Saul Bellow

Literature / Writers Datebook: June 10

 

Brief biography of American novelist and teacher Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize for literature in 1976. Considered one of America's finest writers. Famous for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog and Humboldt's Gift. Considered

 

Early Life

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915, the son of immigrant Russian Jews from St. Petersburg. Bellow's father was a businessman, who was not always successful. The young Bellow spent his childhood in Montreal, and in 1924, when he was nine, his father moved the family to the United States, in Chicago.  Bellow, who spoke English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish, grew up, went to school and attended university in Chicago, and later, in Evanston, Illinois.

 

The Writer, Teacher, and Merchant Marine

After graduating at the age of 21, he decided to become a writer, and abandoned his post-graduate studies at Wisconsin University. By this time Bellow had married and needed to earn money. He began working as a teacher and helped compile the literature section of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as writing novels.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine. He used this experience as the basis for his first novel, Dangling Man, published when Bellow was 29. It is about the thoughts and feelings of a man waiting to be drafted into the army. After the war Bellow returned to his life of teaching and writing. He become an American citizen in 1941.

 

Writing Theme and Criticism

Bellow often writes about people who feel that they do not belong in the world they live in, who feel that they are outsiders and do not fit in to the present environment full of absurdity and chaos as opposed to the intellectually and emotionally nourishing past. For this he was criticized by his detractors as conventional still clinging to the European novels of the 19^th century. Many of his stories are both sad and funny at the same time. Typical of this is his novel Humboldt's Gift, a comic book about death that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

 

Awards and Distinctions

He has won many awards for his work, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1998. He became an associate professor at Minnesota University, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 1948, after which he traveled to Europe, in Paris and Rome.

He died at the age of 89, in Massachusetts, USA, on April 5, 2005.

 

Works by Saul Bellow

Dangling Man, 1944

The Victim, 1947

Adventures of Augie March, 1953

Seize the Day, 1956

Henderson the Rain King, 1959

Herzog, 1964

Mr Sammler's Planet, 1970

Humboldt's Gift, 1975

The Dean's December, 1982

More Die of Heartbreak, 1987

The Actual, 1997

 

Photo Credit:

Saul Bellow.   Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Photo portrait of Bellow from the dust jacket of Herzog (1964).

 

Resources:

Chambers Biographical Dictionary, New Edition, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse plc, 1994

 

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