Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Bellow, Saul (Vol. 200) - Faye Kuzma (essay date summer 1998)

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Faye Kuzma (essay date summer 1998)

SOURCE: Kuzma, Faye. “The Demonic Hegemonic: Exploitative Voices in Saul Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak.” Critique 39, no. 4 (summer 1998): 306-23.

[In the following essay, Kuzma views More Die of Heartbreak as a text shaped by nihilism and the discourse of fashionable cynicism.]

Saul Bellow's novel More Die of Heartbreak opens with the observation of its narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg that his maternal uncle Benn Crader is obsessed with a cartoon by Charles Addams, author of Monster Rally. The cartoon depicts a couple in a cemetery. The man, Gomez, asks: “Are you unhappy darling?” and the woman, a witch named Morticia, replies: “Oh yes, yes! Completely.” That her unhappiness could motivate such an affirmation is incongruous—as if to say the couple is content with being miserable or that they are monsters to one another and happy with what they have made of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John L. Brown (review date winter 1995)
   2. Sanford Pinsker (essay date spring 1995)
   3. Richard K. Cross (review date spring 1995)
   4. Jerrald Ranta (essay date fall 1995)
   5. Ethan Goffman (essay date winter 1997)
   6. James W. Tuttleton (review date June 1997)
   7. James Wood (review date 16 June 1997)
   8. Alfred Kazin (review date 26 June 1997)
   9. Philip Hensher (review date 9 August 1997)
   10. Karl Miller (review date 22 August 1997)
   11. Marvin J. LaHood (review date winter 1998)
   12. Faye Kuzma (essay date summer 1998)
   13. Martin Corner (essay date spring 2000)
   14. Penelope Fitzgerald (review date 15 April 2000)
   15. Jonathan Yardley (review date 9-15 April 2000)
   16. Jonathan Levi (review date 23 April 2000)
   17. Christopher Hitchens (review date 27 April 2000)
   18. Louis Menand (review date 25 May 2000)
   19. John Leonard (review date 29 May 2000)
   20. Adam Feldman (review date fall 2000)
   21. Adam Phillips (review date fall 2000)
   22. Rita D. Jacobs (review date autumn 2000)
   23. Igor Webb (essay date spring 2001)
   24. Bharat Tandon (review date 21 April 2001)
   25. Diana Hendry (review date 8 December 2001)
   26. Stephen Amidon (review date 10 December 2001)
   27. Gloria L. Cronin (essay date 2001)
   28. Morris Dickstein (review date 18 January 2002)
   29. John L. Brown (review date spring 2002)
   30. David K. Nichols (essay date winter 2003)
   31. Michael Davis (essay date winter 2003)
   32. Algis Valiunas (essay date September 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Saul Bellow