Saul Bellow, The Actual

Gloria Cronin (Brigham Young University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1997

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

The Actual (1997) is a novella which tells the familiar Bellow story of an old adolescent love resumed. The worldly and clever Harry Trellman, a grand noticer of things and an ambassador of the arts, is invited to “notice” on behalf of another grand old noticer, Sigmund Adletsky. Adeltsky welcomes Harry’s intellectual gossip because, though he is rich beyond imagining, Adletsky is now, like Napoleon on St Helena, socially exiled and bored. Harry will be his intellectual informer, while Adletsky for his part will discern the nature of Harry’s great unrequited adolescent love, Amy Wustrin, and finally bring the two together. Here is one of the most familiar of Bellow’s themes, the true human failure to recognize the …

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298 words

Citation: Cronin, Gloria. "The Actual". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 October 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13837, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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