Abstract
When in 1976 Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize for Literature the award marked the international recognition of a writing career that had already endured for thirty-five years. Yet it was only twelve years earlier, with the publication in 1964 of Herzog, that Bellow had begun to receive widespread popular attention in his own country, and this novel marked the confirmation of his status as ‘major’ American novelist, the inheritor of the place of Hemingway and Faulkner, both of whom had died during the three years prior to the appearance of Herzog. Bellow’s earlier novels had brought him academic and critical acclaim as well as numerous literary prizes: The Adventures of Augie March, like Herzog, won the National Book Award, and he had received awards of various sorts from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and from the Guggenheim and Ford Foundations, as well as honorary doctorates from Northwestern University and Bard College. But the success of Herzog gave him a new prominence, for it marked him out as an author who was no longer the possession of a small, cultivated elite. Herzog remained on the best-seller lists for many weeks, and its popularity generated an interest in Bellow’s earlier novels, which were reissued by their publishers with the recommendation that they were ‘by the author of Herzog’ or, more persuasively, ‘by the celebrated author of Herzog’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Copyright information
© 1992 Peter Hyland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hyland, P. (1992). Life and Career. In: Saul Bellow. Modern Novelists. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22109-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22109-7_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-51697-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22109-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)