(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called literary "classics," then write r...
Saul Bellow once referred to his two earliest novels, ‘The Dangling Man’ and ‘The Victim’, as his ‘M.A. and Ph.D’ respectively. It wasn’t until his third novel, ‘Augie March’, that Bellow found his unique literary voice, a sort of sprawling and introspective philosophizing that mixed comedy wit...
Huh — so, the plot of this book, I say to myself, having chosen it at random from Peter Boxall's 1001 Books list, is a rich white guy goes to Africa to learn the meaning of life from the noble savages. Oh, I can see that this will turn out well.Saul Bellow is one of those Big Literary Dudes I've ...