Saul Bellow

<div> <p>Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Dangling Man is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago's streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.</p></div> <p>Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. <i>Dangling Man</i> is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago's streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.

<p>Bellow evokes all the rich colour and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life earns him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.</p> <div><p>Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson’s awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe—but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, <em>Henderson the Rain King</em> is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.</p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Bellow's classic novel of a dissatisfied American millionaire finding himself in Africa has been newly recorded in time for the novel's 50th anniversary. Joe Barrett reads the seriocomic tale of Eugene Henderson, who flees workaday American anomie for the freeing chaos of Africa. Barrett's voice is pleasingly gravelly, rimed with experience and rising to a growling screech at particularly heated moments. Every audio recording should be so lucky as to work with Bellow's prose, but this version, directed by Keith Reynolds, is more than adequate. Barrett is to be commended for sounding like a man of Bellow's era, not his own; one can almost picture Bellow's voice emitting a similar blend of assurance and self-conscious anxiety. <em>A Viking hardcover. (July)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"A kind of wildly delirious dream made real by the force of Bellow's rollicking prose and the offbeat inventiveness of his language."<br></p><p>(<em>Chicago Tribune</em> ) </p></div> <p>Bellow evokes all the rich colour and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life earns him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, HENDERSON THE RAIN KING is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.

Saul Bellow's Herzog is part confessional, part exorcism, and a wholly unique achievement in postmodern fiction. Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend, and Herzog is left alone with his whirling thoughts - yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and the myriad catastrophes of the modern age. In a crumbling house which he shares with rats, his head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, the living and the dead, revealing the spectacular workings of his labyrinthine mind and the innermost secrets of his troubled heart. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury'Spectacular ... surely Bellow's greatest novel'Malcolm Bradbury'A masterpiece ... Herzog's voice, for all its wildness and strangeness and foolishness, is the voice of a civilization, our civilization'The New York Times Book Review

'We were friends, somehow.But in the end, somehow, he intended to be a mortal enemy.All the while that he was making the gestures of a close and precious friend he was fattening my soul in a coop till it was ready for killing.'Vital, exuberant, streetwise and philosophizing, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow is one of the undisputed masters of American prose. In this inspired novella an ageing man writes an apology for his rudeness to a librarian thirty-five years earlier, unleashing a dazzling, rancorous comic riff on growing old, regret, rudeness, smoking and 'the world's grandeur'. 'We were friends, somehow. But in the end, somehow, he intended to be a mortal enemy. All the while that he was making the gestures of a close and precious friend he was fattening my soul in a coop till it was ready for killing.' Vital, exuberant, streetwise and philosophizing, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow is one of the undisputed masters of American prose. In this inspired novella an ageing man writes an apology for his rudeness to a librarian thirty-five years earlier, unleashing a dazzling, rancorous comic riff on growing old, regret, rudeness, smoking and 'the world's grandeur'.

<p>'I think it A Work of genius, I think it The Work of a Genius' John CheeverFor many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around.</p> <p>For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around. <div><h3>Review</h3><p>Novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1975. The novel, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course. -- __</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>A chronicle of success and failure, this work is Bellow's tale of the writer's life in America. When Humboldt dies a failure in a seedy New York hotel, Charlie Citrine coping with the tribulations of his own success, begins to realize the significance of his own life. </p> </div> <div><h3>Review</h3><p>Novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1975. The novel, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course. -- <em>The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature</em></p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong> Saul Bellow</strong> (1915–2005) wrote thirteen novels and numerous novellas and stories in his lifetime. In 1975 he won the Pulitzer Prize for <em>Humboldt’s Gift</em>, and in 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. <strong>Jeffrey Eugenides</strong> is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <em>Middlesex</em> and <em>The Virgin Suicides</em>. </p></div>

Kenneth Trachtenberg has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described 'plant visionary.' While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from 'bliss to breakdown.' Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments.

Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a "registrar of madness," a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul. "Sorry for all and sore at heart," he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering. To Mr. Sammler-who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings-a good life is one in which a person does what is "required of him." To know and to meet the "terms of the contract" was as true a life as one could live. Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a "registrar of madness," a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul. "Sorry for all and sore at heart," he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering. To Mr. Sammler-who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings-a good life is one in which a person does what is "required of him. " To know and to meet the "terms of the contract" was as true a life as one could live.

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously — and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it. Much to Ravelstein's own surprise, the book makes him a millionaire. Ravelstein suggests in turn that Chick write a memoir or a life of him, and during the course of a celebratory trip to Paris the two share thoughts on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends, old and new

THE LIFE OF A MASTER, TOLD IN LETTERS Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, three National Book awards, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saul Bellow wrote marvellously acute, unsparing, tender, ferocious, hilarious, and wise letter throughout his long life (1915-2005). Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to his fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, J.F. Powers, Karl Shapiro, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, John Auerbach, Stanley Elkin, Richard Stern, James Salter, Martin Amis, and others. Intimate and ironical, rueful and amused, this vast self portrait-indeed, the autobiography Bellow never wrote-shows the influences at work in the man and illuminates his enduring legacy- the novels and stories that enduring legacy- the novels and stories that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of readers the world over. A never-before-published collection of letters - an intimate self-portrait as well as the portrait of a century. Saul Bellow was a dedicated correspondent until a couple of years before his death, and his letters, spanning eight decades, show us a twentieth-century life in all its richness and complexity. Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to Bellow's fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, and Wright Morris. Intimate, ironical, richly observant, and funny, these letters reveal the influcences at work in the man, and illuminate his enduring legacy-the novels that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of the world over. Saul Bellow: Letters is a major literary event and an important edition to Bellow's incomparable body of work. ### Review Best of 2010 Lists "The New York Times," Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten of 2010 "The Washington Post," John Yardley's Best of 2010 "Minneapolis Star Tribune" "It comes as no surprise to find that the great novelist was a great correspondent as well. I hungrily read the book through in three nights, as though I'd stumbled upon a lost Bellow masterpiece only recently unearthed." ?Philip Roth "In the "Letters," as in everything he wrote, Saul Bellow never dipped below a certain level?and that level is stratospheric." ?Martin Amis "These aren't dashed-off notes, but letters that required considerable care and meant much to the author, as he expresses affection and support for other writers (Ellison, Roth, Malamud, Cheever, Amis et al.), takes critics and journalists to task with well-formed arguments and offers critical commentary on the culture that provides the context for his work (a culture that no longer values the art of writing letters)." ### Review Best of 2010 Lists *The New York Times* , Michiko Kakutani’s Top Ten of 2010 *The Washington Post* , John Yardley’s Best of 2010 *Minneapolis* *Star Tribune* “It comes as no surprise to find that the great novelist was a great correspondent as well. I hungrily read the book through in three nights, as though I’d stumbled upon a lost Bellow masterpiece only recently unearthed.” **—Philip Roth** “In the *Letters* , as in everything he wrote, Saul Bellow never dipped below a certain level—and that level is stratospheric.” **—Martin Amis** “ *Saul Bellow: Letters* is a treasure trove. It’s fascinating to see one of our great American writers take form.” **—Nathan Englander** “Magnificent… The man is all here in this book, in his stunning, almost baffling plenitude. Bellow’s letters are one of Bellow’s greatest books. Benjamin Taylor records that it contains only two-fifths of what Bellow called his “epistling,” but its riches are nonetheless immense. Taylor has selected and edited and annotated these letters with exquisite judgment and care. This is an elegantissimo book. Our literature’s debt to Taylor, if our culture still cares, is considerable.” **—Leon Wieseltier, *The New York Times Book Review*** “Full of those wonderful vignettes that pepper his books, comic and perceptive at the same time… There’s so much going on here, such swift and impassioned dialogue between the spiritual and the physical, the place and those who inhabit it, that, as so often in his books, we can only gasp in joyful wonder.” **— *The Wall Street Journal*** “Masterfully edit[ed].” **— *Vanity Fair*** “A hefty, handsome volume… Chatty yet polished, and always vibrant, Bellow’s letters serve as the autobiography he never wrote.” **— *Los Angeles ** Times*** “You must read this. If you’re a lover of prose, someone who knows how to savor the taste of a scrumptious sentence, then you’ll find morsels aplenty to set your eyes rolling to the back of your head in indecent pleasure.” **— *NPR*** “Studded with brilliant passages… Just as Bellow’s novels teem with the turbulence of raw immediate experience burnished by the refiner’s fires of insight, emotion, and style, his letters make clear that his life was the source of that connected fullness.” **— *The New Yorker*** “A window into literary genius.” **— *London ** Review of Books*** “Arresting, seizing the reader by the lapels and refusing to let go… Bellow is a gifted and emotionally voluble letter writer. The Bellow that floats to the surface in this volume is a close spiritual relative of the heroes who populate his fiction: a seeker and searcher who also happens to be a first-class noticer; an intellectual, deep in what he once called “the profundity game,” who is constantly trying to balance the equation between rumination and action, solipsism and distraction, the temptations of selfhood and the noise of the real world.” **—Michiko Kakutani, *The New York Times*** “Bellow’s sheer brio, his occasional feuds and deep friendships, his unquenchable enthusiasm for being human, and his incomparable prose, make this collection of letters an absolute must for anyone who is remotely interested in American literature of the 20th century.” **— *The Financial Times*** “Bellow was an exceptionally astute man. He was also formidably well-read, an intellectual in the deepest sense of the word but also a lover of pleasure in many forms. His collected letters are probably the last book we shall have from him, and… a very good one.” **— *The Washington Post*** “Drollery, mordancy, tenderness, quick-draw portraiture, metaphysical vaudeville, soul talk, heart pains, the whole human mess—Saul Bellow’s letters are a Saul Bellow novel, the author himself the protagonist. A Saul Bellow novel! A gift from the grave, like Humboldt’s. The great voice again, the peerless voice.” **—William Deresiewicz, *The Nation*** “Reveal[s] Bellow’s unfailingly high quality as a correspondent… Scarcely a letter in this volume is without an amusing phrase or arresting insight or interesting formulation.” **— *The New Criterion*** “Feisty, smart, but most of all thrillingly intimate, these letters ripen and mature as they go along, just as some people do.” **— *Chicago ** Tribune*** “These letters are rich in gossip, declarations of love and ambition, praise, criticism, and commiseration; the most touching among them are to the writers for whom he had tender feeling (John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, John Cheever) and those who appealed to him for help (William Kennedy, Wright Morris).” **— *Bookforum*** “So richly characteristic on every page. What makes Bellow rare, possibly unique, among the great writers of the past century was [his] conviction that seeing had a metaphysical warrant, that perception, and the recording of perception, was not a pastime but an “assignment.”” **—Adam Kirsch, *The Times Literary Supplement*** “The letters are all zest and craving and demand—so many journeys, so many cities, so many liaisons, so many courtings, so many marriages and partings, so many spasms of rage, so many victories and downers, so many blue or frenetic melancholias and grievances; but cumulatively they add up to a rich montage of knowing, speckled now and again with laughter, that most metaphysical of emotions.” **—Cynthia Ozick, *The New Republic*** “The virtue of these letters is found in their compassion.” **— *Playboy*** “Ben Taylor’s meticulously edited and annotated volume of Bellow’s letters provides the most intimate glimpse we have yet received of how this voice emerged. Bellow’s language in letters, as in fiction, is stunning. His is an English both earnestly and adoringly cerebral and earthy, drawing on the cadences of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Hyde Park Trotskyism, the high-church intellectualism of the University of Chicago, and the guys and dolls patois of Damon Runyon.” **— *Jewish Review of Books*** “Flecked with remarkable judgments on the people he knew… Bellow’s letters reveal him as a restless, agitated truth-seeker, not unlike many of his characters.” **— *National Post*** “These letters crackle with wit, often wicked and nonetheless satisfying for that.” **— *Commonweal Magazine*** “Wonderful… offers a strong salve to those who miss his familiar voice. Like the fiction, the missives can be brilliant, glistening, scathing, boring, funny, generous, probing and always genuinely human.” **— *Chicago ** Sun-Times*** “A generous sampling of the literary judgments of a great writer, with private assessments of his own work as well as that of others.” **— *The Huffington Post*** “Insightful and engaging… This elegant edition provide[s] new insight into the relationship between Bellow’s life and his art.” **— *The Daily Beast*** “Readers of Bellow will plunge into these letters eager to trace the making of a writer, and in this they will not be disappointed. Who, reading these letters, could not but love him? He was fearsome and kindly, tolerant and unforgiving, committed to his art but dedicated to the world. “I have,” he wrote, “sophisticated skin and naïve bones.” There was no one to match him, nor will be again.” **—John Banville, *The Guardian (U.K.)*** “Why not simply admit it? The new collection of Saul Bellow’s “Letters” is a modern reliquary. It is a treasured remnant of the beloved wonderworker. And who are the followers, the faithful? Bookish cranks, mainly, plus unstoppable line-quoters, Jewish lit fetishists, passionate scholars, and the unclassifiable lovers of living books.” **— *The Forward*** “Taylor’s significant contribution constitutes the eloquent autobiography that Bellow never wrote.” **— *The Jewish Chronicle*** “Thoughtful, eloquent, feisty. Benjamin Taylor has done a superb job in both his selection and his introduction to these salient letters from a gone world when literature was all the rage.” **— *Tablet Magazine*** “Benjamin Taylor’s introduction and frequent brief identifying notes are models of elegant scholarly restraint.” **— *Boston ** Globe*** “He is a great describer, a whiz with metaphor, a humanist, a life-affirmer, a practitioner of philosophical laughter.” **— *The New York Observer*** “[A] cracking new volume… A principal pleasure in this chronological collection is the chronology itself—in the joy of watching a big man of American letters grow into himself, reflexively and reflectively, in the course of composing letters.” **— *The American Scholar*** “A cause for celebration.” **— *New Statesman*** “Wise, honest and often very funny… [This] may be the last of the great literary letter collections. Letters are often wrongly dismissed in the academy as worthless gossip, but the letters of great writers can be windows on to minds and social milieus once v... ( **Praise for *Saul Bellow: Letters*** ) ### Review **Best of 2010 Lists** *The New York Times* , Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten of 2010 *The Washington Post* , John Yardley's Best of 2010 *Minneapolis Star Tribune* "It comes as no surprise to find that the great novelist was a great correspondent as well. I hungrily read the book through in three nights, as though I'd stumbled upon a lost Bellow masterpiece only recently unearthed." ?Philip Roth "In the *Letters* , as in everything he wrote, Saul Bellow never dipped below a certain level?and that level is stratospheric." ?Martin Amis "These aren't dashed-off notes, but letters that required considerable care and meant much to the author, as he expresses affection and support for other writers (Ellison, Roth, Malamud, Cheever, Amis et al.), takes critics and journalists to task with well-formed arguments and offers critical commentary on the culture that provides the context for his work (a culture that no longer values the art of writing letters)." ?_Kirkus Reviews_ "Feisty, smart, but most of all thrillingly intimate, these letters ripen and mature as they go along, just as some people do." ?_Chicago Tribune_ "Benjamin Taylor has done a superb job in both his selection and his introduction to these salient letters from a gone world when literature was all the rage." ?_Tablet Magazine_ "Benjamin Taylor's introduction and frequent brief indentifying notes are models of elegant scholarly restraint." ?_Boston Globe_ "Collected and annotated by Benjamin Taylor, these letters reveal in Saul Bellow a rare consistency: From the first letter in 1932 to the last in 2005, Bellow's ex-wives accrue, his fortunes rise and fall, but his character-as a man generous and preoccupied by literature-remains fixed." ?_Time Out New York_ "Vibrant, witty, and revealing, the collection is truly captivating." -Kiara, Bookseller, Booksmith ### Product Description **A never-before-published collection of letters-an intimate self- portrait as well as the portrait of a century.** Saul Bellow was a dedicated correspondent until a couple of years before his death, and his letters, spanning eight decades, show us a twentieth-century life in all its richness and complexity. Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to Bellow's fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, and Wright Morris. Intimate, ironical, richly observant, and funny, these letters reveal the influcences at work in the man, and illuminate his enduring legacy-the novels that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of the world over. *Saul Bellow: Letters* is a major literary event and an important edition to Bellow's incomparable body of work.

'The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further' Martin AmisA penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through life latching on to a wild succession of occupations, including butler, thief, dog-washer, sailor and salesman. He is a 'born recruit', easily influenced by others who try to mould his destiny. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, can he attempt to break free. A modern day everyman on an odyssey in search of reality and identity, Augie March is the star of star performer in a richly observed human variety show, a modern-day Columbus in search of reality and fulfilment. The Adventures of Augie March includes an introduction by Christopher Hitchens in Penguin Modern Classics.'Funny, poignant, crowded with carnivalesque types and yet narrated by a voice that is lonely and simple, it is Bellow's fat comic masterpiece' Observer

<p>It's sweltering summer in New York City, and Asa Leventhal is alone. His co-workers ignore or condescend to him, his wife is away with her mother, and his estranged brother has run off, abandoning his wife and two sons. One night, Leventhal is confronted by a stranger--'one of those guys who want you to think they can see to the bottom of your soul'--who reveals himself to be a marginal figure from his distant past. Leventhal, accused of ruining the man's life, becomes shocked and dismissive, vehemently denying any part in the man's unhappy lot. But as time passes, he is increasingly unable to separate his own good fortune from the bad luck of this down-and-out stranger, who will not leave him be. A brief, haunting rumination on the vagaries of fate and responsibility, The Victim is, in the words of Norman Rush, Saul Bellow's "purest creation.</p> <p>"</p> <div><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Bellow's second novel charts the descent into paranoia of Asa Leventhal, sub-editor of a trade magazine. With his wife away visiting her mother, Asa is alone, but not for long. His sister-in-law summons him to Staten Island to help with his sick nephew. Other demands mount, and readers witness a man losing control. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p><strong>Saul Bellow</strong> (1915-2005) wrote thirteen novels and numerous novellas and stories in his lifetime. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. <strong>Norman Rush</strong> is the author of the novel <em>Mating</em>, which won the National Book Award, as well as the novel <em>Mortals</em> and the short story collection <em>Whites</em>. </p> </div>

“Bellow’s nonfiction has the same strengths as his stories and novels: a dynamic responsiveness to character, place and time (or era) . . . And you wonder—what other highbrow writer, or indeed lowbrow writer has such a reflexive grasp of the street, the machine, the law courts, the rackets?” —Martin Amis, The New York Times Book ReviewThe year 2015 marks several literary milestones: the centennial of Saul Bellow’s birth, the tenth anniversary of his death, and the publication of Zachary Leader’s much anticipated biography. Bellow, a Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and the only novelist to receive three National Book awards, has long been regarded as one of America’s most cherished authors. Here, Benjamin Taylor, editor of the acclaimed Saul Bellow: Letters, presents lesser-known aspects of the iconic writer. Arranged chronologically, this literary time capsule displays the full extent of Bellow’s nonfiction, including criticism, interviews, speeches, and other reflections, tracing his career from his initial success as a novelist until the end of his life. Bringing together six classic pieces with an abundance of previously uncollected material, There Is Simply Too Much to Think About is a powerful reminder not only of Bellow’s genius but also of his enduring place in the western canon and is sure to be widely reviewed and talked about for years to come.