Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

From BBC Radio 3:

Free Thinking
Landmark: Saul Bellow's Herzog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xqdzh

Martin Amis, Zachary Leader and Sarah Churchwell join Matthew Sweet to discuss Saul Bellow and his masterpiece, Herzog with readings by Kerry Shale.

Born exactly one hundred years ago on June 10th 1915 in Quebec, Bellow spent most of his life in Chicago and it formed the backdrop for many of his novels. In 1976 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Herzog depicts the mid life crisis of a Jewish academic whose mind begins to unravel when his wife leaves him for his best friend. His rage drives him to write a series of letters to friends, family and the famous in a bid to understand his predicament. They are never sent but they colour the book's emotional landscape. Herzog was nominated as one of the 100 best novels in the English language by TIME magazine.

Bellow writes (at least to me) somewhat off-putting novels and short-stories. I respect his talent but the choices he makes for his themes seem remote to my interests; very specialized subject matter.

Another thing is his prose style: as dense and cumbersome as John Updike at his worst. Or John Irving at his worst.

All three of these writers 'disembowel themselves in their manuscripts and let the thousands of feet of untrammeled verbiage lurking in their intestines seep out in thick, treacly, ropy strands like the whorls in one's fingertips, blah blah blah etc etc etc'. You get the idea.

All that being said, I was blown away by the American Playhouse adaptation of 'Seize the Day' starring Robin Williams. This little tv movie remains the only Robin Williams' movie performance I have ever liked.

There's one novel only of Bellows' which interests me: 'The Dean's December'.

I liked Robin in "Good Morning, Vietnam!" and "The World According to Garp" (speaking of John Irving).

Highly talented and gifted individual. That goes without saying.

But boy when he was placed in this very tragic, moving story of Jewish Americana, he knocked it out of the ballpark. For once, he showed restraint in a performance.

Its just that I can't think of anything else he ever did which was appealed to me. The box-office movies he starred in were too small for his abilities, perhaps.