Herzog (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Saul Bellow
- First Published: 1964
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Philosophy or philosophers, New York City, Marriage, Chicago, Mental illness, Adultery, Letter writing, Divorce, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics
- Locales: New York, NY, Chicago, IL, Berkshires, MA
Considered by many to be Bellow's masterwork, Herzog may well be his prototypical novel, and Herzog the prototypical Bellovian hero. Like Emily Dickinson, who wrote poems as a means of opening a communion with the world, Moses Herzog, sensitive student of Romanticism, writes letters to the world-at-large in an attempt to keep his sanity and to measure his need for compassion and empathy in a world devoid of both. Like Gimpel the Fool, Herzog is a true schlemiel, a loser by the standards of the world but a noble spirit.
Though capable of anger and self-pity at the breakup...
[The entire page is 746 words long]
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