Bad enemy, worse lover

Five years after his death, Saul Bellow’s literary reputation has yet to suffer the usual post-mortem slump, and publication of these lively letters should help sustain his standing.

Five years after his death, Saul Bellow’s literary reputation has yet to suffer the usual post-mortem slump, and publication of these lively letters should help sustain his standing. It’s less likely to boost his reputation as a man.

Bellow was never humble about his talents, and the surviving early letters show an intellectual precocity leavened by the vernacular of melting-pot Chicago. Yet initially he was reluctant to plumb home-grown strengths for his work. His first two novels were constructed on what he called a ‘Flaubertian model’ — modest, polished efforts, which were critically well received but sold poorly. It was only with The Adventures of Augie March that Bellow discovered the naturally cadent narrative voice that also runs throughout his correspondence — the book was written, he later wrote, ‘in a jail-breaking spirit’.