Collected Stories

Nobel Prize-winner Saul Bellow has deservedly been celebrated as one of America's greatest living writers. For more than sixty years he has stretched our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with his exhilarating perceptions of life. Now collected for the first time in one volume and chosen by the author himself are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?," "Leaving the Yellow House," and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence." With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. This is a volume to treasure for longtime Bellow fans, and an excellent introduction for new readers.

Editorial Reviews

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Seattle Times

This is realism at its best, achieved by a master stylist and storyteller.

Book Magazine

With selections ranging from 1968's oft-anthologized "Mosby's Memoirs" to the luminous 1989 novella "The Bellarosa Connection," this indispensable collection confirms the 1976 Nobel Prize winner's status as perhaps America's greatest living writer. Fans who know mainly his novels—the epic The Adventures of Augie March, the grandly hilarious Henderson the Rain King or any of their eleven counterparts—will find the same vigor and imagination in this book. The nightmares of history and the Holocaust, the vagaries of romance and human aspiration, the bluster of vintage Chicago and the inspired reportage on American Jewish life are all here, along with Bellow's signature gift: heart-stopping attention paid to what he calls the "knowledge of the hidden work of uneventful days." A nice bonus is Janis Bellow's preface, a snapshot of her husband at work. Lauding his "Stendhalian brio—laughter,whimsy, lightness of touch," she details his creative process, marveling, asany reader will, at what he makes of "so rare and complex and strange a use of human material."—Paul Evans

About The Author:

Praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose, Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marines.

His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970); Humboldt's...

Name:Saul Bellow

Also Known As:Solomon Bellow (real name)

Date of Birth:June 10, 1915

Place of Birth:Lachine, Quebec, Canada

Date of Death:April 5, 2005

Place of Death:Brookline, Massachusetts

Education:University of Chicago, 1933-35; B.S., Northwestern University, 1937

Awards:National Book Awards for The Adventures of Augie March, 1953; Herzog, 1964; and Mr. Sammler's Planet, 1970; Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift, 1975; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1976

Biography

Praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose, Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marines.

His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970); Humboldt's Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Dean's December (1982); More Die of Heartbreak (1987);Theft (1988); The Bellarosa Connection (1989); The Actual (1996); and, most recently, Ravelstein (2000). Bellow has also produced a prolific amount of non-fiction, collected in To Jerusalem and Back, a personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975, and It All Adds Up, a collection of memoirs and essays.

Bellow's many awards included the International Literary Prize for Herzog, for which he became the first American to receive the prize; the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens; the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish Literature"; and America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award has been made to a literary personage. In 1976 Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."

Bellow passed away on April 5, 2005 at the age of 89.

Author biography courtesy of Penguin Group (USA).