Lee Trepanier

Gloria L. Cronin

Saul Bellow is one of the twentieth century's most influential, respected, and honored writers. His novels The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet won the National Book Award, and Humboldt's Gift was awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In addition, his plays garnered popular and critical acclaim, and some were produced on Broadway. Known for his insights into life in a post-Holocaust world, Bellow's explorations of modernity, Jewish identity, and the relationship between art and society have resonated with his readers, but because his writing is not overtly political, his politics have largely been ignored. A Political Companion to Saul Bellow examines the author's novels, essays, short stories, and letters in order to illuminate his evolution from liberal to neoconservative. It investigates Bellow's exploration of the United States as a democratic system, the religious and ideological influences on his work, and his views on race relations, religious identity, and multiculturalism in the academy. Featuring a fascinating conclusion that draws from interviews with Bellow's sons, this accessible companion is an excellent resource for understanding the political thought of one of America's most acclaimed writers.

A Political Companion to Saul Bellow

The world of Saul Bellow is peopled largely by men - often intellectuals - who manifest Bellow's unique conception of American masculinity. This work analyzes Bellow's oeuvre from a feminist perspective. It incorporates the insights of French feminist theory on Western male philosophers.

In Search of the Feminine in the Novels of Saul Bellow

A Room of His Own

Alan L. Berger

Deepens and enriches our understanding of the Jewish literary tradition and the implications of the Shoah. Challenging the notion that Jewish American and Holocaust literature have exhausted their limits, this volume reexamines these closely linked traditions in light of recent postmodern theory. Composed against the tumultuous background of great cultural transition and unprecedented state-sponsored systematic murder, Jewish American and Holocaust literature both address the concerns of postmodern human existence in extremis. In addition to exploring how various mythic and literary themes are deconstructed in the lurid light of Auschwitz, this book provides critical reassessments of Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth, as well as contemporary Jewish American writers who are extending this vibrant tradition into the new millennium. These essays deepen and enrich our understanding of the Jewish literary tradition and the implications of the Shoah. Alan L. Berger is the Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies and directs the Holocaust and Judaic Studies program and the Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz at Florida Atlantic University. His previous books include Children of Job: American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust, also published by SUNY Press, and the Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature (coedited with David Patterson and Sarita Cargas). Gloria L. Cronin is Professor of English at Brigham Young University and has written and edited numerous books, including A Room of His Own: In Search of the Feminine in the Novels of Saul Bellow.

Gloria L. Cronin

Books

Your next favorite book is out there