The second volume of Zachary Leader\'s definitive authorised biography of one of the greatest American writers When this second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow opens, Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters - rich, famous, critically acclaimed.
His immense achievement and its cost, to himself and others, are also clear..
Bellow’s heroic energy and will are clear to the very end of his life.
In making his case, he could be cutting and rude; he could also be charming, loyal, and funny.
An opponent of cultural relativism, he exercised great influence in literary and intellectual circles, advising a host of institutes and foundations, helping those he approved of, hindering those of whom he disapproved.
Although an early and engaged supporter of civil rights, in the second half of his Life Bellow was angered by the excesses of Black Power.
His three sons, whom he loved, could be as volatile as he was, and their relations with their father were often troubled.
At eighty-five he fathered his fourth child, a daughter, with his fifth wife.
The women he pursued, the ones he married and those with whom he had affairs, were intelligent, attractive and strong-willed.
In the 1960s he was compulsively promiscuous (even as he inveighed against sexual liberation).
Bellow\'s relations with women were often fraught.
In the public sphere, he is embroiled in controversy over foreign affairs, race, religion, education, social policy, the state of culture, the fate of the novel.
In this volume, his Life away from the desk, including his Love life, is if anything more dramatic than in volume 1.
At eighty, he wrote his last story; at eighty-five, he wrote Ravelstein.
Bellow never fell, producing some of his greatest fiction (Mr Sammler\'s Planet, Humboldt\'s Gift, all his best stories), winning two more National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize.
The expected trajectory is one of decline: volume 1, rise; volume 2, fall.
The second volume of Zachary Leader\'s definitive authorised biography of one of the greatest American writers When this second volume of The Life of Saul Bellow opens, Bellow, at forty-nine, is at the pinnacle of American letters - rich, famous, critically acclaimed
