Saul Bellow - high-minded joker?

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<Read a couple of Bellow’s before he died, with mixed results.  All the obits and articles published since his death have sparked my interest again. What’s the consensus on the p-list re. Bellow>>

Don't know what the consensus is, but Bellow's a great great writer.  Very smart and erudite, a creator of astonishing sentences.

I don't know that there's a bad novel.  Humboldt's Gift is as good as reported, but also Mr. Sammler's Planet, Herzog, Some Die of Heartbreak, Augie March.  His second novel, The Victim,is also very good, but, at Bellow's admission, written before he'd found his voice.  Still, worth reading.  The two small ones--Seize the Day and Ravelstein are both wonderful.  The last, which was misread by many critics as nonfiction in disguise, is, I think, a little gem, written when Bellow was in his eighties.

Him With His Foot in His Mouth, which is a story collection, is also very fine.

And two novellas:  A Theft and The Bellarossa Connection; easy  ways to take a measure.