Tell Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize-Winning Jewish Novelist, He’s Going to the Great Canon in the Sky
By Lindsay notes that Saul Bellow, who many smart people consider the greatest American novelist of the past century (and who was born in Lachine, a suburb of my beloved Montreal), has passed away.
The superb critic Terry Teachout has comments that are interesting, in that they probably reflect the general position of most of my literature-inclined contemporaries with respect to Bellow:
I just got an urgent e-mail from an editor informing me that Saul Bellow died earlier today and asking if I wanted to write an appreciation. I said no, not merely because I’M TAKING WEDNESDAY OFF!! but because Bellow never really interested me, not as a writer and not as a man. I didnt find him at all sympathetic, yet he didnt irritate me enough to cause the accretion of a strong negative opinion. He simply wasnt on my screen (except when he took a shot at me in the New York Times, but that’s another story).
Might it have been a generational thing? Among the New York intellectuals, Bellow was a fixed star, a literary giant about whom you had to have an opinion, be it good or bad. I dont think thats true today, and I wonder how well his work will be remembered ten years from now, or even five. My guessand its nothing more than thatis that hell be seen as a period piece. That doesnt exactly add up to an appreciation, does it?
To some extent, I see what he means. Augie March and Herzog are very impressive achievements, but I admit that my admiration for them is quite cold; I certainly have never been compelled to return to them the way I have (to pick a couple random examples) As I Lay Dying or Invisible Man or Catch-22. Part of that, undoubtedly, is a question of sensibility. But that doesn’t explain all of it; Bellow’s misogyny can be annoying, but if pressed to name the greatest living American novelist I would probably cite Phillip Roth, so that can’t explain all that much. (Ditto goes for his personal life; I’m willing to take James Atlas’s word about his failings, but I don’t care.) For whatever ineffable reason, his landmark achievements have never meant much to me.
Having said that, I do have a higher estimation of him than Teachout, based on some of his more modest works. Seize the Day, I have gone back to several times after it bowled me over as an undergraduate, and it still seems like a peak of American literature to me. And while it would be crazy to say that it ranks with his best work in any objective sense, I also very much enjoyed Ravelstein, his roman a clef about Allan Bloom. Part of this is my idiosyncratic interest in the Straussian subculture, but I prefer Bellow when he’s less self-conscious; the fact that Ravelstein isn’t striving to be a masterpiece works in its favor. And while he evaluates Bloom’s work and influence very differently than I would, in literature that’s not really the point; his affection gives us more insight than someone with a polemical axe to grind would, even if I would be in far more intellectual sympathy than the latter.
At any rate, he was an important artist who influenced many great writers, and I’m sure we will see many tributes from his staunchest admirers over the next week. RIP.