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The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife, 1965-2005
When this second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow opens, Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters - rich, famous, critically acclaimed. The expected trajectory is one of decline: volume 1, rise; volume 2, fall. Bellow never fell, producing some of his greatest fiction (Mr Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, all his best stories), winning two more National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize. At eighty, he wrote his last story; at eighty-five, he wrote Ravelstein. In this volume, his life away from the desk, including his love life, is if anything more dramatic than in volume 1. In the public sphere, he is embroiled in controversy over foreign affairs, race, religion, education, social policy, the state of culture, the fate of the novel.
Bellow's relations with women were often fraught. In the 1960s he was compulsively promiscuous (even as he inveighed against sexual liberation). The women he pursued, the ones he married and those with whom he had affairs, were intelligent, attractive and strong-willed. At eighty-five he fathered his fourth child, a daughter, with his fifth wife. His three sons, whom he loved, could be as volatile as he was, and their relations with their father were often troubled.
Although an early and engaged supporter of civil rights, in the second half of his life Bellow was angered by the excesses of Black Power. An opponent of cultural relativism, he exercised great influence in literary and intellectual circles, advising a host of institutes and foundations, helping those he approved of, hindering those of whom he disapproved. In making his case, he could be cutting and rude; he could also be charming, loyal, and funny. Bellow's heroic energy and will are clear to the very end of his life. His immense achievement and its cost, to himself and others, are also clear.
Bellow's relations with women were often fraught. In the 1960s he was compulsively promiscuous (even as he inveighed against sexual liberation). The women he pursued, the ones he married and those with whom he had affairs, were intelligent, attractive and strong-willed. At eighty-five he fathered his fourth child, a daughter, with his fifth wife. His three sons, whom he loved, could be as volatile as he was, and their relations with their father were often troubled.
Although an early and engaged supporter of civil rights, in the second half of his life Bellow was angered by the excesses of Black Power. An opponent of cultural relativism, he exercised great influence in literary and intellectual circles, advising a host of institutes and foundations, helping those he approved of, hindering those of whom he disapproved. In making his case, he could be cutting and rude; he could also be charming, loyal, and funny. Bellow's heroic energy and will are clear to the very end of his life. His immense achievement and its cost, to himself and others, are also clear.
767 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 9, 2021
He wasn’t good with money; he didn’t like John Updike; he womanised; the quality of his books nosedived after he won the Nobel Prize; he womanised some more.
March 18, 2021
On the whole, Leader's 2 volumes tell almost everything about Saul Bellow's life in an approach that occasionally allows in too much information (does anyone need to know how many people attended lectures, bar mitzvahs, and so on?) in a style that, for the most part, is subdued, except where praise over Bellow's books are concerned. Leader comes across as fair to the various family members and friends who had dealings with Bellow.
The seemingly endless plot summaries and quotations from the books are not padding but over-indulgence. Yes, the content of the novels and short stories (and occasional journalism) are connected (perhaps relentlessly) to the people Bellow met -- he seems to have thought of writing more in terms of characters and stereotypes than structurally innovative ways to shape material -- but somewhat less could go a long way (admittedly, with the exception of Allan Bloom and Ravelstein). There's a lot of chronological jumping around that seems needless.
The larger picture of usian literary life in chicago and new york from about 1940 to 2005 is well drawn.
As for Bellow, who doesn't like to read about a man who could never admit he was wrong and whose skin was paper thin? Delightful company over 1500 pages.
Finally, it's useful and of interest to see how a certain part of the literary world behaved and fought over love, politics, science, liberal versus (neo)conservative beliefs, and education in the mid-to late-20th century.
The seemingly endless plot summaries and quotations from the books are not padding but over-indulgence. Yes, the content of the novels and short stories (and occasional journalism) are connected (perhaps relentlessly) to the people Bellow met -- he seems to have thought of writing more in terms of characters and stereotypes than structurally innovative ways to shape material -- but somewhat less could go a long way (admittedly, with the exception of Allan Bloom and Ravelstein). There's a lot of chronological jumping around that seems needless.
The larger picture of usian literary life in chicago and new york from about 1940 to 2005 is well drawn.
As for Bellow, who doesn't like to read about a man who could never admit he was wrong and whose skin was paper thin? Delightful company over 1500 pages.
Finally, it's useful and of interest to see how a certain part of the literary world behaved and fought over love, politics, science, liberal versus (neo)conservative beliefs, and education in the mid-to late-20th century.
May 9, 2019
I was hard on the first volume, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune 1915-1964 in the June 2015 issue of The New Criterion. Let me summarize the charge sheet: A book promulgated by Bellow’s agent, Andrew Wylie, and as such designed as damage control, minimizing Bellow’s faults as writer and human being that James Atlas revealed in Bellow: A Biography (2000). Leader, it seemed to me, had not shaped his biography very well, shifting too much between different periods of Bellow’s life, telegraphing the future before the narrative could adequately handle it. In short, too many narrative interruptions.
Well, either Leader has absorbed my criticism or I misread him in the first place. The second volume seems to me almost impeccable in its narrative drive, unsparing in its revelations of Bellow’s failings, and most generous to Bellow’s previous biographers, especially James Atlas. In this volume, Leader shows how Atlas drew out various aspects of Bellow’s personality in their many positive and negative contacts. Leader has made splendid use of Atlas’s memoir, The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale (2017).
All of Bellow’s later works get their due, with Leader showing how expertly Bellow crafted fiction out of his biography. A case in point is Leader’s treatment of Ravelstein (2002), inspired by Allan Bloom, famous as author of The Closing of the American Mind (1987), a jeremiad against the college curriculum that no longer took the classics seriously and made possible a culture of relativism and permissiveness. The book became a huge best seller with a great send-off by Bellow himself, who associated many of the ideas in the book with his own lamentations about the chaos of contemporary culture in novels like Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970). Bellow and Bloom taught together at the University of Chicago and evidently became so close that Bloom encouraged Bellow to write about him. Bellow had to decide whether to write a memoir or a novel. That he chose the latter is not surprising, since fiction gave him the freedom to write a book animated by his friend but not slavishly bound to facts in the manner of biography, a genre Bellow distrusted because it distorted truth by hewing too closely to fact. Only fiction provided a broad enough context to capture a figure as protean as Bloom.
The energy of Ravelstein when Bellow was well into his seventies is impressive, but that is not what many critics wanted to discuss. Bloom, a homosexual, had been discreet about his private life and Bellow had outed him, suggesting, as well, that Bloom had died of AIDS. To considerable uproar from Bloom’s friends and other critics, Bellow confessed some regret about exposing his friend. Leader does not take sides, and in this instance, I wish he had done so. However many resemblances are to be found between Ravelstein and Bloom, they are not one and the same, and Bellow—usually not shy about brushing off his detractors—should have said nothing or struck back. Even a biography of Bloom would not have been Bloom. It would have been a book. That people persist in faulting novelists or biographers for offering skewed accounts of their subjects seems ridiculous to me. What life is not askew? The answer to one biography is another biography, as we have it now with Atlas and Leader and the other Bellow biographers that Leader never forgets in his honorable narrative.
Implicitly Leader provides an rebuttal to those who decry Bellow’s use of friends and others to create his characters. Leader shows that some of Bellow’s friends were flattered by the literary uses he made of their personalities. They became more interesting, more pointed, more dramatic, than they thought they were, born anew as Saul Bellow characters. Which is to say that fiction, however much you want to string it to real-life models, is still fiction.
Bellow reminds me of a very different novelist, Anthony Powell, who constantly put the résumes of his intimates and acquaintances onto the pages of his glorious A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of twelve novels that chart a good deal of twentieth-century history, as do Bellow’s works. Bellow goes Powell one better, I think, because of the Bellowian play of ideas. He took ideas seriously, but he also treated them comically, and drew back from commitment to positions—not because he was a gadfly, as some supposed, but because of his understanding that ideas take you only so far and cannot be separated from personality and character.
The most moving passages of Leader’s biography are the many scenes of Saul Bellow in old age, trying to come to terms with his five marriages and the sons who remained in certain respects bitter because he was not there for many of the crucial events in their lives. Bellow acknowledged his derelictions of duty, but in his ill tempered moments he remained wounding and unforgivable. He was closer to novelists like Martin Amis and Philp Roth, adopted sons, than to his biological offspring. His fellow writers revered his unflinching dissections of the American character—not exactly what you want to hear from Dad, though, when he turns his merciless perceptions on you.
It was different with Bellow’s last marriage, in which his wife, Janis, more than four decades younger than her husband, learned not only to accept but to manage his vagaries as well as providing him with a daughter when he was well into his eighties. This final marriage changed Saul Bellow, although Leader does not say so in so many words. Did Bellow become more tolerant because Janis showed him the way? She was the first wife to have the resilience and intelligence to master him in all his moods, although that is not to blame the other wives for not doing so. It was a matter of timing and temperament, I think. The patient and resilient Janis came along at just the right moment when Bellow was musing over his earlier failures in love and child rearing.
Bellow gave his biographer a gift. At the very end, even with dementia that can turn to anger, he became, for the most part, kind and gentle and generous, continuing to teach—oh how he loved the contact with young people over six decades in the university. I suppose he finally understood he had nothing more to prove and could open himself up. He needed no defending, or rather Janis was there to play defense if required.
In the end, Zachary Leader has produced one of the most inspiring biographies of an American writer that we are not likely to see again for quite a long time.
Well, either Leader has absorbed my criticism or I misread him in the first place. The second volume seems to me almost impeccable in its narrative drive, unsparing in its revelations of Bellow’s failings, and most generous to Bellow’s previous biographers, especially James Atlas. In this volume, Leader shows how Atlas drew out various aspects of Bellow’s personality in their many positive and negative contacts. Leader has made splendid use of Atlas’s memoir, The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale (2017).
All of Bellow’s later works get their due, with Leader showing how expertly Bellow crafted fiction out of his biography. A case in point is Leader’s treatment of Ravelstein (2002), inspired by Allan Bloom, famous as author of The Closing of the American Mind (1987), a jeremiad against the college curriculum that no longer took the classics seriously and made possible a culture of relativism and permissiveness. The book became a huge best seller with a great send-off by Bellow himself, who associated many of the ideas in the book with his own lamentations about the chaos of contemporary culture in novels like Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970). Bellow and Bloom taught together at the University of Chicago and evidently became so close that Bloom encouraged Bellow to write about him. Bellow had to decide whether to write a memoir or a novel. That he chose the latter is not surprising, since fiction gave him the freedom to write a book animated by his friend but not slavishly bound to facts in the manner of biography, a genre Bellow distrusted because it distorted truth by hewing too closely to fact. Only fiction provided a broad enough context to capture a figure as protean as Bloom.
The energy of Ravelstein when Bellow was well into his seventies is impressive, but that is not what many critics wanted to discuss. Bloom, a homosexual, had been discreet about his private life and Bellow had outed him, suggesting, as well, that Bloom had died of AIDS. To considerable uproar from Bloom’s friends and other critics, Bellow confessed some regret about exposing his friend. Leader does not take sides, and in this instance, I wish he had done so. However many resemblances are to be found between Ravelstein and Bloom, they are not one and the same, and Bellow—usually not shy about brushing off his detractors—should have said nothing or struck back. Even a biography of Bloom would not have been Bloom. It would have been a book. That people persist in faulting novelists or biographers for offering skewed accounts of their subjects seems ridiculous to me. What life is not askew? The answer to one biography is another biography, as we have it now with Atlas and Leader and the other Bellow biographers that Leader never forgets in his honorable narrative.
Implicitly Leader provides an rebuttal to those who decry Bellow’s use of friends and others to create his characters. Leader shows that some of Bellow’s friends were flattered by the literary uses he made of their personalities. They became more interesting, more pointed, more dramatic, than they thought they were, born anew as Saul Bellow characters. Which is to say that fiction, however much you want to string it to real-life models, is still fiction.
Bellow reminds me of a very different novelist, Anthony Powell, who constantly put the résumes of his intimates and acquaintances onto the pages of his glorious A Dance to the Music of Time, a series of twelve novels that chart a good deal of twentieth-century history, as do Bellow’s works. Bellow goes Powell one better, I think, because of the Bellowian play of ideas. He took ideas seriously, but he also treated them comically, and drew back from commitment to positions—not because he was a gadfly, as some supposed, but because of his understanding that ideas take you only so far and cannot be separated from personality and character.
The most moving passages of Leader’s biography are the many scenes of Saul Bellow in old age, trying to come to terms with his five marriages and the sons who remained in certain respects bitter because he was not there for many of the crucial events in their lives. Bellow acknowledged his derelictions of duty, but in his ill tempered moments he remained wounding and unforgivable. He was closer to novelists like Martin Amis and Philp Roth, adopted sons, than to his biological offspring. His fellow writers revered his unflinching dissections of the American character—not exactly what you want to hear from Dad, though, when he turns his merciless perceptions on you.
It was different with Bellow’s last marriage, in which his wife, Janis, more than four decades younger than her husband, learned not only to accept but to manage his vagaries as well as providing him with a daughter when he was well into his eighties. This final marriage changed Saul Bellow, although Leader does not say so in so many words. Did Bellow become more tolerant because Janis showed him the way? She was the first wife to have the resilience and intelligence to master him in all his moods, although that is not to blame the other wives for not doing so. It was a matter of timing and temperament, I think. The patient and resilient Janis came along at just the right moment when Bellow was musing over his earlier failures in love and child rearing.
Bellow gave his biographer a gift. At the very end, even with dementia that can turn to anger, he became, for the most part, kind and gentle and generous, continuing to teach—oh how he loved the contact with young people over six decades in the university. I suppose he finally understood he had nothing more to prove and could open himself up. He needed no defending, or rather Janis was there to play defense if required.
In the end, Zachary Leader has produced one of the most inspiring biographies of an American writer that we are not likely to see again for quite a long time.
March 13, 2019
Really enjoyed this massive 2-volume biography. In some ways the second half of Bellow's life is the most interesting because after fame hits he does a lot more travelling, teaching, and gets invitations and honors from all over the world and meets a greater cross-section of people. Not only that, but he does some of his best writing. Also some of his best and least-fraught relationships occur in the second half of his life. True, you also see the decline of his powers and his end but it's a full life and most of us can do no better. Thoroughly enjoyable. Leader has done a definitive job on his subject. BH.
January 1, 2025
Well, this'll be the final book reviewed for 2024. As I finished part one recently, waiting for "Dangling Man" from my library, I figured I'd look at the second installment of Leader's biography. As with the previous volume, Leader offers a look at the work, critiquing it, constantly mapping how fictional characters emerge with traits from Bellow's life and times and loves and friends. And how, inevitably, Bellow would use up those around him, filing away their traits and comments for his next characters. Although many writers have this same occupational hazard, Bellow, as Leader shows diligently, if exhaustively for the non-obsessed, this necessary network of connections which draw together hundreds of people into their somewhat disguised or obviously left bare counterparts.
I only caught one slip, "Frances" for Francis Steegmuller the Flaubert scholar. Leader delves deeply into his subject, and it's instructional to follow his predecessor, the "authorized" James Atlas, who's credited often, and also critiqued, for he drew upon his commission to pen "The Shadow in the Garden" about his own long stint dogging his still-alive prey. Leader has it easier, as Bellow's death (tenderly told) allows this scholar fuller rein to tighten the control he exerts over this very difficult man to sum up, pin down, or, ironically for Bellow was known as the quintessential master of clarity, to sometimes figure out his M.O.: see "Papuans and Zulus" infamous comment brouhaha.
The money matters bog this down, as does a particularly extended divorce-alimony spat. Yet, one is chastened by how a novelist so driven to dissect the failures of the intellectual life, of the higher ed. in which he spent his increasingly lucrative career, feted, fawned over, importuned, solicited, and badgered (the old "hazards of fame woe is me" line spouted by many a creative celebrity who can't evade the hoi polloi, for whom Bellow has a lot of contempt, whether they're affluent machers who rub shoulders and grease palms with this elegantly tailored, naff, and no less handsomely kitted out customer who appreciates the finer material things his success affords in abundance, or the dunces in his audiences who dare to ask where he got his inspiration for, say, the eagle hunting in "Augie."
It's also a useful tour of the intellectual and political movers and shakers of the later 20c. As Bellow to his credit was already conservative-leaning, earlier than many of his peers to warn of the Stalin and Soviet dangers, he did move in rarified levels of privilege, which didn't endear him to critics such as, notoriously, Brent Staples. Nor did it clear him of charges of racism or failing to ingratiate himself with the self-proclaimed radicals of the Sixties on, or of somehow smearing the reputation of Allan Bloom by "outing" him in "Ravelstein." As with the 1970 pivotal "Mr Sammler's Planet," which increasingly in hindsight appears to be rising in its reception as a crucial turnaround of the Jewish American response to the rise of resistance to their claimed place as victims, as other groups compete for that role given the success of the Jewish community after the Shoah and the rise of the State of Israel, this discussion in Leader may serve as a now-timely analysis of a prescient conflict.
Similarly, what Bellow reports from his 1976 "To Jerusalem and Back" may inform current readers. Yes, lots of attention to "Dean's December" for its autobiographical elements, and "Humboldt's Gift" for its incorporation of a host of influences from throughout Bellow's intimate knowledge of who's who among North American literati, but the value of the whole, across hundreds of closely annotated and archived details from interviews and an encyclopedic recall of the oeuvre, for me lies in the exposure of Bellow's attempts to show how people, burdened by thought, driven by libido, and lusting for achievement all fall weak when it comes to mortality, conscience, and plain decency.
I only caught one slip, "Frances" for Francis Steegmuller the Flaubert scholar. Leader delves deeply into his subject, and it's instructional to follow his predecessor, the "authorized" James Atlas, who's credited often, and also critiqued, for he drew upon his commission to pen "The Shadow in the Garden" about his own long stint dogging his still-alive prey. Leader has it easier, as Bellow's death (tenderly told) allows this scholar fuller rein to tighten the control he exerts over this very difficult man to sum up, pin down, or, ironically for Bellow was known as the quintessential master of clarity, to sometimes figure out his M.O.: see "Papuans and Zulus" infamous comment brouhaha.
The money matters bog this down, as does a particularly extended divorce-alimony spat. Yet, one is chastened by how a novelist so driven to dissect the failures of the intellectual life, of the higher ed. in which he spent his increasingly lucrative career, feted, fawned over, importuned, solicited, and badgered (the old "hazards of fame woe is me" line spouted by many a creative celebrity who can't evade the hoi polloi, for whom Bellow has a lot of contempt, whether they're affluent machers who rub shoulders and grease palms with this elegantly tailored, naff, and no less handsomely kitted out customer who appreciates the finer material things his success affords in abundance, or the dunces in his audiences who dare to ask where he got his inspiration for, say, the eagle hunting in "Augie."
It's also a useful tour of the intellectual and political movers and shakers of the later 20c. As Bellow to his credit was already conservative-leaning, earlier than many of his peers to warn of the Stalin and Soviet dangers, he did move in rarified levels of privilege, which didn't endear him to critics such as, notoriously, Brent Staples. Nor did it clear him of charges of racism or failing to ingratiate himself with the self-proclaimed radicals of the Sixties on, or of somehow smearing the reputation of Allan Bloom by "outing" him in "Ravelstein." As with the 1970 pivotal "Mr Sammler's Planet," which increasingly in hindsight appears to be rising in its reception as a crucial turnaround of the Jewish American response to the rise of resistance to their claimed place as victims, as other groups compete for that role given the success of the Jewish community after the Shoah and the rise of the State of Israel, this discussion in Leader may serve as a now-timely analysis of a prescient conflict.
Similarly, what Bellow reports from his 1976 "To Jerusalem and Back" may inform current readers. Yes, lots of attention to "Dean's December" for its autobiographical elements, and "Humboldt's Gift" for its incorporation of a host of influences from throughout Bellow's intimate knowledge of who's who among North American literati, but the value of the whole, across hundreds of closely annotated and archived details from interviews and an encyclopedic recall of the oeuvre, for me lies in the exposure of Bellow's attempts to show how people, burdened by thought, driven by libido, and lusting for achievement all fall weak when it comes to mortality, conscience, and plain decency.
April 17, 2021
Saul Bellow seems to have faded into irrelevance largely due to his reputation as an outspoken conservative as he aged. Many consider him elitist; his opinions are a bit more nuanced than as categorized by his enemies. It was duly noted that when I posted Bellow’s “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” as a book of the day last month, nary a person liked or commented. And that book is one of the best books with a plot in NYC and at least three scenes that are iconic in 20th century literature. The silence to that Book of the Day was deafening.
The second volume of Zachary Leader’s Bellow biography was released last month; the reviews are as funny and disturbing as the book itself. Th latest volume begins with Saul Bellow at the height of his fame, after he won the National Book Award in 1965 for “Herzog” and continues to his death in 2005. In between there are mistresses, marriages, academic spats and grudges and more mistresses.
The biography, at its best, chronicles the gradual conservative creep of an aging author. Most of us become a bit more conservative as we age. In the case of Bellow, the shift was extreme from a young Trotskyite to an aging academic at the University of Chicago writing and railing against urban slums. While one might not agree with him, Bellow’s thought processes are always fascinating, as is the chronicling of this conservative creep and his spats with more liberal academic colleagues and the backdrop of student protests in which they occurred.
Though I’ve never found the sexual escapades of others in the least riveting, Bellow was a true scoundrel with multiple mistresses, bitter divorce lawsuits (one which went on for over a decade), and an ability to attract and marry women 20-35 years younger than him. In one truly hysterical scene, one mistress confronts another during a social gathering in Bellow’s Chicago apartment:
“What Maggie remembers of this encounter is that when Arlette walked into the room she immediately took her sweater off over her head. Maggie thought, ‘Wow, this is really out of my league,’ by which she meant showy, vulgar. She also remembers that, before Arlette was let in, Bellow grabbed his manuscript and hid it in the refrigerator.”
The man had his priorities!
Biographer Zachary Leader leaves no stone unturned and has a wonderful way of portraying Bellow, warts and all, without appearing vindictive or tell-all. The biography is scholarly and worthy of the figure it portrays. The best quote comes from the bitter ex-wife of one of Bellow’s academic, tail-chasing friends who described her ex-husband, more than twenty years after the fact, as, “Pursuing a degree in Comparative Gynecology.” That line is just so tasty and needs to be in mainstream vernacular.
The second volume of Zachary Leader’s Bellow biography was released last month; the reviews are as funny and disturbing as the book itself. Th latest volume begins with Saul Bellow at the height of his fame, after he won the National Book Award in 1965 for “Herzog” and continues to his death in 2005. In between there are mistresses, marriages, academic spats and grudges and more mistresses.
The biography, at its best, chronicles the gradual conservative creep of an aging author. Most of us become a bit more conservative as we age. In the case of Bellow, the shift was extreme from a young Trotskyite to an aging academic at the University of Chicago writing and railing against urban slums. While one might not agree with him, Bellow’s thought processes are always fascinating, as is the chronicling of this conservative creep and his spats with more liberal academic colleagues and the backdrop of student protests in which they occurred.
Though I’ve never found the sexual escapades of others in the least riveting, Bellow was a true scoundrel with multiple mistresses, bitter divorce lawsuits (one which went on for over a decade), and an ability to attract and marry women 20-35 years younger than him. In one truly hysterical scene, one mistress confronts another during a social gathering in Bellow’s Chicago apartment:
“What Maggie remembers of this encounter is that when Arlette walked into the room she immediately took her sweater off over her head. Maggie thought, ‘Wow, this is really out of my league,’ by which she meant showy, vulgar. She also remembers that, before Arlette was let in, Bellow grabbed his manuscript and hid it in the refrigerator.”
The man had his priorities!
Biographer Zachary Leader leaves no stone unturned and has a wonderful way of portraying Bellow, warts and all, without appearing vindictive or tell-all. The biography is scholarly and worthy of the figure it portrays. The best quote comes from the bitter ex-wife of one of Bellow’s academic, tail-chasing friends who described her ex-husband, more than twenty years after the fact, as, “Pursuing a degree in Comparative Gynecology.” That line is just so tasty and needs to be in mainstream vernacular.
June 27, 2019
Vol. 2 covers the middle and late sections of Bellow’s career and the advent of his mature work: Mr. Sammler’s Planet and Humboldt’s Gift. His characters were based on friends and enemies as well as Bellow himself. His talent was more of intellect and exposition, than invention which made a biographer’s task easier as many of the books were veiled transpositions of Bellow’s actual life. He won two national Book Awards, a Pulitzer and the crowning prize, the Nobel, all of which verified his stature as the preeminent American novelist. Bellow could be arrogant and caustic, more from the “not tolerating fools” attitude than snobbery. He was also funny and outrageous with a wide circle of friends. His work always took precedence though his womanizing approached the legendary. His final marriage to Janis was satisfactory. Over 40 years his junior, she idolized him and took care of him as well as being able to match him intellectually in the field of literature. He acknowledged she was the first of his wives that he could really talk with. Bellow was a diffident father to his three sons by three different wives and though they had the usual father-son problems, he retained their affection and respect. At the age of 85 he fathered his last child, Rosie—a difficult feat as he and Janis underwent repeated IV attempts, suffered miscarriages and were finally successful. Most of his confidantes felt he did this for Janis who, approaching the end of her fertile years, longed for a child. Probably his closest relationships were with his friends, especially the intellectual and street smart Jews of his youth who shared experiences and memories. Bellow despised phonies and social climbers—as well as those who “got in line”—but he was always interested in accumulating money, an issue that was exacerbated by divisive divorces with fights over alimony and child support. One of his friends summarized his lifeswork in saying “Saul Bellow could not write a dull page.’ Leader has given us one of the most readable and fascinating portraits of a literary figure in these dual volumes.
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February 1, 2022Entertaining for someone like myself who is fan of the man. New insights into the author, his writing s too, but moreso, in excruciating detail his personal foibles and complex set. of relationships. Bellow made human. I took great interest in his professional and literary connections including with Owen Barfield - I didn't know. But no surprise there with common interests in anthroposophy. The book in its own wooden rhythm inspires me to find myself, as Bellow did, in spite of external pressures and in the face of internal debates. Love. and Strife- that's the human condition and we just have to get over it and into it as Bellow did. A lot to digest. Plenty of painstaking research. A scholarly work of the first degree, whether authorized or not. A real contribution to pyscho and literary biography.
January 3, 2021
A comprehensive biography of the Nobel Prize winning author. Well researched and well written.
June 3, 2023
I've read everything he ever wrote that appeared in book form. Saul was my author, if any author was. I miss his voice
August 4, 2023
Unsurpassable.
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January 3, 2025A very readable 2-volume biography of the GREAT author Saul Bellow. I might have had his demons (who doesn't?) but, boy, could he write!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews