Saul Bellow Brief Biography

American Writer Known for The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog

Jun 10, 2008
Tel Asiado

Saul Bellow, American Novelist and Teacher - NNDB

Brief biography of American novelist and teacher Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1976. Popular novels include Herzog and Humboldt's Gift.

Saul Bellow, American writer and teacher, is considered one of America's finest writers. His best known works include The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Humboldt's Gift.

Early Life of Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915, the son of immigrant Russian Jews from St. Petersburg. Bellow's father was a businessman, who was not always successful. The young Bellow spent his childhood in Montreal, and in 1924, when he was nine, his father moved the family to the United States, in Chicago.

Bellow, who spoke English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish, grew up, went to school and attended university in Chicago, and later, in Evanston, Illinois. His earlier influences were the Bible and the books by Shakespeare.

Bellow's Career as Writer and Teacher

Saul Bellow was greatly influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece, Uncle Tom's Cabin. After graduating at the age of 21, he decided to become a writer, and abandoned his post-graduate studies at Wisconsin University. By this time Bellow had married and needed to earn money. He began working as a teacher and helped compile the literature section of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as writing novels.

During World War II, Bellow joined the merchant marine. He used this experience as the basis for his first novel, Dangling Man, published when Bellow was 29. It is about the thoughts and feelings of a man waiting to be drafted into the army. After the war Bellow returned to his life of teaching and writing. He became an American citizen in 1941.

Bellow's Writing Theme and Criticism

Bellow often writes about people who feel that they do not belong in the world they live in, who feel that they are outsiders and do not fit in to the present environment full of absurdity and chaos, as opposed to the intellectually and emotionally nourishing past. For this he has been criticized by his detractors as conventional still clinging to the European novels of the 19th century. Many of his stories are both sad and funny at the same time. Typical of this is his novel Humboldt's Gift, a comic book about death that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Awards and Distinctions of Bellow

Bellow won many awards for his work, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1998. He became an associate professor at Minnesota University, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 1948, after which he travelled to Europe, in Paris and Rome.

He died at the age of 89, in Massachusetts, USA, on April 5, 2005.