The Novels of Saul Bellow : A Study in the Problematics of Self and Society

Contents: Preface. 1. The world of the novels. 2. The problem of self. 3. The quest for true self. 4. Response to social reality. 5. The protagonist’s engagement with society. 6. Formal strategies. 7. Summing up. Index.

“A unique historian of modern sensibility falling into post-modernism, of the self losing its way into the labyrinth of corruption, reduction, sensuality and sexuality, reality constructions and ideologies, of the striving of the soul to reach out to God and his creation, of the inroads of anti-humanism into humanism, Saul Bellow (1915-2005), a thinker and writer, is a phenomenon of the twentieth century. The author of several classical novels, novellas, short stories, plays, essays and other works, he is fully aware of the contradictions of the sublime and the ridiculous, euphoric and the somber, lofty and the trivial, imaginatively sweeping and narratively engrossing, metaphorical and symbolical coexisting with the minutiae of life. However, he is not split up but he endeavours to reconcile and resolve the contraries and contradictions, the verities and paradoxes, the complications, and implications. The present work underscores all these aspects of the great Nobel Laureate and offers much more in the study of his novels and novellas while focalizing the novelist’s exploration of the true nature of the self and its belonging in society. The writer also offers valuable insights into other aspects of this all time great writer and asserts the claims of the book on the attention of the academics, researchers and scholars.” (jacket)