot number Renata in Humboldt's Gift - exhibit an intimidating sexual rapacity.

Well, God help us if literature is a beautiful baby competition. I guess none of this matters.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading James Atlas’s biography “Bellow”, about the life of the quintessentially assimilated American writer, forced me to confront a darker side of literary creation. Much as the moon shines her bright face down upon us bringing much needed luminescence to the dark night, writers give us novels, stories, prose and poems that act as a bright human connection in the dark worlds we inhabit within our skulls. But the moon has a side she hides from us – a flash-frozen surface lacking light and heat, devoid of reflected refulgence and seas of tranquility. Authors also hold a dark side hidden from readers’ eyes, trying to keep a crafted image of ‘prolific artist’ or ‘man of letters’ or any number of facades erected to hide the darkness of their transgressions: the raw material they use for their art. Yet this same raw material is also a life lived and often a traumatic, spectacular failure. To a person like, say, Saul Bellow’s third wife, this is a failed marriage, emotional heartache, and never-ending litigation over projected income, and judicious alimony settlements. And yet Bellow saw this dark side as a necessary spherical half which supports the bright shining moiety which graces us terrestrial readers with a necessity: a connection that acts as a salve for loneliness. But at what cost is this salve produced? Reading this biography was my own private Apollo mission. And as I floated past the bright edge of literature and across the chiaroscuro divide between fact and fiction, I found myself staring at the darkened surface of a failed life.

Saul Bellow was born in Canada but, like his most irrepressible character Augie March, his spiritual home was always Chicago. Bellow lived his life in much the same way as Augie: constantly moving from thing to thing, person to person, and consistently blaming his failings on other people, thinking that they are trying to corral his freedom, force his conformity. Bellow saw this everywhere he looked, from wives to publishers, critics, editors, even friends who were not fawning enough - who lacked sufficient sycophancy; all could come in for a brutal fictional treatment. This seems to be the reason (besides libel lawsuits) that Bellow published his books as ‘fiction’ - so that he could punish the people in his life by making caricatures out of them: by turning them into grotesque minor characters or even worse by making them into shameless antagonist. This sort of literature as bullying makes it hard to read ‘Herzog’ as a true novel. While Bellow was cuckolded, playing the mari complaisant, Atlas seems to think that Bellow allowed his wife (number two, I believe - Bellow switched wives like they were cable companies, “oh, I don’t like your rates I think I will be switching to a new company”) to continue on in such a fashion because he saw this unfolding domestic blowup as solid material for a novel. Usually this sort of motivation-fishing in biographies can be a dangerous game, but a man as perceptive as Bellow - who was perspicacious when it came to others’ problems – remaining in the dark this long seems willfully ignorant at best. Of course, Bellow wasn’t just faithfully sitting at home while his wife was out cheating on him with Jack Ludwig, one of Bellow’s friends who also wrote a novel about this salacious affair, a sort answer to ‘Herzog’. Throughout this scandal, Bellow would continue his familiar exercise of “exploring his freedom” or some such euphemistic phrase he used to justify his constant philandering. He just couldn’t help curating a various assortment of “Bellow girls” who were usually well-read women attracted to Bellow’s wit and stature as a writer. This, of course, was a large reason for his domestic failures. It seems fidelity was just another form of conformity.

Bellow’s life ended during his fifth marriage (he also became a new father as an octogenarian and Atlas included in the photograph section of the biography a picture of an 84 year-old Bellow holding his newborn baby daughter. I saw this picture before I read the book and was rooting for this sweet baby girl to be a granddaughter or niece, but alas Bellow’s hoary lasciviousness won out. 84 year-old new father, Ouf!). He was survived by a handful of Mrs. Bellows who, despite spending more time litigating divorce settlements than they did being married, all wanted to keep Bellow’s last name until remarriage or death – an interesting decision that hints at why these women stood for such Bellovian abuse. Bellow’s brand of abuse, consistent with his occupation, was mostly verbal in nature, but he was the most proficient in what I like to call life-abuse, or: the sociopathic destruction of another’s emotions, goals, self-worth, and self-love. Bellow excelled at this as he saw a wife as a sort of cheerleader/manager who should subjugate her own spousal needs and literary ambitions to tend to Bellow’s fragile yet oversized ego. Bellow then - while destroying his wife’s self-esteem - had the temerity to push the fallacious idea that he was some paragon of uxoriousness, whose marital distress was the result of an unloving and unreasonable spouse. And all of this narcissism and emotional exploitation leads us to an unsettling query: was Bellow’s literary output worth the familial, and even worse filial, wreckage that he allowed in order to obtain compelling raw material for his novels? As a reader it’s hard to say. Maybe Bellow would have been a poor father and horrendous husband whether he wrote books or not (and if his brothers were any hint, he probably would have been pathetic at both. Augie’s older brother Simon was based on Maurice Bellows, who conceived a love child and refused to support him. Naturally Bellow used this as a plot point in “Augie March” causing his brother to turn taciturn, not speaking to Saul for five years). In other words, the darkness would have been there regardless and at least Bellow - through a Yawehistic twist - managed to turn that darkness into a literary light. But I wonder if his sons feel the same way, or one of the Mrs. Bellows.

For me personally, I think these racist, misogynistic writers are more a product of their era, and as they age these insidious cultural memes harden into drab stelae celebrating the gloriousness of Western white traditions. Add to this a fear and ignorance that come with aging in a changing world and you have a full blown racist who quickens his step when a black reader tries to approach him, wanting to tell him how much his books meant to him: sad. I don’t fully blame him for his later racism when speaking about Chicago (and, when speaking on 80’s gang violence, conveniently forgetting how violent Chicago was in the 1930’s - acting as if European immigrants didn’t do there fair share of killing and vice-pushing). This is a phenomenon that is seen fairly frequently. Even Ralph Ellison, arguably the best black, American author, had a sad revulsion about what he saw as ‘provincial’ blacks. This idea only worsened with age, much like Bellow’s own misogyny. But really Bellow’s biggest character defect was his pettiness. He was quick to add someone to his enemies list if they so much as didn’t call to talk shit about a reviewer who had poorly reviewed one of his novels. Or even worse, if an acolyte wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about Bellow’s work that meant he was somehow mentally deficient. And this gets us to Bellow’s larger fictional theme. The idea of persecution: of a larger system trying to mold and repress the individual (who is always a Bellovian avatar: well-read, with a nagging wife, and chronically misunderstood). Thus what was good for his fiction was massively detrimental in his interpersonal relationships. Bellow just couldn’t turn off this switch in his real life, always seeing groups - even when they didn’t exist - as trying to enlist him and make him concede to some collective ideal, or expel him and in the process keep him from his rightful place as a great American writer. There were Trotskyites in the 30’s; Jew-hating, WASP enclaves in the 40’s; Partisan Review intellectuals in the fifties; wives, lawyers and family court in the remaining decades of his life. Bellow had a genuine belief that these were organized cabals, out to get him: either as an asset or an enemy. He could never see himself as the primary instigator of his life’s problems; but rather, as an innocent, assimilated Jew trying to make his way in big, bad America.

This is Atlas’s view of him anyway, the view he settled on through his research (which was quite voluminous; he spent ten years on the project). And it’s hard to see this view as anything but accurate when you consider Bellow’s thematic repetitions, his petty, literary-character assassinations, and his holistic disregard for other people and their emotions. His narrow narcissism which is reflected in his fiction leads to only one conclusion: Bellow is a fairly typical sociopath. And this is what saddens me about so many great artists, whether they are writers, musicians, painters, etc. They always have an oversized ego that topples their personal happiness - as well as those around them. And yet they use their collapsing life to create their art. This is the paradox of the great artist: an extraordinary ability to understand human interaction and motivation belied by utter failure in personal life and an ego-led blind spot when it comes to their own sins. But does an artist really choose this life? In some ways, yes. But I think in Bellow’s case he actually did realize his shortcomings, as he was constantly justifying his failed marriages and placing himself in the role of the victim (he even wrote a novel titled The Victim). Ultimately, Bellow couldn’t stand up to all his failures because he needed all of his amour propre to carry out the preposterously ballsy enterprise of writing a novel. Bellow could never distinguish between his art and his life; his themes, his purpose, his sense of worth, were all blended: he could never see the sharp distinction between his dark side (his life) and his bright side (his art). It may be that Bellow was fully cognizant of all these differences but used apathy as a shield against personal suffering - inhabiting a character to protect the performer or: method-acting as self-protection. Or it could be that the act eventually became the man. Either way the egoism is the same: the family still destroyed for art. And so now I’m left with a question: Should I as a reader find solace in something created by such a solipsistic individual? The answer is elusive and finally unanswered. And this is the frustration with reading an author’s biography: the only answers are practical ones.

Artists and suffering have been seen as concomitant partners – the former using the latter as a way to turn pain into joy, or in a more metaphysical sense, death into life. But Bellow’s own desire to enter posterity’s good graces was at the extent of entering into life’s good graces. Rephrased: while trying to turn death into life, he ignored the life that he was currently immersed in - like a man starving to death while cooking a four course meal, when a pizza is sitting in front of him on the table. But that can be the draw of art and its creation: a chance to be more than just banal and unsexy, a chance to communicate with millions of current and future souls all reaching out for a human connection and finding your work at the other end. This isn’t just adulation, but a sort of providential prospect: creating a world that others wish to inhabit.

But I don’t know if this is worth it. To Saul Bellow it seemed to be worth a failed family life. To others it may seem too steep a price to pay. To me, the allure of posterity is as illusory as real live temporally importunate praise; because Bellow’s novels, short stories, and other literary endeavors will fade. As sure as the sun rises, it will some day have us: all of our books, music, history and heartache. Perhaps we may leave our planet for some other heavenly sphere, where Bellow’s Augie will be as foreign as a Papuan Proust: where his dark side may finally meet its metaphor; where some irrepressible lunar lunatic may find himself soothed by Augie’s inexorable spirit. But this is too far a reach for me when the low hanging fruit of requited love and personal fulfillment hangs ripe on the tree of life, just waiting for me to stand up and seize it.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.” Thus muses the hero of Saul Bellow’s sixth novel in that book’s memorable opening line. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that James Atlas ever wondered if he was out of his mind, and whether that was all right with him, in the years that he labored to produce this splendid biography of arguably the most accomplished and the most acclaimed author in American literary history.

For, as it turns out, Bellow, a three-time National Book Award recipient, Pulitzer prize winner, and Nobel laureate – when he was not practicing his self-imposed discipline of writing for several hours nearly every morning of his long life – was spending an inordinate amount of the rest of his time embroiled in a seemingly endless stream of bruising conflicts with friends, lovers, ex-wives, lawyers, critics, colleagues, agents, publishers, reviewers, grant committees, and university administrators. The unenviable task of reading through the voluminous trove of contentious correspondence left in the wake of all these disputes could easily have had the biographer questioning, Herzog-like, the condition of his own mind.

Fortunately for us, Atlas not only stayed in complete control of his mental faculties, but he has also stayed completely in control of his narrative from beginning to end of this nearly 600-page opus. While his duties as biographer require him to report honestly on the unending parade of emotional tumult that featured in his subject’s life (most of which Bellow himself incorporated into whatever novel or story he was working on at the time), Atlas expertly walks the fine line of neither condoning nor condemning Bellow’s often questionable behavior.

Time and again, with each new rupture occurring in one or another of Bellow’s various personal or professional relationships, Atlas simultaneously both takes Bellow to task for his role in the incident and offers a sympathetic interpretation of his actions, more often than not attributing them to the insatiable need for approval that his father’s neglect and his two older brothers’ disdain had bred in Bellow as a child.

In keeping with this balanced approach, Atlas misses no opportunity to praise Bellow for his many admirable traits – his deep affection for his sons, his diligent work habits, his unstinting generosity in giving support and direction to aspiring young writers, his lifelong devotion to his childhood friends, his frequent brilliance as a college lecturer, and his constant love for the father and brothers who had so often and so hurtfully disparaged his choice of career (until late in life, when the awards and the cash finally started flowing in).

The portrait Atlas paints of Bellow strikes me as faithful to the facts and fair to the man.

Nevertheless, Atlas has been harshly judged by some reviewers as having been overly harsh to his subject. In the most cited case I’m aware of, the noted critic James Wood implied that Atlas – and the rest of us – ought to treat Bellow’s supposed failings in life as a sort of artistic license, making a “greater-good” argument that the relatively small handful of individuals who suffered some real-life grievance at Bellow’s hands are so few in comparison to the far larger number of individuals who have gained so much pleasure from reading the inspired books that flowed from those very same hands.

Perhaps we ought to. But I’m much more inclined to think that we ought to ask that handful of sufferers being so airily dismissed what they think we ought to do. And I’m absolutely inclined to view all these aspersions that have been cast upon Atlas as a particularly unwarranted case of the messenger being attacked for the message he brings.

For myself, I applaud the messenger. Atlas’ insightful look into Bellow’s life has made me ask myself anew the essential question that I believe Bellow was asking in each of his books, from the incomparable early masterpieces to the less stellar later ones that followed – namely, what does it mean to be alive as a human being in this inexplicable world of ours? Could any reader want more from a biography? And could Bellow (who was still alive when this book was published) have wanted any more from a biographer?

As I began reading Atlas’ book, I wondered if, at its conclusion, he would venture to offer his own answer to Bellow’s question. Who better to attempt this, I thought, than one who had immersed himself so thoroughly in the Bellovian life, lore, and literary output?

It turns out that Atlas knew who better.

In his deeply touching closing paragraph, he recounts a scene from a 1997 BBC television program, in which Bellow, at age 82, is being interviewed by the novelist Martin Amis in a Boston coffee shop. Their conversation turns to Bellow’s thoughts on death, and on the possibility that there might be an afterlife. In reply, Bellow suggests that if we “think of eternity as a conscious soul”, then perhaps in the eternity of death “we might become God’s apprentices and have the real secrets of the universe revealed to us.”

Something to keep in mind the next time I afford myself the pleasure of reading one of Bellow’s books. Which, thanks in no small way to Atlas, will probably be sooner rather than later.

[Jesse K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely not going to end up being the definitive Ellmannesque biography of Bellow, but it was passable, in some regards. It gave the reader a skeletal outline of Bellow's life and works, and served well as a key to who was based on who in his novels, for the sort of people who like that thing. However, I have four complaints, two of which were likely out of the authors control, one of which could barely be helped, and the last of which was a rather unfortunate tactical error: (1) There really wasn't that much personal information, (2) putting out a bio before someone is dead is kind of corny, especially when they end up dying a mere 5 years later, since it becomes incomplete the moment it is published, (3) having just read the letters before really highlighted how much the author (over?)relied on them for his info, and made certain parts repetitive, for me, at least, and (4) while I'm sure that Bellow was a total bastard at various points, the author would have been better off showing this to be the case instead of repeatedly telling the reader that it was, pointing out that he was a bastard after relating a bastardly anecdote, when the anecdote would have served the purpose well enough, and even overanalyzing his actions and his works to derive the inherent bastardry in statements and actions that seemed rather innocent or benign, to the extent of even bringing bloody Freud into it.

All that said, I'm still glad that I read it. Hopefully, the official biographer isn't hampered too much by the constraints imposed by Bellow's heirs, and/or someone comes out with another unauthorized bio that digs deeper into the actual data available, while leaving out cranky remarks about, analysis of, and petty plebeian prissy pissiness regarding alleged or existent Freudian complexes, mommy issues, daddy issues, bad fathering, masochism, womanizing, insecurity, jealousy, anger, wry conservative bellicosity, and the ultimately misunderstood beautifully belligerent and entertaining curmudgeonly aspects of a brilliant mind awash in a sea of stupidity and so forth.

[Russel Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine, personal biography that was not unsympathetic to its subject but did not shy away from his personal or professional shortcomings. The bio provides a comprehensive, perhaps too comprehensive, look at the personal and particularly intimate life of its subject, but as a literary biography it successfully explicates themes in and across novels and contextualizes them within the American literary scene, past and contemporary. If I could tender a criticism, aside from the excessive dwelling on Bellow's sex life, it would be the (relatively) short shrift afforded his nonfiction works, but it's a tepid criticism. I came away thinking somewhat less of Bellow the man but with a greater appreciation for Bellow the writer, who wrote relevant, insightful fiction for more than half a century.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Atlas's biography of Saul Bellow is very good. If you are really interested in Bellow, I recommend it. If you are unsure about Bellow, I would skip it. One problem is that Atlas casts Bellow's life as a series of repetition compulsions wherein he reenacts the trauma of losing his mother at a young age by means of marrying women, leaving them, and saying he is the victim because in fact they left him...as his mother did. In fact, Bellow did this 4 times. Finally, in old age, he married for a fifth time and that lasted to his death.

Atlas is quite aggressive in pushing his analysis of Bellow. The information he presents largely corroborates his conclusions. Bellow was a difficult character. Recently I saw a PBS show about him in which Philip Roth, Bellow's friend, said quite frankly, "He was not a nice man."

No, for all his loyalty to the old gang he grew up with in Chicago and his kindness to many younger writers, Bellow was not a nice man and it is often quite unpleasant to read about the ways in which he used his problems with wives and ex-friends as fair game in his novels.

I have often wondered if Bellow really had a command of the philosophers and general thinkers who play such a role in Herzog. Atlas's book implies that he definitely read deeply and widely and was quite brilliant in moments of discussion, but I came away with my question answered--in fact, late in life, Bellow answered it himself by declaring, "I am not an intellectual." He was something of a hit and run guy, a unique dust storm of ideas and words and human propositions, i.e., characters, that he could bedazzle you with ...and then sweep away, leaving you thinking, "Hunh? What the hell was that?" To read and love Bellow you have to more or less get into the dynamics of his personal brilliance. His aesthetic, it seems to me, was an inimitable mixture of perception and expression.

This being the case, I look back on Bellow in his times and wonder why he, more than many other writers, was considered the greatest of novelists. As Atlas points out, repeatedly, Bellow didn't bother with plot; he used comedy to slide right past the idea of form and structure. His first two novels--apprentice work, he would call them--were grim; at least that was my impression. And yet because of personal magnetism, good looks and great luck with women, he became "the guy" among a select group of New York writers. Ironically, it was when he slipped the traces of 20th century alienation in writing Augie March that he became a success. The people who loved him for his tight little spells of darkness learned to love him much more for his lightness, his spirit, his boldness, his big lungs.

The trouble was that even Augie March didn't solve his money and divorce problems, so Atlas cycles through those issues over and over again, and this is a bit, shall we say, wearing. The literary feuds and spats also become tedious as Atlas recounts Bellow's increasing self-confidence, albeit touchy self-confidence, with the successes that followed Augie March. He was quite easily wounded, but he also was fantastically resilient, knowing how good he was and essentially having no choice: if it was morning, he needed to write.

Among the healthier relationships, Bellow and John Cheever held each other in esteem, and of course Bellow was devoted to Alan Bloom, subject of his novel, Ravelstein.

Bellow's knowledge of literary biographies was great, but he was no fan of the biographies written about him. For facts and insights, this is probably the best of them, but I don't think he'd like it.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it's a mark of a good biography when you're left, after 600 pages, with an intense admiration for the subject's talent but a rather strong dislike for the person himself. Atlas puts Bellows fervor for writing and his intellect, fed by voracious reading on display. But Bellow had his demons, and his sensitivities, nearly paranoic, caused the wreckage of friendships and public disdain at times. His attitude toward women, personally and in print has been called misogynistic for decades. Still, he is a unique talent among American authors and deserves to be read, as does this biography.

[Mauricio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como dice Lee Siegel:
"The Bellow we meet in the pages of Atlas's book must have been given the Nobel Prize by by a Jewish charitable organization."

[Yeti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant biography that provides valuable insight into the complex writer. A great book that would prove an invaluable resource to anyone who is hesitant to try reading Bellow's own work.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as magisterial as Ellmann's 'James Joyce' or Ian Hamilton's 'Robert Lowell' but still a grand life befitting its subject. Lucid, intelligent and enlightening.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a biography should be.

[icaro]

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