9780140072709

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This multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, moaner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him--he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife and to his best friend--Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, revealing his wry perceptions of the world and the innermost secrets of his heart.

"Before and, I hope, after everything else has been said, HERZOG should be praised as a marvelously animated performance. It is a book that makes one greedy for the next page, the next character....That Herzog cannot accurately perceive the other figures in the novel and that we are closely confined to his sense of them, is true and in ways...a limitation. But not a crippling limitation, for it soon becomes clear that, while totally committed to Herzog's experience, Bellow is not nearly so committed to his estimate of that experience...He has become a master of something that is rarely discussed in criticism because it is hard to do more than point toward it: the art of timing, which concerns the massing, centering and disposition of the characters and creates a sense of delight in the sheer motion of the narrative."

Irving Howe, New Republic, 9/19/1964

"With this new work, his sixth novel, Saul Bellow emerges not only as the most intelligent novelist of his generation but also as the most consistently interesting in point of growth and development. To my mind, too, he is the finest stylist at present writing fiction in America. ...There is nothing in any novel I have read quite like these letters Herzog writes. In no sense formal in tone, they represent at once a fictional device and a prodigiously productive aggression of the mind...Among the elements back of [Bellow's style] is, no doubt, a deep sense of humor specifically derived from his Jewish background and thoroughly assimilated to his sensiblity. This style is sensibility in action."

Philip Rahv, Book Week, 9/20/1964

Herzog: Library Edition: Search Results