Editing Saul Bellow (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows<ref Name="Name">Library of America ''Bellow Novels 1944–1953'', pg. 1000.</ref><ref name=NYTobit>{{Cite news|last1=Gussow|first1=Mel|last2=McGrath|first2=Charles|date=April 6, 2005|title=Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/books/saul-bellow-who-breathed-life-into-american-novel-dies-at-89.html|access-date=December 16, 2022|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> in [[Lachine, Quebec]], two years after his parents, Lescha (née Gordin) and Abraham Bellows,<ref name="google">{{cite book|title=Bellow: A Biography|author=Atlas, J.|date=2000|publisher=Random House|isbn=9780394585017|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P2GwAAAAIAAJ|access-date=August 26, 2015}}</ref> emigrated from [[Saint Petersburg]], Russia.<ref Name="Name"/><ref name=NYTobit/> He had three elder siblings - sister Zelda (later Jane, born in 1907), brothers Moishe (later Maurice, born in 1908) and Schmuel (later Samuel, born in 1911).<ref name="Leader 2015 p." /> Bellow's family was [[Lithuanian Jews|Lithuanian-Jewish]];<ref name="theguardian">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/apr/27/greg-bellow-father-saul|title=Greg Bellow: My father, Saul|work=The Guardian|date=April 27, 2013|author=Emma Brockes}}</ref><ref name="independent">{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/great-author-terrible-father-memoir-portrays-saul-bellow-as-an-egotistical-womaniser-who-drove-his-son-into-therapy-8577412.html|title=Great author, terrible father: Memoir portrays Saul Bellow as an egotistical womaniser who drove his son into therapy – Features – Books – The Independent|newspaper=independent.co.uk|access-date=August 26, 2015}}</ref> his father was born in [[Vilnius]]. Bellow celebrated his birthday on June 10, although he appears to have been born on July 10, according to records from the Jewish Genealogical Society-Montreal. (In the Jewish community, it was customary to record the Hebrew date of birth, which does not always coincide with the Gregorian calendar.)<ref>''The New York Times'' obituary, April 6, 2005. "...his birthdate is listed as either June or July 10, 1915, though his lawyer, Mr. Pozen, said yesterday that Mr. Bellow customarily celebrated in June. (Immigrant Jews at that time tended to be careless about the Christian calendar, and the records are inconclusive.)"</ref> Of his family's emigration, Bellow wrote: {{blockquote|The retrospective was strong in me because of my parents. They were both full of the notion that they were falling, falling. They had been prosperous cosmopolitans in Saint Petersburg. My mother could never stop talking about the family [[dacha]], her privileged life, and how all that was now gone. She was working in the kitchen. Cooking, washing, mending ... There had been servants in Russia ... But you could always transpose from your humiliating condition with the help of a sort of embittered irony.<ref>Saul Bellow, ''It All Adds Up'', first published 1994, Penguin edition 2007, pp. 295–96.</ref>}}

A period of illness from a respiratory infection at age eight both taught him self-reliance (he was a very fit man despite his sedentary occupation) and provided an opportunity to satisfy his hunger for reading: reportedly, he decided to be a writer when he first read [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]].''

When Bellow was nine, his family moved to the [[Humboldt Park, Chicago|Humboldt Park]] neighborhood on the [[West Side, Chicago|West Side]] of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels. Bellow's father, Abraham, had become an onion importer. He also worked in a bakery, as a coal delivery man, and as a bootlegger.<ref name=NYTobit /> Bellow's mother, Liza, died when he was 17. She had been deeply religious and wanted her youngest son, Saul, to become a rabbi or a concert violinist. But he rebelled against what he later called the "suffocating orthodoxy" of his religious upbringing, and he began writing at a young age. Bellow's lifelong love for the Torah began at four when he learned [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]]. Bellow also grew up reading [[Shakespeare]] and the great [[Russian literature|Russian novelists]] of the 19th century.<ref name=NYTobit />

In Chicago, he took part in [[anthroposophy|anthroposophical studies]] at the [[Anthroposophical Society of Chicago]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/11/saul-bellow-life-steiner|title=Saul Bellow: Letters|website=www.newstatesman.com|access-date=May 26, 2018}}</ref> Bellow attended [[Tuley High School]] on Chicago's west side where he befriended [[Yetta Barsh Shachtman|Yetta Barsh]] and [[Isaac Rosenfeld]]. In his 1959 novel ''[[Henderson the Rain King]]'', Bellow modeled the character King Dahfu on Rosenfeld.<ref name="test">[http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2002/1/zipperstein.html "Isaac Rosenfeld's Dybbuk and Rethinking Literary Biography"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203030852/http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2002/1/zipperstein.html |date=December 3, 2013 }}, Zipperstein, Steven J. (2002). Partisan Review 49 (1). Retrieved October 17, 2010.</ref>

===Education and early career===
Bellow attended the [[University of Chicago]] but later transferred to [[Northwestern University]]. He originally wanted to study literature, but he felt the English department was anti-Jewish. Instead, he graduated with honors in [[anthropology]] and sociology.<ref>''The New York Times'' obituary, April 6, 2005. "He had hoped to study literature but was put off by what he saw as the tweedy anti-Semitism of the English department, and graduated in 1937 with honors in anthropology and sociology, subjects that were later to instill his novels."</ref> It has been suggested Bellow's study of anthropology had an influence on his literary style, and anthropological references pepper his works. He later did graduate work at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison|University of Wisconsin]].

Paraphrasing Bellow's description of his close friend [[Allan Bloom]] (see ''[[Ravelstein]]''), [[John Podhoretz]] has said that both Bellow and Bloom "inhaled books and ideas the way the rest of us breathe air."<ref name="timesonline">{{cite news|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article379354.ece |title=Saul Bellow, a neocon's tale |newspaper=[[The Times]]|access-date=August 26, 2015}}{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref>

In the 1930s, Bellow was part of the Chicago branch of the [[Federal Writers' Project]], which included such future Chicago literary luminaries as [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]] and [[Nelson Algren]]. Many of the writers were radical: if they were not members of the [[Communist Party USA]], they were sympathetic to the cause. Bellow was a [[Trotskyism|Trotskyist]], but because of the greater numbers of [[Stalinism|Stalinist]]-leaning writers, he had to suffer their taunts.<ref>Drew, Bettina. ''Nelson Algren, A Life on the Wild Side.'' Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991</ref>

In 1941, Bellow became a [[naturalized]] United States citizen, after discovering, on attempting to enlist in the armed forces, that he had immigrated to the United States illegally as a child.<ref>
{{cite book
| last = Slater
| first = Elinor
|author2=Robert Slater
 | title = Great Jewish Men
| publisher = Jonathan David Company
| year = 1996
| page = 42
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=T91sokr_nJYC&q=great+jewish+men
| chapter = SAUL BELLOW: Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
| chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=T91sokr_nJYC&q=bellow+naturalized+citizen&pg=PA42
| isbn = 0-8246-0381-8
| access-date = October 21, 2007
}}</ref><ref name=SlateHitchens>{{cite magazine|last1=Hitchens|first1=Christopher|title=Remembering Saul Bellow|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2005/04/he_was_an_american_quebecborn.html|magazine=Slate|access-date=June 13, 2015}}</ref>
In 1943, [[Maxim Lieber]] was his literary agent.

During [[World War II]], Bellow joined the [[United States Merchant Marine|merchant marine]] and during his service he completed his first novel, ''[[Dangling Man]]'' (1944) about a young Chicago man waiting to be drafted for the war.

From 1946 through 1948 Bellow taught at the [[University of Minnesota]]. In the fall of 1947, following a tour to promote his novel ''[[The Victim (novel)|The Victim]]'', he moved into a large old house at 58 Orlin Avenue SE in the [[Prospect Park, Minneapolis|Prospect Park]] neighborhood of [[Minneapolis]].<ref name="Leader 2015 p.">{{cite book|title=The Life of Saul Bellow: to fame and fortune, 1915–1964|last=Leader|first=Zachary|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|year=2015|isbn=978-0-307-26883-9|location=New York|page=64|oclc=880756047}}</ref>

In 1948, Bellow was awarded a [[Guggenheim Fellowship]] that allowed him to move to Paris, where he began writing ''[[The Adventures of Augie March]]'' (1953). Critics have remarked on the resemblance between Bellow's [[picaresque novel]] and the great 17th-century Spanish classic ''[[Don Quixote]]''.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pinsker|first=Sanford|date=April 1973|title=Saul Bellow in the Classroom|journal=College English|volume=34|issue=7|pages=980|jstor=375232|doi=10.2307/375232}}</ref> The book starts with one of American literature's most famous opening paragraphs,<ref name="npr">{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2005/04/08/4583405/saul-bellow-an-appreciation|title=Saul Bellow, An Appreciation : NPR|website=NPR|date=April 8, 2005|publisher=npr.org|access-date=August 26, 2015|last1=Cheuse|first1=Alan}}</ref> and it follows its titular character through a series of careers and encounters, as he lives by his wits and his resolve. Written in a colloquial yet philosophical style, ''The Adventures of Augie March'' established Bellow's reputation as a major author.

In 1953, Bellow translated [[Gimpel the Fool]] by [[Isaac Bashevis Singer]] from Yiddish into English.

In 1958, Bellow once again taught at the University of Minnesota. During this time, he and his wife Sasha received psychoanalysis from University of Minnesota Psychology Professor [[Paul Meehl]].<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=May 11, 2015 |title=Young Saul |url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/young-saul |magazine= The New Yorker |location= New York, NY|access-date= October 18, 2016}}</ref>

In the spring term of 1961 he taught creative writing at the [[University of Puerto Rico]] at [[Río Piedras, Puerto Rico|Río Piedras]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Bellow |first=Saul | year= 2010|title=Saul Bellow: Letters |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=sr98LzRQvUUC&q=Saul+Bellow%3A+Letters+Puerto+Rico+1961&pg=PT216
|others=redactor Ben Taylor |location= New York |publisher=Viking |isbn=9781101445327 |access-date=July 12, 2014 | quote = ... Puerto Rico, where he was spending the spring term of 1961.}}</ref>
One of his students was [[William Kennedy (author)|William Kennedy]], who was encouraged by Bellow to write fiction.

===Return to Chicago and mid-career===
Bellow lived in New York City for years, but returned to Chicago in 1962 as a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the [[University of Chicago]]. The committee's goal was to have professors work closely with talented graduate students on a multi-disciplinary approach to learning. His students included the poet, [[Tom Mandel (poet)|Tom Mandel]]. Bellow taught on the committee for more than 30 years, alongside his close friend, the philosopher [[Allan Bloom]].

There were also other reasons for Bellow's return to Chicago, where he moved into the [[Hyde Park, Chicago|Hyde Park]] neighborhood with his third wife, Susan Glassman. Bellow found Chicago vulgar but vital, and more representative of America than New York.<ref>The New York Times Book Review, December 13, 1981</ref> He was able to stay in contact with old high school friends and a broad cross-section of society. In a 1982 profile, Bellow's neighborhood was described as a high-crime area in the city's center, and Bellow maintained he had to live in such a place as a writer and "stick to his guns."<ref>''[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue]]'', March 1982</ref>

Bellow hit the bestseller list in 1964 with his novel ''[[Herzog (novel)|Herzog]]''. Bellow was surprised at the commercial success of this cerebral novel about a middle-aged and troubled college professor who writes letters to friends, scholars and the dead, but never sends them. Bellow returned to his exploration of mental instability, and its relationship to genius, in his 1975 novel ''[[Humboldt's Gift]]''. Bellow used his late friend and rival, the brilliant but self-destructive poet [[Delmore Schwartz]], as his model for the novel's title character, Von Humboldt Fleisher.<ref name=Atlas>Atlas, James. ''Bellow: A Biography.'' New York: Random House, 2000.</ref> Bellow also used [[Rudolf Steiner]]'s spiritual science, anthroposophy, as a theme in the book, having attended a study group in Chicago. He was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1969.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=May 30, 2011}}</ref>

===Nobel Prize and later career===
Propelled by the success of ''Humboldt's Gift'', Bellow won the [[1976 Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize in literature in 1976]]. In the 70-minute address he gave to an audience in [[Stockholm]], [[Sweden]], Bellow called on writers to be beacons for civilization and awaken it from intellectual torpor.<ref name=Atlas />

The following year, the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]] selected Bellow for the [[Jefferson Lecture]], the US federal government's highest honor for achievement in the [[humanities]]. Bellow's lecture was entitled "The Writer and His Country Look Each Other Over."<ref name="jefflect">[http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/jefflect.html Jefferson Lecturers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111020121101/http://www.neh.gov///whoweare/jefflect.html |date=October 20, 2011 }} at NEH Website. Retrieved January 22, 2009.</ref>

From December 1981 to March 1982, Bellow was the Visiting Lansdowne Scholar at the [[University of Victoria]] (BC),<ref>{{cite web|title=Visiting Lansdowne scholar, Saul Bellow|url=http://archives.library.uvic.ca/hpc/index.php/visiting-lansdowne-scholar-saul-bellow;rad|website=University of Victoria Archives|access-date=June 14, 2015}}</ref> and also held the title Writer-in-Residence.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Colombo|first1=John Robert|title=Canadian Literary Landmarks|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WdPnEvbEKgQC&pg=PA283|publisher=Dundum|page=283|isbn=9781459717985|date=January 1984}}</ref> In 1998, he was elected to the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Saul+Bellow&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=December 2, 2021|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>

Bellow traveled widely throughout his life, mainly to Europe, which he sometimes visited twice a year.<ref name=Atlas /> As a young man, Bellow went to [[Mexico City]] to meet [[Leon Trotsky]], but the expatriate Russian revolutionary was assassinated the day before they were to meet. Bellow's social contacts were wide and varied. He tagged along with [[Robert F. Kennedy]] for a magazine profile he never wrote, and was close friends with the author [[Ralph Ellison]]. His many friends included the journalist [[Sydney J. Harris]] and the poet [[John Berryman]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/27/archives/john-berryman-friend.html|title=John Berryman, Friend|last=Bellow|first=Saul|date=May 27, 1973|work=The New York Times}}</ref>

While sales of Bellow's first few novels were modest, that turned around with ''[[Herzog (novel)|Herzog]]''. Bellow continued teaching well into his old age, enjoying its human interaction and exchange of ideas. He taught at [[Yale University]], [[University of Minnesota]], [[New York University]], [[Princeton University]], [[University of Puerto Rico]], [[University of Chicago]], [[Bard College]] and [[Boston University]], where he co-taught a class with [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]] ('modestly absenting himself' when it was time to discuss ''Seize the Day''). In order to take up his appointment at Boston, Bellow moved from Chicago to [[Brookline, Massachusetts]], in 1993; he died there on April 5, 2005, at age 89. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery Shir HeHarim of [[Brattleboro]], [[Vermont]].

While he read voluminously, Bellow also played the violin and followed sports. Work was a constant for him, but he at times toiled at a plodding pace on his novels, frustrating the publishing company.<ref name=Atlas />

His early works earned him the reputation as a major novelist of the 20th century, and by his death he was widely regarded as one of the greatest living novelists.<ref name="Linda Grant">{{Cite web|date=April 9, 2005|title=Linda Grant on Saul Bellow|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/apr/10/fiction.saulbellow|access-date=December 16, 2022|website=the Guardian|language=en |quote=He was the first true immigrant voice}}</ref> He was the first writer to win three National Book Awards in all award categories.<ref name=winners>{{Cite web|title=National Book Foundation - Explore the Archives|url=https://www.nationalbook.org/national-book-awards/search/|access-date=December 16, 2022|website=National Book Foundation|language=en-US}}</ref><!-- unofficial count. Our [[List of winners of the National Book Award]] may be easier to search efficiently --> His friend and protege [[Philip Roth]] has said of him, "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists—[[William Faulkner]] and Saul Bellow. Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century." [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]], in a eulogy of Bellow in ''[[The New Republic]]'', wrote:<ref>Wood, James, 'Gratitude', ''New Republic'', 00286583, April 25, 2005, Vol. 232, Issue 15</ref>

{{blockquote|I judged all modern prose by his. Unfair, certainly, because he made even the fleet-footed—the Updikes, the DeLillos, the Roths—seem like monopodes. Yet what else could I do? I discovered Saul Bellow's prose in my late teens, and henceforth, the relationship had the quality of a love affair about which one could not keep silent. Over the last week, much has been said about Bellow's prose, and most of the praise—perhaps because it has been overwhelmingly by men—has tended toward the robust: We hear about Bellow's mixing of high and low registers, his Melvillean cadences jostling the jivey Yiddish rhythms, the great teeming democracy of the big novels, the crooks and frauds and intellectuals who loudly people the brilliant sensorium of the fiction. All of this is true enough; John Cheever, in his journals, lamented that, alongside Bellow's fiction, his stories seemed like mere suburban splinters. Ian McEwan wisely suggested last week that British writers and critics may have been attracted to Bellow precisely because he kept alive a Dickensian amplitude now lacking in the English novel. ... But nobody mentioned the beauty of this writing, its music, its high lyricism, its firm but luxurious pleasure in language itself. ... [I]n truth, I could not thank him enough when he was alive, and I cannot now.}}