Table of Contents

Chronology; Introduction. Saul Bellow in his times Victoria Aarons; 1. Bellow's early fiction and the making of the Bellovian protagonist Philippe Codde; 2. Seize the Day: Bellow's novel of existential crisis Hilene Flanzbaum; 3. Bellow's breakthrough: The Adventures of Augie March and the novel of voice Steven G. Kellman; 4. Bellow's cityscapes: Chicago and New York Gustavo Sánchez Canales; 5. Bellow and the Holocaust Victoria Aarons; 6. Humboldt's Gift and Bellow's intellectual protagonists S. Lillian Kremer; 7. On being a Jewish writer: Bellow's post-war America and the American Jewish diaspora Alan L. Berger; 8. Bellow and his literary contemporaries Timothy Parrish; 9. Women and gender in Bellow's fiction: Herzog Paule Lévy; 10. Race and cultural politics in Bellow's fiction Martin Urdiales-Shaw; 11. Bellow on Israel: to Jerusalem and back Leona Toker; 12. Bellow's nonfiction: it all adds up Sukhbir Singh; 13. Bellow's short fiction David Brauner; 14. The late Bellow: Ravelstein and the novel of ideas Leah Garrett; Guide to further reading; Index.

Promotional Information

This book demonstrates the complexity of Bellow's work by emphasizing the ways in which it reflects the changing conditions of American identity.

About the Author

Victoria Aarons is the O. R. and Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature at Trinity University, Texas. She is the author of A Measure of Memory (1996) and What Happened to Abraham (2005), both recipients of the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book; and the co-editor of The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (2014), and Bernard Malamud: A Centennial Tribute (2016). She is co-author of Third-Generation Holocaust Representation: Trauma, History, and Memory and editor of Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction, both published in 2016. Aarons has published over seventy scholarly articles and is on the editorial board of Philip Roth Studies, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Women in Judaism, and Verbeia, Journal of English and Spanish Studies. She serves as a judge for the Edward Lewis Wallant Award.

Reviews

'A wonderful characteristic of this volume is that one can often 'hear' Bellow himself in dialogue with his critics and readers.' CHOICE