Bellow's Herzog

About Herzog

Saul Bellow (1915–2005), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 and the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift in 1976, was the dominant figure in American fiction for three decades and the model for what the serious American intellectual novel could achieve. Herzog (1964) — his most personal work, drawing on his divorce from his second wife — spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and established him as the major American writer of his generation. The Adventures of Augie March (1953), his exuberant National Book Award-winning breakthrough, gave American Jewish fiction a new confidence; Henderson the Rain King (1959) was his funniest novel; Seize the Day (1956) was his most concentrated. Humboldt's Gift (1975) mediated between his early exuberance and his late seriousness. Philip Roth, who called him 'the greatest American writer of the twentieth century,' defined himself in part against and in part through Bellow's achievement.