[Essay] [Assignment #7] [Selected Bibliography]

SAUL BELLOW (1915- )

ASSIGNMENT #7: Read:  Herzog.

1. In a famous autobiographical narrative, The Education of Henry Adams, the author called his life an education in failure. Is such an observation true of Moses Herzog?
2. Herzog's "reality instructors" are invariably women. Note the curious movement and progress from Daisy (order, stability, symmetry) to Sono (subserviency, sensuality)to Madeleine (mercurial, unpredictable) to Ramona (the Earth goddess). Herzog appears to drift from adhesion to intellect to emotions to Success, American style. Where do we find him at the end of his journey? Is the garden significant?*
3. What lies behind Herzog's incessant "letter writing"? Why does Bellow have his hero transcend time and space by composing letters to long dead philosophers, relatives, writers and friends?*
4. Herzog appears to be oppressed by too much information; that is, he can't cope with personal data, national and international news reports, current discoveries in science and technology, the cultural explosion of the sixties. What is Bellow saying about breakdown and integration? Explain this quotation from the text: "What this country needs is a good five-cent synthesis."*
5. Herzog travels to Chicago with the express purpose of committing a murder. What prevents him:  absurdity? man's existentialist plight? inertia? lethargy? love? none of the preceding?*
6. Look up "entropy."  (Thomas Pynchon has a story by this title in his collection, Slow Learner, which might clarify the meaning for you.) It's a term from quantum physics and relates to the measure of randomness or disorder in a system.  Relate this concept to Herzog's plight and his quest.*
7. Moses Herzog has been called an "anti-hero." What do you suppose this means?
8. Herzog is alternately aggressive and immobile. How is he unaware of himself?
9. In what ways is Moses Herzog Everyman? Twice Herzog asserts, "If I am out of mind, it's all right with me." Does this mirror in any way the human condition?*

• Bach, Gerhard, ed.  The Critical Response to Saul Bellow. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995.  Gathering early reviews and scholarly-critical essays from the late 1940s into the 1990s, the volume covers Bellow’s entire career.


• Bloom, Harold, ed.  Saul Bellow's Herzog.  New York: Chelsea, 1988.  Handy casebook.


• Cronin, Gloria L., and L. H. Goldman, eds.  Saul Bellow in the 1980s: A Collection of Critical Essays.  East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 1989.  Another handy casebook.


• Dutton, Robert R.  Saul Bellow.  New York:  Twayne, 1971.  Sound introduction.


• Galloway, David.  "Mr. Sammler’s Planet:  Bellow’s Failure of Nerve." Modern Fiction Studies (Spring 1973): 17-28.


• ---. The Absurd Hero in American Fiction:  Updike, Styron, Bellow, Salinger.  2nd rev. ed.  Austin:  U of Texas P, 1981.  Traces a theme significant for Bellow and other Laureates.


• Hyland, Peter. Saul Bellow.  New York:  St. Martin's, 1992.  Very brief, very basic.


• Malin, Irving.  Saul Bellow’s Fiction.  Carbondale:  Southern Illinois UP, 1969.  Good analysis of Bellow’s literary strategies, emphasizing the "Jewish irony" in his works.


• McCadden, Joseph F.  The Flight from Women in the Fiction of Saul Bellow. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1980.  Title reveals this study’s theme more than clearly.


• Rodrigues, Eusebio L.  Quest for the Human: An Exploration of Saul Bellow's Fiction. Lewisburg:  Bucknell UP, 1982.


• Wilson, Jonathan.  Herzog:  The Limits of Ideas.  Boston:  Twayne, 1990.  A sound volume in the sound Twayne Masterwork series.

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