Seize the Day

Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity.

Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity.

The New York Times, 1956 - Alfred Kazin

It is the special distinction of Mr. Bellow as a novelist that he is able to give us, step by step, the world we really live each day -- and in the same movement to show us that the real suffering of not understanding, the deprivation of light. It is this double gift that explains the unusual contribution he is making to our fiction.

A literary giant, Saul Bellow loomed large over writers attempting the Great American Novel, since many would argue that he has already achieved this feat at least once over. He was considered a foremost chronicler of the Jewish-American post-war experience, but the "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work" are what won him the Nobel, and helped him transcend cultural and national borders.