Editing Saul Bellow (section)

===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>