An authentic intellectual thinker is always an outsider or even an outcast...
Is solitude a cause of eccentricity? Is solitude an effect of eccentricity?

He didn’t feel that Poggioli had done full justice to certain important figures – Rozanov, for instance. Though Rozanov was cracked on certain questions, like the Jewish ritual bath, still he was a great figure, and his erotic mysticism was highly original – highly. Leave it to those Russians. What hadn’t they done for Western Civilization, all the while repudiating the West and ridiculing it!

Like a hermit crab one should find a shell and hiding in it live in estrangement and alienation – an ultimate thinker.

Just a shade after the celebration of Saul Bellow's 100th birthday, I wanted to offer some congratulatory words, particularly singling out the author's novel, Herzog, a book I recently reread, having initially read it the year it was published. In honor of Mr. Bellow's centenary, I did attend a special birthday tribute in his honor, held in the town where he was raised and where many of his novels are set.



Alas, there was a small group of well-wishers on hand & no cake for those who came out on an inclement evening but there was a very nice theatrical overview, performed by a local company & drawn from a few of the author's novels & other works. Beyond that, the author Scott Turow, a lifelong fan of Saul Bellow, spoke at length.

It seems that Bellow's star has fallen, though it never rose all that high, in spite of his acclaim in some literary circles, various awards that included the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift, the National Book Award for Herzog and the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, of all of the author's many novels, only Herzog became a best seller and it is the only Bellow novel I've read twice. It seems most unfortunate that Bellow seems virtually unknown to many readers at this point, even in his hometown.

A reporter casting about for traces of Bellow's Chicago roots in Humboldt Park (vs. Hyde Park, the University of Chicago community where Saul Bellow lived & taught for many years) failed to locate anyone today who had read his novels or even anyone who was familiar with the author. Yes, that old neighborhood has changed but more than that, Saul Bellow seems to speak to a rather specialized audience of readers who are not in search of memorable plot lines, dynamic interactions among characters or much in the way of "action". As Turow put it, Bellow's books are all "about a very intelligent man thinking--essentially speaking to himself".

I think I'd have dealt Herzog five stars if there had been an Internet or a place called Goodreads after my first reading of the book but I have carried the memory of the book with me for countless years & the thought of Moses Herzog never ceases to bring a smile. In brief, I think at 2nd reading that I liked the idea or premise of the novel better than the book itself & have taken away the extra star, something I regret, especially during the observance of Bellow's 100th birthday.



Scott Turow mentioned that even at Stanford, where Turow was in a PhD program at the time, Bellow seemed under-appreciated, with Wallace Stegner (Director of Creative Writing at Stanford) & others dismissively consigning Bellow to the realm of the "Partisan Review crowd", which at that point apparently meant the domain of certain East Coast, Jewish intellectuals.

Moses Herzog is a down-on-his-luck lecturer, holding forth on literature, "half elegant & half slovenly", whose wife, a convert to Catholicism, has left him. He is the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant whose father is said to have gone through 2 dowries in one year while back in St. Petersburg, fleeing to Quebec & failing as a farmer and as a baker.

Herzog seems a kind of "everyman", a fellow in search of his own voice but an "everyman" who filters Kierkegaard & Spinoza and has authored a book on Romanticism & Christianity. Like many of Bellow's characters, Herzog's search for identity is at the core of the novel and Moses Herzog strives to tell himself the story of his own life and to do that, he retreats farther & farther from "reality". It is said that he is both afloat & shipwrecked and though he has been behaving oddly, he feels "confident, cheerful, clairvoyant & strong".

Herzog, who has fallen under a spell, was writing letters to everyone under the sun. He was so stirred by these letters that from the end of June he moved from place to place with a valise of papers. He had carried this valise from New York to Martha's Vineyard but two days later flew to Chicago & from Chicago he went to a village in western Massachusetts.

Hidden in the country, he wrote endlessly, fanatically, to the newspapers, to the people in public life, to friends & relatives and at last to the dead, to his own obscure dead and finally to the famous dead.

I can easily picture a character like Moses Herzog, walking down the street & mumbling to himself (definitely not on a cellphone), seen as meshuggah, (mentally unbalanced) by passers-by, or lost among the stacks at some library, unshaven, scruffy & even disheveled, talking to himself but if one approaches closer (but not too close), perhaps having a dialogue with one of the characters in the book he seems to be focusing on at the moment or maybe with imagined voices from within the stack of books he has assembled all around him. But here is a further description of Bellow's Herzog at Penn Station:

In his long brown coat, tight at the shoulders & misshapen by the books stuffed into the pockets (Pratt's Short History of the Civil War + several volumes of Kierkegaard), he walked the underground tunnel of shops--flowers, cutlery, whiskey, doughnuts & grilled sausages, the waxy chill of orangeade. Laboriously, he climbed into the light-filled vault of the station, the great windows dustily dividing the autumn sun--the stoop-shouldered sun of the garment district.

The mirror of the gum machine revealed to Herzog how pale he was, unhealthy--wisps from his coat & wool scarf, his hat & brows, twisting & flaming outward in the overfull light and exposing the sphere of his face, the man who was keeping up a front. Herzog smiled at this earlier avatar of his life, at Herzog the victim, Herzog the would-be lover, Herzog the man on whom the world depended for certain intellectual work, to change history, to influence the development of civilization.

Several boxes of stale paper under his bed were going to produce this very significant result. Herzog holding his unpunched ticket marched down to the train. His shoelaces were dragging. Ghosts of an old physical pride were still about him. On the lower level, the cars were waiting. Was he coming or going? He did not know.

Herzog may have been a bestseller at the bookshops but the novel was greeted with hostility by many critics, Alfred Kazin, Richard Gilman & Christopher Lehmann-Haupt among them, though John Updike seemed to favor it. In spite of certain critics, Saul Bellow was an intellectual's intellectual, a dapper, often-married literary icon in his day but also someone who managed to embrace the thoughts & speech patterns of some rather down-to-earth, quirky but for me memorable folks, characters like Moses Herzog & Augie March & Eugene Henderson, the "Rain King".

And while only 600+ readers at this site have contributed reviews for the best-selling novel of a fairly recent American Nobel laureate, I would like to raise a glass to Bellow on the occasion of his centennial year.



Beyond the Saul Bellow novel, there is a certain uncanny similarity to sitting at a keyboard crafting book reviews that no one may ever read and the letters of a fictional Moses Herzog.

*Within my review, images 1 & 3 are of the author, Saul Bellow, while #2 features fellow writer Scott Turow, a lifelong fan of Bellow's work, holding 3 books that changed his life, Herzog among them.

This is without a doubt my favorite book by Saul Bellow. I am not sure it will speak to everybody, but it certainly spoke to ne. It captures the world of an educated, liberal, East Coast professor. He goes by the name of Moses E. Herzog, and yes, he is from a Jewish family. He is having a midlife crisis, has just gone through a second divorce and is looking back on his life. He is writing letters to friends, relatives and public figures, some dead and some alive. But these letters are NOT sent and the further one goes the less do they even resemble letters! What he is doing is reminiscing, sizing up his life, determining in what direction he will go next. The year is 1964.

I liked this book as much as I did because the East Coast of the 1950s and 1960s is familiar to me. Psychiatry, Martin Buber, and talk and opinions and talk and opinions about all that is happening around one feels natural to me. Everyone has a view on everything and one’s views must be expressed. What is described is the world of my parents and my own youth. Herzog spends time in New York City, Massachusetts, Montreal, Martha’s Vineyard and Chicago too. What was in the news, what people were talking about, how people dealt with life then is all here.

I liked the progression of the novel—where it starts and where it ends. Herzog’s next step is not spelled out clearly, but in my view, this is clear. As Herzog looks back we share with him his disappointments and misgivings He sees failures both in himself and in others, but who doesn’t?! What we are seeing is life as it really is. At the end, I see hope, at least a willingness to try anew. This was perfect for me. For me, this is how life really is.

The audiobook is narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner. He captures wonderfully the type of people the book is about. I have given the narration four stars.

I recommend this book to those who breathe NYC, who feel comfortable with American East Coast mannerisms, are of the liberal, academic bent, have Jewish connections and grew up in the 1940s, 50s or 60s. I think you will love it and feel a kinship with it.

Ако трябва да опиша книгата с една дума, тя би била "сърбеж". Сол Белоу ми предаде трескавите усещания на главния герой. Ту мразих книгата, ту я разлиствах с нетърпение, ту ме вбесяваха героите, ту им съчувствах. Страниците сякаш се въртят и те връщат пак и пак във въпросителната позиция. А май че не само в рамките на фикцията е така? Не мислите ли? Ще запомня тази книга.

No conocía nada del Premio Nobel de Literatura 1976 Saul Bellow y debo decir que me cautivó su estilo con esta novela llamada Herzog. La temática: un intelectual judío profesor de literatura que pasa por una crisis aguda en su vida.

La novela se desarrolla entre dos grandes ciudades norteamericanas Chicago y Nueva York y digamos que a principios de los años 60. Estos temas me atrapan de inmediato: crisis existenciales, escritores, músicos, esgrima filosófica, luchas internas, etc. Pues bien, mis expectativas se vieron superadas. El personaje y la temática son tratados con inteligencia y estilo: sensibilidad y filosofía.

Moses Herzog, el protagonista, un escritor que cobra conciencia del mundo en que vive, con todas sus penurias, injusticias, decepciones y a veces la siniestra mano del destino que nos envuelve convulsamente. A pesar de todo, él está dispuesto a seguir viviendo en este mundo pero su espíritu se agita y aletea con furia para sobrevivir a la falta de “oxígeno” que le es vital para su sobrevivencia interior.

Un libro memorable de donde extraigo una frase, entre muchas que me impresionaron: “..ser libre, conocer la verdad, amarse a uno mismo, consumar la existencia y enfrentarse a la muerte con una conciencia clara…” Esta es sólo uno de un sinnúmero de pensamientos que, como decía, hacen reflexionar y cimbran el interior de nosotros.

Moses Herzog, héroe solitario, espiritual e invisible en el convulso y deshumanizado mundo del siglo XX. Moses busca, se refugia en sí mismo a veces, como una fiera enjaulada y amenazada por el mundo exterior, describe con acritud el mundo, le duele la humanidad. El y la muerte se acechan alternadamente.

La característica distintiva de este personaje es que sus crisis lo impulsan a escribir cartas, muchas cartas dirigidas a todos los personajes imaginables; les reclama, manotea, vocifera pero no claudica nunca en su feroz combate interior. Toca temas profundos, filosóficos que a veces cuesta trabajo entenderlos de primera instancia.

Herzog recurre constantemente a lo que subyace en el interior de la vida humana, trata de llevarnos a ver los recovecos de nuestra alma, un poco en el sentido de Nietzsche plasmado en su famosa frase “tienes que llegar a ser quien eres”, esto él lo expresa entre sombras diciendo tener una deuda con los que le dieron los poderes humanos: “¡Donde esa vida humana que es mi única excusa para sobrevivir!”

Por otra parte y en cuanto a su forma de escribir es ameno y al mismo tiempo profundo, su manejo del relato es asombroso ya que nos lleva en el tiempo no solamente de manera lineal, avanzando progresivamente en el tiempo, sino también retrocede en el relato para luego hacerlo avanzar a su entera voluntad llevándonos sin dificultad al pasado, al presente y al futuro.

También aborda cuestiones del mundo material que ya estaban plenamente identificadas y en desarrollo por los años 60s del siglo XX que han afectado profundamente nuestra concepción del mundo y que para las nuevas generaciones es lo normal, lo que debe ser, puesto que es lo que conocen: “…hoy el objetivo nacional tiene que ver con la fabricación de mercancías que no son esenciales para la vida humana.”

El gran Moses Herzog considera la vida humana como muy compleja y trágica y piensa que cuando hayamos asimilado mejor la muerte podremos vivir de otra manera y exhibiremos una expresión distinta. Los seres humanos somos muy complejos por lo que las relaciones lo son doblemente: “… en esas remotas estrellas la materia está embarcada en un proceso que creará todavía seres más extraños...”

Su pensamiento lo lleva a otras partes del Universo. Saul Bellow es un erudito, conocedor de muchos temas científicos, mundanos, filosóficos, artísticos y me ha dado horas esplendorosas de lectura, de bienestar, de calma y de paz.

Moses es un corazón ingenuo, a veces tambaleante, sin astucia alguna y necesitado de protección, también es sumiso e inseguro y piensa que la fraternidad es lo que hace humano a un hombre.

Es un placer atragantarse con el pensamiento de Bellow.

En suma un libro fraternal y lleno de alimento para nuestro interior.

زندگی اش ، آن طور که در اصطلاح می گویند ، تباه شده بود . ولی چون زندگی اش از اول هم چیزی نبود ، پس چندان هم جای تاسف نداشت

Филип Рот на стероиди. Дори малко по-добър. Ще чета още от Сол Белоу. Много ми хареса.

Ο Χέρτσογκ είναι εβραίος, στο δεύτερο διαζύγιό του και με μια εκπληκτική "ικανότητα" να δυναμιτίζει ο ίδιος της ζωή του. Ένας απίιθανος χαρακτήρας, χαμένος στον κόσμο και τον εαυτό του, που γράφει γράμματα (μεταξύ άλλων και σε διάσημους, ενίοτε ήδη πεθαμένους) τα οποία δε στέλνει ποτέ.

Λειτουργικά... δυσλειτουργικός, δέχεται τα δυσάρεστα συμβάντα της ζωής με... στωική αγανάκτηση, μετράει τις πληγές του και συνεχίζει, καθώς οι εμπειρίες του του δημιουργούν ατέρμονους βρόχους σκέψης και σολιψιστικής έκφρασης (εκεί που ο μέσος άνθρωπος θα έριχνε καντήλια, ο Χέρτσογκ σκέφτεται ένα γράμμα προς τον Νίτσε).

Σίγουρα υπάρχουν στιγμές μέσα στο βιβλίο που θέλεις να του ρίξεις μια κλωτσιά, ένα χαστούκι, κρύο νερό στο πρόσωπο για να ξεκολλήσει, αλλά αυτό δεν αναιρεί το πικρό χιούμορ του συγγραφέα και τη σπιρτάδα με την οποία έχει στηθεί ο χαρακτήρας. Ένας διανοούμενος που του λείπουν οι πρακτικές δεξιότητες για να σταθεί σε έναν κόσμο που αλλάζει, προκαλώντας ο ίδιος στον εαυτό του πολύ περισσότερα προβλήματα και δυσκολίες απ' όσα του προκαλούν οι άλλοι, σε σημείο μαζοχισμού. Ο αναγνώστης κάποια στιγμή πείθεται ότι στον Χέρτσογκ ΑΡΕΣΕΙ να υποφέρει, του δίνει υπόσταση. Ωστόσο, η τάση του αυτή κρύβεται πίσω από ένα προσωπείο ηθικής, ο Χέρτσογκ έχει απαρασάλευτες αρχές και θέσεις, είναι αυστηρός κριτής των πάντων (και ίσως αυστηρότερος ακόμα με τον εαυτό του κάποιες φορές, αναγνωρίζει την υπαιτιότητά του στις γαμήλιες αποτυχίες του, βλέπει τον εαυτό σαν έναν όχι καλό πατέρα για τα παιδιά του, αλλά δεν παύει να εκφράζει και σοβινιστικές απόψεις εκτός του κλίματος της εποχής του.

Ο Χέρτσογκ (θεωρώ) είναι μια καρικατούρα του μοντέρνου άντρα της εποχής του, έχοντας χάσει τον παραδοσιακό του ρόλο και χωρίς να έχει βρει τα καινούργια του πατήματα. και παρά τις παραδοχές του και τις συνειδητοποιήσεις του, η βασική του αντίσταση στην "κάθοδο" είναι η μάλλον αναποτελεσματική συγγραφή επιστολών που γράφει σε πλήθος αχέτως μεταξύ τους παραληπτών, όσο συνεχίζει να είναι ο βασικός υπεύθυνος των δεινών του, όσο συνεχίζει με ατελέσφορες φιλοσοφικές αναζητήσεις να βρει ένα νόημα που πάντα θα του ξεγλιστρά.

Η εξαιρετική πρόζα και το μεγαλοφυές στήσιμο της περσόνας του Χέρτσογκ θα άξιζαν ίσως 5 αστεράκια, αν μερικές φορές το βιβλίο δεν "αγκομαχούσε" (και μαζί ο αναγνώστης), σαν οδοντωτός σιδηρόδρομος σε απότομη ανηφόρα.

n  "Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?"n

What is the world for the intellectual? The playground of his ideas or the hell of his emotions? For Moses Hezog, a forty-seven-year old former Professor in a mid-life crisis it is certainly both. Recently gone through a messy divorce and the tragi-comedy of a marital triangle, the hero looks for the cathartic liberation from this emotional ballast in two ways: by writing letters to acquaintances and strangers, to the living and the dead, and by remembering the past. The result? A very exquisite mixture of epistolary and psychological novel intertwined with cleverly hidden intertextual dialogues, in a perfect narrative structure and a memorable collection of characters. A masterpiece signed Saul Bellow.

The novel follows Herzog’s quest to make sense of the world either following Tolstoy’s belief – that freedom is personal and indifferent to historical limitations, or Hegel’s conception – that freedom begins with the knowledge of death, knowledge fed by history and memory.

Therefore, the letters are not necessarily a way of communication (he never sends nor finishes them) they are a way of self understanding, Tolstoyan way: “I go after reality with language.” Thus, he keeps arguing with Spinoza whether the desire to exist is enough to lead to happiness, he feels like rejecting Nietzsche’s view of any present moment as a crisis, a fall from classical greatness on the principle that he had a Christian view of the history despite his accusation that Jesus Christ enslaved the world with his morality, and finally he finds a new interpretation of Kirkegaard’s belief that knowledge can be acquired only through hell by seeing suffering as a personal choice; not by playing at crisis, alienation, apocalypse and desperation, but as an antidote to illusion:

…people of powerful imagination, given to dreaming deeply and to raising up marvelous and self-sufficient fictions, turn to suffering sometimes to cut into their bliss, as people pinch themselves to feel awake.

Together with Samuel Johnson, Herzog discovers that suffering can acquire an almost hedonistic quality:

Grief, Sir, is a species of idleness.

If the letters are the intellectual dialogues with the world, memories are the emotional ones. Through personal history, this time in a Hegelian way, Herzog rebuilds his own image, since: “I am Herzog. I have to be that man. There is no one else to do it.” On these grounds he recalls all his “reality instructors”: his parents who taught him to love and to lose the loved one, his women who taught him that “not thinking is not necessarily fatal”, that is he can divorce intellect from emotion unpunished, his friends who taught him that generosity comes sometimes with an unbearable price tag. Two memorable Dostoyevskian figures emerge in all their contradictory splendour from this recollection: his second wife, Madeleine, who, according to Herzog, tried to steal his place in the world and his rival and former best friend Valentine Gersbach, who tried to become him, emulating his opinions and gestures. The only form of the self preservation, Herzog discovers, is detachment, so the final lesson the hero is gradually taught is the acceptance of death, be it physical or emotional:

And you, Gersbach, you’re welcome to Madeleine.
Enjoy her – rejoice in her. You will not reach me through her, however. I know you sought me in her flesh. But I am no longer there.

However. However. Which is the door to freedom – intellectual or emotional? Tolstoy or Hegel? For it is sure you cannot go through both at the same time, since they are rather opposite. Herzog clams up in the end, refusing either word or feeling, or simply refusing to tell. It‘s up to us to open whichever door we seem fit – for him and for ourselves, in a dignified answer to the mocking question of Longfellow’s dog at Kew: “Pray tell me, Sir, whose dog are you?”

Prije nekoliko godina – u vrijeme dok sam kupovao svakakve knjige – nabasao sam na ultrajeftina odabrana djela Sola Beloua i kupio ih na blef, ne znajući uopšte o kakvom autoru je riječ. Druženje sa ovim piscem započeh, a možda i završih njegovim najpoznatijim romanom, za koji je čak dobio i Nobelovu nagradu 1976. godine. U pitanju je roman o tipičnom intelektualnom produktu zapadne civilizacije na izdisaju, čovjeku koji pišući bilješke pokušava da otkrije uzrok dubokog ličnog nezadovoljstva, što mu, bar na početku romana, ne polazi za rukom. Zdrav je, relativno inteligentan, ne ide mu doduše baš sve od ruke ni kada su porodične ni poslovne prilike u pitanju, ali daleko od toga da postoji nešto toliko strašno u njegovom životu da bi njegova muka mogla tome da se pripiše. U principu sve ovo uopšte ne djeluje nezanimljivo kada se ovako interpretira, ali je knjiga za moj čitalački ukus u tolikoj mjeri zamorna, koliko u narativnom toliko i u stilskom pogledu, da sam vrlo brzo morao odustati. Jedina dobra stvar koju sam izvukao iz tih pedesetak pročitanih stranica jeste obogaćivanje mog rječnika neprevodivih riječi jednim simpatičnim pojmom iz jidiša – u pitanju je trepverter (riječi sa stepenica – umjesni odgovori koji prekasno padaju na um, kada bi čovjek već silazio sa stepenica).

sintomo/commento 1:
l'opera struggente di un formidabile genio
il genio struggente di una formidabile opera
l'opera geniale di un trascinatore formidabile
la struggente opera di un genio errante
l'ebreo errante è uno genio all'opera

sintomo/commento 2:
caro moses, ti scrivo questa lettera con molto ritardo. qualcuno avrebbe dovuto avvisarmi. sia di quello che mi perdevo, sia dei suoi effetti compulsivi a catena. spero tanto che per la sindrome non esista una cura. ricordami di ringraziare il signor dave eggers per i mattoncini lego del commento precedente. e di dissentire la prossima volta che sentirò definire questo tuo, un romanzo epistolare. le ultime lettere di moses e. herzog, tsk.
una rapita lorin b.

ps: credo tu abbia qualche responsabilità nella freddezza con cui un anno dopo la tua uscita venne accolto stoner di john williams. occupavi ancora troppo la scena, mi sa. ma ti perdono perché di stoner sei stato amico, ne sono certa.

I can't imagine what it would have been like to have read this when it first was published. The power, the storm, the frenzy of Bellow's words is amazing. It is almost impossible to compare him to another writer. I don't mean to say that he is a better writer than others. It is just hard to group or contain him. He isn't bounded by boundaries. Sure, he is a madman, but there are no institutions built to contain him.