Editing Saul Bellow (section)

===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>