Saul Bellow is one of the twentieth century’s most influential, respected, and honored writers. His novels The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet won the National Book Award, and Humboldt’s Gift was awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In addition, his plays garnered popular and critical acclaim, and some were produced on Broadway. Known for his insights into life in a post-Holocaust world, Bellow’s explorations of modernity, Jewish identity, and the relationship between art and society have resonated with his readers, but because his writing is not overtly political, his politics have largely been ignored.
A Political Companion to Saul Bellow examines the author’s novels, essays, short stories, and letters in order to illuminate his evolution from liberal to neoconservative. It investigates Bellow’s exploration of the United States as a democratic system, the religious and ideological influences on his work, and his views on race relations, religious identity, and multiculturalism in the academy. Featuring a fascinating conclusion that draws from interviews with Bellow’s sons, this accessible companion is an excellent resource for understanding the political thought of one of America’s most acclaimed writers.
Table of Content
Introduction: Saul Bellow’s Political Thought
Trotskyism in the Early Work of Saul Bellow
Bellow as Jew and Jewish Writer
Saul Bellow and the Absent Woman Syndrome: Traces of India in ‘Leaving the Yellow House’
The Politics of Art: The Colonial Library Meets The Carnivalesque in Henderson the Rain King
The Jewish Atlantic: The Deployment of Blackness in Saul Bellow
Washed up on the shores of truth: Saul Bellow’s Post-Holocaust America
Mr. Sammler’s Planet: Saul Bellow’s 1968 Speech at San Francisco State University
Biography, Elegy, and the Politics of Modernity in Saul Bellow’s Ravelstein
Our Father’s Politics: Gregory, Adam and Daniel Bellow
About the author
Gloria L. Cronin is professor of English at Brigham Young University. She is coeditor of the Saul Bellow Journal and executive director of the International Saul Bellow Society, as well as coauthor or coeditor of several books, including Jewish American and Holocaust Literature: Representation in the Postmodern World.
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