Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

Nobel laureate, novelist, veteran of the merchant marine, social critic, native son of Canada...

Saul Bellow dies at 89. [NYT permalink]

[Thanks to reader Cat for alerting me.]

Update: Scott Lemieux and grishaxx recall Saul.

Comments

[aaron law]

Thank you for posting this. Saul Bellow was a great. All of his stuff is worth reading for the sheer vibrancy of his prose. There will undoubtably be some who attempt to claim him as representative of certain movements, but they will be wrong. He eschewed commercialism as much as pc-ness because he didn't want any of it to affect his art. One can forgive his anachronisms because he was unerringly humanist. His passing diminishes our world greatly. There won't be another like him in our lifetime.

On a related note, after Sontag, Hunter S. Thompson, and now Bellow, does anyone else feel like there are no more greats left? I don't think I can think of a cultural critic, journalist, and novelist (respectively) I liked better. Anybody have any suggestions of remaining writers who might come close to these?

[bob mcmanus]

Pynchon might get a Nobel.

Read Herzog, Mr Sammler's Planer, Henderson the Rain King, maybe Augie March. Lemieux inspired me, I was going to avoid commenting for insufficient knowledge. But I had the same experience of reading Herzog as a twenty something and finding it challenging. But I felt at the time that Bellow had provided me with a little of the wisdom and experience of his forty plus years.

Besides, I remember it was really funny.

[Alan Bostick]

Bellow's granddaughter Juliet is married to my partner's cousin. The birth of Bellow's daughter Naomi five years ago provided a great deal of grist for the family gossip mill. Juliet Bellow's aunt is younger than her daughter, which ought to make the kids table at family dinners interesting.

[Robin]

There are plenty of great writers, poets and the like around: Naipaul, Ashberry, Seamus Heaney, Rushdie, Walcott, Marquez, Mafouz, Delillo, Calasso . . .

[anon]

Bellow was more of a Chicagoan than a Canadian. :P

I claim him for Chicago!