Saul Bellow è stato un maestro romanziere le cui opere si sono addentrate nelle complessità della vita moderna e della psiche umana. Il suo stile distintivo, che fonde perfettamente profondità intellettuale con una voce vibrante e colloquiale, risuona nei lettori per la sua franchezza e il suo umorismo arguto. Bellow ha esplorato temi di identità, alienazione e ricerca di significato in un mondo caotico, consolidando il suo posto come uno degli scrittori americani più significativi del XX secolo.
Bellow's second novel features Asa Leventhal, sub-editor of a trade magazine, and he is a natural victim; a man uncertain of himself, never free from the nagging suspicion that the other guy might be right. So when he meets a down-at-hell stranger in the park one day and finds himself being accused of ruining the man's life...well, he half-believes it. And because he half-believes it, he can't shake the man loose, can't stop himself being trapped in a mire of self-doubt, can't help becoming...a victim. First published in the USA in 1947, and in the UK a year later. It first appeared in a Penguin edition in Britain in 1966.
Joseph, protagonista del romanzo, è un borghese che un giorno decide di rifiutare il proprio ruolo nella società. Per farlo chiede di arruolarsi nell'Esercito, dove la ferrea regola militare lo assolverà da qualsiasi obbligo sociale. A partire da questa decisione, quello che si apre agli occhi del lettore è un viaggio allucinato nell'alienazione del mondo contemporaneo alla ricerca dei fondamenti di una nuova vita. Anche al prezzo della negazione di ogni principio di libertà.
Solo nella grande vecchia casa di campagna, l'ebreo Moses Elkanah Herzog (alter ego dell'autore) scrive febbrilmente lettere su lettere agli amici, alla famiglia, persino a morti illustri: a tutti pone quesiti sull'esistenza. Personaggio quanto mai contradditorio, portavoce delle inquietudini intellettuali dell'americano dopo Kennedy, egli non ha la risposta al mistero della vita; spoglio di ogni romantica illusione, Herzog è un umiliato che va fiero della propria umiliazione, e nel disastro delle sua vita si sente tuttavia fiducioso.
Negli anni '80 e '90, Saul Bellow si è concentrato su opere più brevi, ma con Ravelstein torna al romanzo di ampio respiro, dimostrando la sua capacità di creare personaggi vividi anche nella sua nona decade. Il personaggio principale, Abe Ravelstein, è una rappresentazione velata dell'amico di Bellow, Allan Bloom, che, come Ravelstein, ha combattuto contro il declino della rigorosità intellettuale nella cultura americana. Ravelstein, un autore di successo e professore all'Università di Chicago, sta morendo di AIDS, e la narrazione si sviluppa come una sorta di falso memoir scritto dal suo migliore amico, Chick. Le riflessioni di Ravelstein sull'amore, il bisogno e le complessità dell'Eros sono temi centrali, mentre condivide intuizioni profonde nonostante la sua salute in deterioramento. La trama è minimale, concentrandosi invece sulla lotta di Chick per scrivere il suo memoir, portando a un ricco arazzo di aneddoti che formano il carattere di Ravelstein. Il romanzo cattura la vita del filosofo, dall'insegnamento al suo declino, con un mix di umorismo e malinconia. La dettagliata rappresentazione di Ravelstein e del cast di supporto lo rende vivo, esplorando anche temi di mortalità e natura umana. Ravelstein è un'esplorazione toccante, umoristica e perspicace dell'amicizia e dell'esistenza, segnando un'opera significativa nella produzione di Bellow.
Il romanzo più esuberante e divertente di Bellow, "Il re della pioggia", racconta la storia di Eugene Henderson, un uomo imponente, milionario e padre di molti, che si sente alla deriva. Afflitto e stanco, quasi sconfitto, desidera mettere a posto le cose. Seguito dalle sollecitazioni della sua indimenticabile voce interiore—“voglio, voglio, voglio”—il nostro eroe si ritrova in Africa. Henderson si avventura in un interno mitico e soleggiato, dove tra tribù esotiche incontra altri cercatori, insegnanti e anime affini. Che si tratti di far esplodere una cisterna piena di rane o di imparare a camminare senza paura tra i leoni, il sensibile e stravagante Henderson intende risvegliare il suo “sonno dello spirito.”
Una storia d'amore bizzarra, durata in silenzio per una vita e conclusa con una domanda di matrimonio in un cimitero. Una storia di fedeltà ai propri sentimenti, ma anche di infatuazioni e lacerazioni mai sopite in cui, ancora una volta, Saul Bellow dà vita a un gruppo di straordinari personaggi, figli di un'America "ipercivilizzata" in cui si esprime il disordine della nostra epoca. A cominciare dal protagonista e narratore Harry Trellman. Un osservatore di prima classe che "trova piacere nell'osservare i comportamenti e le motivazioni della gente". E dalla donna da lui amata, con cui scopre di aver sempre avuto, senza mai riuscire a comunicargliela, un'intensa reale "affinità".
Compiled and edited by Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, this collection includes previously uncollected and newly discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews in addition to the essay collections Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory . The preface is written by Saul Bellow
A never-before-published collection of letters-an intimate self- portrait as well as the portrait of a century. Saul Bellow was a dedicated correspondent until a couple of years before his death, and his letters, spanning eight decades, show us a twentieth-century life in all its richness and complexity. Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to Bellow's fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, and Wright Morris. Intimate, ironical, richly observant, and funny, these letters reveal the influcences at work in the man, and illuminate his enduring legacy-the novels that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of the world over. Saul Bellow: Letters is a major literary event and an important edition to Bellow's incomparable body of work.
Arranged chronologically, this literary time capsule displays the full extent of Bellow's nonfiction, including criticism, interviews, speeches and other reflections, tracing his career from his initial success as a novelist until the end of his life. Bringing together six classic pieces with an abundance of previously uncollected material, There is Simply Too Much to Think About is a powerful reminder not only of Bellow's genius but also of his enduring place in the western canon. It is sure to be widely reviewed and talked about for years to come.
"The Adventures of Augie March" is the great American Novel. Search no further. Martin Amis As soon as it first appeared in 1953, this novel by the great Saul Bellow was hailed as an American classic. Augie, the exuberant narrator-hero is a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Deptression. A born recruit, Augie makes himself available for a series of occupations, then proudly rejects each one as unworthy. His own oddity is reflected in the companions he encounters plungers, schemers, risk-takers, and hole-and corner operators like the would-be tycoon Einhorn or the would-be siren Thea, who travels with an eagle trained to hunt small creatures. This Penguin Classics edition, with an introduction by celebrated writer and critic Christopher Hitchens, makes a literary masterpiece available to a new generation of readers. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators."
This is the definitive collection of short stories by Saul Bellow. Abundant, precise, various, rich and exuberant, the stories display the stylistic and emotional brilliance which characterises this master of prose. Some stories recount the events of a single day, some are contained in a wider frame; each story is a characteristic combination of observation and a celebration of humanity. This volume contains a preface by his wife, Janis Bellow, and an introduction by James Wood. It is an essential collection.
In this wonderfully entertaining collection edited by Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow, 28 stories by outstanding Jewish authors capture all the bold color and rich flavor of Jewish culture through the ages. Includes stories by Sholom Aleichem, Isaac Bebel, S.J. Agnon, and others. Reissue.
Renata, Rinaldo, and Charlie fove out destinies complicated by the unforgettable Humboldt. and Humboldt-drinker, lover, sometimes bum, and lifetime shadow of Charlie Citrine-plots a dubious revenge for services rendered in the name of friendship.
Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of More Die of Heartbreak, has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described "plant visionary." While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from "bliss to breakdown." Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments. As Kenneth grapples with his own problems involving his unusual lady-friend Treckie, the two men try to figure out why gifted and intelligent people invariably find themselves "knee-deep in the garbage of a personal life."
Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York, is a 'registrar of madness', a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking deep into the sufferings of the human soul. 'Sorry for all and sore at heart', he observes how greater luxury & leisure have only led to more suffering. To Sammler--who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings--a good life is one in which a person does what is 'required of him'. To know and to meet the 'terms of the contract" was as true a life as one could live. At its heart, this novel is quintessential Bellow: moral, urbane, sublimely humane.
In Philip Roth's intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer's highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life. With Primo Levi, Roth discusses the stubborn core of rationality that helped the Italian chemist-writer survive the demented laboratory of Auschwitz. With Milan Kundera, he analyzes the mix of politics and sexuality that made him the most subversive writer in communist Czechoslovakia. With Edna O'Brien, he explores the circumstances that have forced generations of Irish writers into exile. Elsewhere Roth offers appreciative portraits of two friends--the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston--at the end of their careers, and gives us a masterful assessment of the work of Saul Bellow. Intimate, charming, and crackling with ideas about the interplay between imagination and the writer's historical situation, Shop Talk is a literary symposium of the highest level, presided over by America's foremost novelist.
In this "impassioned and thoughtful book" (The New York Times), Bellow records the opinions, passions, and dreams of Israelis of varying viewpoints -- Yitzhak Rabin, Amos Oz, the editor of the largest Arab-language newspaper in Israel, a kibbutznik escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto -- and adds his own thoughts on being Jewish in the twentieth century.
This dazzling collection of shorter fiction describes a series of self-awakenings -- a suburban divorcee deciding among lovers, a celebrity drawn into his cousin's life of crime, a father remembering bygone Chicago, an artist, and an academic awaiting extradition for some unnamed offense.
When his induction into the army is delayed, Joseph finds himself facing a
year of idleness. This journal presents an account of his restless wanderings
through Chicago's streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction
to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the
nature of freedom and choice.
Albert Corde, dean of a Chicago college, is unprepared for the violent response to his expose of city corruption. Accused of betraying his city, as well as being a racist, he journeys to Bucharest, where his mother-in-law lies dying, only to find corruption rife in the Communist capital. Switching back and forth between the two cities, The Dean's December represents Bellow's "most spirited resistance to the forces of our time" (Malcolm Bradbury).
Fading charmer, Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared.
In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him
to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children, at odds
with his vain, successful father, failed in his acting career, and in a
financial mess. schovat popis
A powerfully compressed exploration of the meaning of memory, The Bellarosa Connection is a masterful novella from a writer whose new work of fiction is further testament to his acclaimed gifts in creativity.
Many years ago, Teddy gave Clara an emerald ring that she has cherished as a symbol of her passion for him. The ring is lost and after many years - eventually - discovered.
Henderson, kráľ dažďa, paródia na mytické putovania, je filozoficko-komický román z roku 1959. Hrdinom diela je znudený päťdesiat päťročný milionár Eugene Henderson, ktorý má už po krk svojich dvoch manželstiev a piatich detí. Vyberie sa preto do Afriky a jeho cesta sa stane akousi púťou za sebapoznaním. So svojím verným sprievodcom Romilayuom navštívi domorodý kmeň pastierov, ktorých sužuje veľké sucho. Chce domorodcom pomôcť, ale zničí vodnú nádrž a musí ujsť. Dostane sa k ďalšiemu kmeňu a tam sa mu pri obradoch privolávajúcich dážď podarí nadvihnúť modlu bohyne plodnosti a dažďa. Keď vzápätí vypukne prietrž mračien kmeň Hendersona vyhlási za "kráľa dažďa". S týmto titulom je okrem verejných pôct späté a jveľké nebezpečenstvo. Po rozličných útrapách sa Henderson napokon vracia domov, a jeho srdce napĺňa pokoj a láska k žene a deťom.
Kniha je druhým dílem povídkového díla držitele Nobelovy ceny za literaturu a Pulitzerovy ceny. Bellow i tentokrát nechává čtenáře nahlédnout do svého jedinečného vnímání světa a nabízí několik nesmírně hlubokých příběhů.
Soubor židovských povídek. Náhled i životní postoje i moudrost věků. Své zvyky si vystěhovalci odnášeli ze staré vlasti i za moře. Spojení tradic i nových životních zkušeností. Doslov „Saul Bellow novelista a povídkář“ napsal Josef Jařab.
"Mehr noch sterben an gebrochnem Herzen" erzählt die Geschichte des Botanikers Benn Crader, der in Liebesangelegenheiten ahnungslos ist. Sein Neffe Kenneth beobachtet entsetzt die Heiratspläne seines Onkels mit der ehrgeizigen Matilda. Nach der Ehe flieht Benn vor familiären Konflikten und kehrt zur Wissenschaft zurück, während der Roman humorvoll und nachdenklich die Probleme unserer Zeit beleuchtet.
Wyprowadzka z Żółtego Domu [Leaving the Yellow House] Stary system [The Old System] W poszukiwaniu pana Greena [Looking for Mr. Green] Manuskrypt Gonzagi [The Gonzaga Manuscripts] Przyszły ojciec [A Father-to-Be] Wspomnienia Mosby'ego [Mosby's Memoirs]
Herzog is alone, now that Madeleine has left him for his best friend. Solitary, in a crumbling house which he shares with rats, he is buffeted by a whirlwind of mental activity. People rumoured that his mind had collapsed. But was it true? Locked for days in the custody of his rambling memories, Herzog scrawls frantic letters which he never mails. His mind buzzes with conundrums and polemics, writing in a spectacular intellectual labyrinth. Is he crazy, or is he a genius?..
Kniha představuje úvodní svazek souhrnného povídkového díla Saula Bellowa, který za svou práci obdržel nejvyšší literární ocenění Nobelovu i Pulitzerovu cenu. V jeho jedinečném povídkovém díle je nesporně obsažena významná část autorova celoživotního díla. Tyto obyčejné lidské příběhy nabízejí v širším kontextu odpovědi na věčné otázky současného člověka ztraceného ve spletitosti postmoderního světa. Bellowovo invenční vypravěčské umění, nesmírně bohaté myšlenkové zázemí, bravurní technika bez prázdných a zbytečných slov, brilantní úvahové pasáže, věrohodná znalost okolního světa, moudrý, chápavý nadhled a jasnozřivá psychologie postav to vše nabízí vnímavému čtenáři neopakovatelný zážitek.
Zwei brillant geschriebene Novellen aus dem Alterswerk Saul Bellows, in denen uns ein 17-jähriger Jüngling aus Chicago und eine erfolgreiche New Yorkerin durch ihre Stadt und ihr Leben führen und in denen - wie immer bei Saul Bellow - Komisches und Tragisches, Witz und Melancholie dicht beieinander liegen. Mit stilistischer Brillanz bettet der Autor die Geschichten ein in eine Fülle von stimmungsvollen Beobachtungen und Figuren, die unvergeßlich charakterisiert sind. Ein großes Lesevergnügen.
Druhý román amerického autora předvádí dva protagonisty, Asu Leventhala, redaktora malého obchodního časopisu, který se pere s životem, a jeho vyděrače, frázistu a antisemitu Allbeeho, jenž své vydírání zakládá na historce, že mu žid kdysi ublížil a způsobil jeho životní ztroskotání.Jestliže se vyděrač označuje za oběť, je jí ve skutečnosti citlivý a poctivý Leventhal, jenž o své vině přemýšlí a snaží se tuto vinu, ve skutečnosti vinu pomyslnou, napravit. Autor zde původní otázku, kdo z nich dvou je čí osobní obětí, rozvádí na otázku, do jaké míry jsou oba obětí společnosti, okolností, náhod i svých vlastních nedostatků. Kniha je opatřena doslovem „Saul Bellow nejsoustředěnější“ od Zdeňka Vančury.
Юный герой романа остро сознает свою неспособность разделить патриотические настроения воющей Америки. Он честно пытается стать частью "единого национального целого" - но все тщетно
V roce 1956 poprvé vyšlá novela dosud u nás neznámého amerického spisovatele. Jde o příběh muže toužícího po dobrém soužití s lidmi, na jehož životním neúspěchu a pádu se vedle jeho vlastní neobratnosti podílí i prostředí, v němž honba za vlastním prospěchem ubíjí cit a ohled k člověku.
