IT All Adds up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future

A collection of nonfiction pieces that is a journey through forty years in literary America features articles, essays, travel writing, and an "Autobiography of Ideas." 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

Fans of Nobel Prize-winning author Bellow should enjoy this wide-ranging selection of more than 30 nonfiction pieces--lectures and articles reprinted from Esquire , the New Republic , the New York Times , etc. Bellow's roving and astute eye produces memorable reportage, such as a portrait of a retired Chicago con man and other Windy City scenes, and his view of the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. He also offers neat sketches of colleagues like Allan Bloom, John Berryman and John Cheever. But the meat of the book is Bellow's tart, sometimes dyspeptic cultural commentary, exemplified by his Nobel Lecture criticizing writers for failing to challenge orthodoxies, and his laments at the useless distractions of the Information Revolution and the intellectual frivolities of bohemian New York City. Invoking Tolstoy, Nabokov and Flaubert, among others, Bellow muses on the novelist's responsibilities and, in three lively interviews, offers illuminating autobiographical reflections on reading, writing, teaching and life ("I've had more metamorphoses than I can count"). 50,000 first printing; $40,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bellow (Something to Remember Me By, 1991) makes it seem--in his introduction to these essays, addresses, interviews, and journalism pieces--as though he'd been reluctantly corralled into collecting them. And in truth, the individual entries are tied together more by the supple richness of Bellow's wonderful prose than by any greatly compelling worldview. The novelist/recorder/stylist in him always wins out here over the historian of ideas. Maybe the best piece, for its fidelity to place and time and sense of possibility, is the most unlikely: a brilliant, clever, full-hearted consideration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in which Bellow taps into the vein of American optimism and argues that the can-do bravado of Roosevelt is sorely lacking from contemporary American life. Equally fine (if slightly crowing) is a jaundiced dismissal of the mid-century New York intellectuals (the Partisan Review crowd et al.) as having been mere consumers of ideology who always needed to have the latest model of theory in their intellectual garages. The journalism here--reports from Spain, Paris, Israel, Vermont, Tuscany--is light-footed and companionable if hardly inspired. The public addresses (including Bellow's Nobel peroration) are much doughier items; and a pair of later interviews have some nice balletic turns amid flashes of ego that can be a little cloying. But for all his foibles and old ax-grindings, Bellow remains one of the most interesting, if slippery, figures in our literature. Sheen and fascination come off of every page. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In his preface to this collection of nonfiction work, Bellow reflects on what he would say differently if he wrote some of the older pieces now. This second guessing sets the tone for this entire dichotomous volume; rigorous and devilish throughout, Bellow consistently sees all sides to an issue and continually airs the sort of existential doubt any keen observer of humanity is bound to acquire. This tension enlivens his pugnacious prose, which also echoes the skittish energy of his longtime hometown, Chicago. Bellow's sentences have a jab and parry to them that echo Chicago's bluster, cultural self-doubt, and ruthlessness. A born storyteller, Bellow is at his best in essays on his Chicago childhood and in deft characterizations of towering figures such as Mozart and FDR. Bellow is fascinated by history, genius, politics, and the aura of places as diverse as Galena, Illinois; Paris; Vermont; and Tuscany. His essays are organized into loose, topical groupings rather than chronological order. For instance, his striking 1976 Nobel lecture is followed by a revealing 1993 piece titled "Writers, Intellectuals, Politics: Mainly Reminiscence," and the continuity of thought and attitude is notable. If there is a main theme here, it's Bellow's perception of the great divide between artists and intellectuals. Again and again, Bellow contrasts cognition with imagination, rails against the pomposity and sterility of the academy, and praises the soulfulness of art. Several question-and-answer pieces, "An Interview with Myself" (1975), "A Half Life" (1990), and "A Second Half Life" (1991), present us with scrappy self-portraits that throw both Bellow's gift for writing and crusty worldview into high relief. Donna Seaman

Bellow is America's writer, and in this superb collection of nonfiction essays he demonstates his vigilance of and loyalty to his country over a span of 45 years. From his earliest piece, a war report from Spain written for the Partisan Review (1948), to his Novel Prize lecture (1976), to a recent Forbes article entitled "There Is Simply Too Much To Think About," Bellow is consumed by the idea of America--so great, so accomplished, so magical--destroying its soul. "The cost of all the great successes," he writes in "The Jefferson Lectures" (1977), "may be the abasement of man." The Chicago native is the conscience of his city, and Washington, and New York . He reports from the Sinai during the Six Day War and mingles at White House dinners; his trenchant observations rip through the standard rigmarole. The years have sharpened his craft, and his memory. An essential purchase, this just might kindle interest in Bellow's oeuvre ( More Die of Heartbreak ; Humboldt's Gift ) among a younger generation.
- Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.