It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future by Saul Bellow (PDF)

Description

In this collection of more than thirty essays, published in The New York Times, Esquire and The New Republic, the vast range of Saul Bellow’s nonfiction is made abundantly clear. In Bellow’s capable hands, a single essay can range fluidly across topics as various as the talents of President Roosevelt, the economic narrative of Jay Gatsby, and childhood adventures in Chicago. In this rich mix of literary, political, and personal musings, Bellow is able to explore subjects as enormous as the writer’s search for truth, and as minute as the discomforts of a French doctors’ office. Traveling from Washington to Spain to the Sinai Peninsula, and profiling friends and characters such as John Cheever and John Berryman, Bellow is keenly focused and perceptive. These pages, spanning a lifetime of thought and debate, present provocative arguments and erudite literary criticism, all with the wry humor of a great storyteller. In It All Adds Up, Bellow turns his view away from the sparkling characters of his novels, and towards the conditions and qualities of his own experience of writing and living.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Saul Bellow has limitless intellect,although he would deny he is an intellectual. To him,intellectuals get bogged down in the cul de sac of ideologies;attempting to sort out societies problems and the meaning of life via philosophies infected by the mood of the times;philosohies that ignore mans endless desires of individualism,curiosity and the need to be free.Ideologies that just add further to the mess. Bellow looks for what is human through art and literature,which is a refuge for our soul. All of this beams through Bellows essays.He transcends mere intellectualism and operates on a higher plain.He has no desire to ‘do the good thing’ or appear ‘liberal’ if it means having to lie to achieve it.His clash with Gunter Grass-who unbeknown to Bellow and the World at the time had a rather nasty skeleton in his closet-comes to mind. Grass in his politics and self righteous ranting is given the moral high ground by using deception-by doing the right thing;appearing liberal.But as people like Richard Wright found of the ‘liberal’ North,the attitude was all hot air.The blacks were no more accepted there than the South.They were ‘accepted’ as long as they stuck to the black belt areas.That truth would have destroyed many a liberal;many a do gooder,as it was a reality they knew of but hid from view.Bellow lives in this area of revelation. His recollections of Roosevelt,the war,Yom Kippur,Paris….all wonderful. This is a wonderful insight into the greatest mind of the 20th century.

⭐Have not read the book yet, but I am satisfied with the copy I received for my collection of Bellwo works.

⭐Good essays. I always like Saul Bellow’s writing.

⭐Read this collection, it truly does All Add Up.

⭐Gifted writer with humorous and insightful stories.

⭐Incredible intellect.

⭐Frankly, I thought some of the early chapters were windy, and I did a lot of speed reading and skipping. Objectively speaking, I don’t think Bellow wore a second hat as literary critic with the distinction that someone like V.S. Pritchett did. But part four impressed me very much; the travel pieces, if you could pigeonhole them as such, were first-rate, and new to me. The parallels with someone like Truman Capote were curious. Capote too is remembered for his book-length work, and his marvelous travel writing overlooked. And I can think of noone to compare with Bellow in writing about Chicago and the role of European immigrants, especially the unconstricted tide prior to 1924, in giving distinctive life to great American cities—even, and especially so, in what in any age would be described as slums. Also, I was unaware of how erudite Bellow was; he was apparently at least trilingual (French and Spanish).

⭐I read Herzog when I was much younger & found it revelatory in the way it moved my soul, which for a young person is akin to the spiritual epiphany we as human beings hunger for. Finding a thought provoking review of this book on “brain pickings” website earlier has rekindled this joy & hunger to read more of his musings in relation to the creative processes involved in writing. He is able to describe so deeply & colourfully the Abstract…..that which is eternally difficult to put into words….so naturally, effortlessly (so it would seem) to his readers. Yet his greatness didn’t elevate him from the reading public but made us feel a deep connection to every subject he wrote about. This however is not a review of the said book but an endorsement that anything one can read by Saul Bellow will be well worth reading!

⭐Print is horrible. Looks like a pirated copy

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