So, Saul Bellow would have been 100 this year. That’s a big deal, partially because—in case you didn’t know—Saul Bellow is a big deal. He’s a Nobel laureate. He’s been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an O. Henry Award and a National Medal of Arts. He’s also the only writer to have won three National Book Awards. He is arguably the most decorated novelist of the 20th century, if not of all time.
As an English major, I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never read anything by Bellow until a little over a year ago, outside of class, when I found a beat up hardcover of one of his novels, Herzog, in a bookstore. For whatever reason, I bought and read it. I’m glad I did.
Herzog is the most perfect novel I’ve ever read. I declare that without hesitation.
Often cited as Bellow’s masterpiece, the book is about Moses Herzog, an academic in his mid-40’s recovering from his second failed marriage and the turmoil of middle age. It has no real plot to speak of. It’s mostly epistolary, made up of Herzog’s rambling letters to everyone including his mistress, President Eisenhower, Nietzsche and even God.
It’s a strange novel, and as I read it for the first time last summer, I often found myself asking: Why? Why am I—a 21-year-old college student—reading a near-400 page book about an intellectual going through a mid-life crisis? It seemed like a viable enough question, yet I was also somehow drawn to the book like no other I’d read before.
I’ve since read more Bellow, not everything he’s written, but enough to know that my compulsion to Herzog was no fluke. Bellow’s other novels and short stories carry just as much emotional depth along with the dense intellectual provocation that brimmed off the pages of Herzog. Many writers are considered successful if they can manage to imbue their work with one of the two—feeling and thought. Bellow not only accomplishes the feat of writing books that contain both, but he does it better than anyone else I’ve read.
That’s why I’m glad to see that this year—on the 100th anniversary of his birth and 10th anniversary of his death—Bellow is being celebrated with the recognition a writer of his talent and merit deserves.
Events are being held across the country, mainly in New York and Bellow’s adopted home Chicago, honoring the writer’s life and extraordinary body of work. There are also several book releases in store, including a reissue of Herzog with a new introduction by Bellow’s friend and fellow 20th century literary titan Philip Roth, as well as the first volume of an extensive biography on Bellow by Zachary Leader.
Both of those releases are planned for early May, but a book of Bellow’s collected nonfiction, There is Simply Too Much to Think About, was already released at the end of March.
Because Bellow wrote nonfiction in all forms, from personal essays and lectures to reviews and more critical pieces, and the collection culls works from all periods of his career, There is Simply Too Much to Think About has the ability to delight and disappoint in equal measure.
If the collection shows anything, it’s that Bellow was always clearly most at home writing fiction. That doesn’t mean certain pieces don’t rise above the rest and stand out as fantastic works in themselves. His essay “On Jewish Storytelling” weaves together general history, personal anecdote and an academic seriousness to the topic to create a concise whole that is—like his best novels—both enlightening and entertaining.
Some works in the collection—particularly the lectures—drag and wander on aimless asides that are neither all that necessary nor interesting. Because there are so many such inclusions, the collection never becomes a seamless and enjoyable whole. Chalk that up to the editing job of Benjamin Taylor, who also made the puzzling decision to exclude a number of short eulogies Bellow wrote for several academic and literary friends. The best of which is about John Berryman and first appeared as the forward to the poet’s posthumously released novel Recovery. It is a touching farewell to Bellow’s colleague and an exquisite piece of writing, but is nowhere to be found in There is Simply Too Much to Think About.
The collection is an obvious must have for any Bellow fan, if only to have Bellow’s seemingly boundless knowledge on hand for whatever needs it may satisfy. Everyone else should start with his fiction, which is what his reputation rests on. It’s the reason Bellow’s centenary is being observed this year, and it will likely be the cause for another celebration 100 years from now. •
