Saul Bellow
Canada / USA
Restless, high-energy sentences crammed with erudition and street slang at once: a mind thinking out loud, digressive, funny, unable to stop.
Born in a Quebec suburb to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Bellow grew up trilingual on Chicago's gritty streets after the family crossed the border when he was nine. He studied anthropology at Northwestern, worked briefly for the WPA's Federal Writers' Project, and served in the wartime merchant marine before Augie March's opening line ('I am an American, Chicago born') announced a whole new register for the American novel.
He married five times, taught for decades at the University of Chicago, and collected honors almost compulsively: three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer for Humboldt's Gift, and the 1976 Nobel Prize, awarded for fiction combining exuberant comedy with a mind that never stopped arguing with itself.
He died in 2005 in Massachusetts at eighty-nine, still arguing.
Lines of influence
Their books in the atlas
- 1953
The Adventures of Augie MarchLvl 7picaresque - 1964
HerzogLvl 7psychological novel - 1970
Mr. Sammler's PlanetLvl 7philosophical novel - 1975
Humboldt's GiftLvl 6philosophical novel
Meanwhile, elsewhere
If you like Bellow, try
1933–2018Philip RothUSAshaped by Bellow · shared movement: The Jewish American Novel · both shaped Cohen
1821–1881Fyodor DostoevskyRussiashaped Bellow · kindred genres: psychological novel, philosophical novel · neighboring movements
1902–1991Isaac Bashevis SingerPoland / United Statesshared movement: The Jewish American Novel · kindred genres: philosophical novel, psychological novel · same region & era
b. 1980Joshua CohenUSAshaped by Bellow · same region & era
1914–1986Bernard MalamudUnited Statesshared movement: The Jewish American Novel · kindred genres: psychological novel · same region & era
1923–2007Norman MailerUnited Statesshared movement: The Jewish American Novel · kindred genres: psychological novel · same region & era