Bellow, Saul

(b. 1915)

   US novelist. Bellow was born in Montreal, Canada and as a child spoke English, French and Yiddish. He studied anthropology before becoming a writer. His first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944. He taught creative writing for a year at Princeton University and then was appointed a professor at the University of Chicago. Bellow’s novels show a wide range of Jewish experience, and the protagonist is often a Jew. The Victim (1947) is an unusual account of persecution. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) give a picaresque history of Chicago in the Depression. In Herzog (1964) and Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970) Bellow takes two different views of the frustration and despair of Jewish intellectuals attempting to deal with modern life. He has written a play, The Last Analysis (1965), and a collection of stories, Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories (1968). Since 1970 he has written To Jerusalem and Back (1974), Humboldt’s Gift (1975), The Dean’s December (1982), Him With His Foot in His Mouth (1984), More Die of Heartbreak (1986), A Theft (1989), The Bellarosa Connection (1989) and Something to Re-member Me By (1991). Among his numerous awards he has won the Pulitzer Prize, several National Book Awards and, in 1976, the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is generally recognized as one of the greatest figures of modern American letters.