Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer"

by Gerald Sorin

Overview

Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer" offers a fresh and original perspective on the life and works of Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1976. Author Gerald Sorin emphasizes Bellow's Jewish identity as fundamental to his being and the content and meaning of his fiction. Bellow's work from the 1940s to 2000, when he wrote his last novel at the age of 84, centers on the command in Deuteronomy to "Choose life" as distinct from nihilistic withdrawal and the defense of meaninglessness.

Although Bellow disdained the label of "American Jewish Writer," Sorin conjectures that he was an outstanding representative of the classification. Bellow and the characters in his fiction not only choose life but also explore what it means to live a good life, however difficult that may be to define, and regardless of how much harder it is to achieve. For Sorin, Bellow realized that at least two obstacles stood in the way: the imperfection of the world and the frailty of the human pursuer.

Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer" provides a new and insightful narrative of the life and works of Saul Bellow. By using Bellow's deeply internalized Jewishness and his remarkable imagination and creativity as a lens, Sorin examines how he captured the shifting atmosphere of postwar American culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253069443
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2024
Series:	The Modern Jewish Experience
Pages:	602
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gerald Sorin is Distinguished Professor of American and Jewish Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. His works have won multiple National Jewish Book Awards, and he is author of Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent and Howard Fast: Life and Literature in the Left Lane.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Transliterations
Introduction
1. In the Beginning
2. Adapting to America
3. The Education of Saul Bellow
4. Dangling Men
5. In the Shadow of the Holocaust
6. In the Land of the Holocaust
7. The Adventures of Saul Bellow
8. Fathers and Sons
9. Husbands and Wives
10. Friendships and Betrayals
11. Wealth, Fame, and Jewish Identity in 1960s America
12. Love and Death
13. Bellow's Gift, Israel, and the Nobel Prize
14. Bellow's December
15. A Whole New Life
16. Bellow Banished and Bruised
17. Life and Death
Appendix: Saul Bellow's First Published Piece
Notes
Sources and Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Gerald Sorin's volume is a wonderful addition to the body of criticism on Bellow. These are easily among the best readings of Bellow's fiction I have read, and the portrait of Bellow in this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in this great and currently neglected author."—David Mikics, author of Bellow's People: How Saul Bellow Made Life Into Art

From the Publisher