Status Updates From The Life of Saul Bellow: Lo...

One realizes the humanity in Bellow. His story fulfills the subtitle : "Love and Strife" - even a Nobel laureate feels both. This is a quirky read with lots of textural text notes and interfacings with biography and relationships that evoke for this reader a mix of fascination and petty curiosity. Much in her about the consilience of prose and politics with some original detours into philosophy and being American.

"Who was that attractive woman you were talking to?" Susan's friend Margo Howard asked her. "One of Saul's old mistresses," Susan said. "During whose marriage?" the friend asked. "Mine," she answered.

In a 1996 class at Boston University Bellow bans papers on the topic of Color in The Great Gatsby.

Bellow's tastes and habits were precise. Janis "learned to make coffee the Ralph Ellison way, the right amount, in a particular cup." He was also particular about breakfast. With cereal, he liked bananas, but "only seven slices."

For all his neuroses, Singer belongs on the saner end of a line of unstable correspondents whose letters Bellow felt worth reading and keeping (in files labeled "Abuse," "Problem Mail," "Nuts.").

At a seminar at Caltech Bellow was asked how he started writing every day. He explained that "first he checked his typewriter to see that all the letters of the alphabet were still there."

"Juliet [Bellow's first grandchild] was born about five weeks ago. I have a picture of her and she doesn't yet look worth flying to California to see."