Saul Bellow, 1915-2005

Saul Bellow, the "great American novelist of the 20th century" (David Kipen, SF Chronicle), died yesterday at the age of 89. The NYT obituary offers a full mix of biography and literary appreciation, observing: "His success came neither too early nor too late, and he took it more or less in stride. He never ran out of ideas and he never stopped writing." And as Jonathan Yardley adds, "The void left in the American literary landscape by the death yesterday of Saul Bellow is too large to map or describe."

As is to be expected, the Chicago papers, Tribune and Sun-Times, offer tributes of their own, though the latter dwells a bit overmuch on the hoopla over Ravelstein. It's a sign of Bellow's accomplishment that he was the second living writer (after Welty) to be honored with inclusion in the Library of America; Nicole Krauss reviewed the omnibus edition of his first three novels for The Forward in 2003. (The collection was edited by James Wood, who profiled Bellow a few years earliers, right around the time he was reviewing the biography by James Atlas.)

Some of these links came from The Elegant Variation, which has lots more. Nextbook has some Bellow essays, too.

photo: Jared Leeds/NYT