Editing Saul Bellow (section)

===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.}}