Saul Bellow, Herzog

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 1964

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

While Henderson the Rain King (1959) begins to focus Bellow’s intellectual quarrel with modernism and the social sciences, Herzog (1964) extends the critique to the entire modern philosophical tradition. Herzog is a massive intellectual accomplishment that has repeatedly been likened to Joyce’s Ulysses. It remains Bellow’s acknowledged masterwork and was on the New York Times best-seller list for the entire year. The plot of the novel is slender. Herzog leaves his home and marriage, fails in the classroom, abandons his academic project, and undertakes a massive spiritual and intellectual housekeeping via the production of dozens of letters to God, the long dead, the recently dead, and the …

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664 words

Citation: Cronin, Gloria. "Herzog". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 November 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4768, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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