BELLOW, SAUL (June 10, 1915-- )

American novelist, wrote: "My parents emigrated to Canada from Russia in 1913--my father, a businessman, has often told me that he imported Egyptian onions into St. Petersburg--and settled in the town of Lachine, Quebec. I was born there in 1915, the youngest of four children. Until I was nine years old we lived in one of the poorest and most ancient districts of Montreal, on the slope of St. Dominick Street between the General Hospital and Rachel Market.

"In 1924 we moved to Chicago. I grew up there and consider myself a Chicagoan, out and out. Educated after a fashion in the Chicago schools, I entered the University of Chicago in 1933. In that year the Hutchins revolution was already under way and the university was, for me, a terrifying place. The dense atmosphere of learning, of cultural effort, heavily oppressed me; I felt that wisdom and culture were immense and that I was hopelessly small. In 1935 I transferred to Northwestern University. Northwestern had less prestige, but my teachers there appreciated me more. And of course I wanted to be appreciated. My intelligence revived somewhat and I graduated with honors in anthropology and sociology in 1937.

"Graduate school didn't suit me, however. I had a scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, and I behaved very badly. During the Christmas vacation, having fallen in love, I got married and never returned to the University. In my innocence, I had decided to become a writer.

"I will say this for my choice: there are many professions that one may follow without enthusiasm, but though there may be as many unenthusiastic novelists, proportionately, as there are unenthusiastic engineers or dentists, they must consider themselves infidels and they feel their unbelief and treason keenly. Vividness is what they must desire most and so they must value human existence or be unfaithful to their calling.

Principal Works: Novels--Dangling Man, 1944; The Victim, 1947; The Adventures of Augie March, 1953; Seize the Day, with Three Short Stories and a One-Act Play, 1956; Henderson the Rain King, 1959; Herzog, 1964; Mr. Sammler's Planet, 1970; Humboldt's Gift, 1975; The Dean's December, 1982; More Die of Heartbreak, 1987; A Theft, 1989; The Bellarosa Connection, 1989; Something to Remember Me By, 1991.

About: The autobiographical material quoted above was written for Twentieth Century Authors First Supplement, 1955. Bloom, H. (ed.) Saul Bellow, 1986; Bradbury, M. Saul Bellow, 1982; Braham, J. A Sort of Columbus: The American Voyages of Saul Bellow's Fiction, 1984; Clayton, J. J. Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man, rev. ed., 1979; Cohen, S. B. Saul Bellow's Enigmatic Laughter, 1974; Contemporary Novelists, 4th ed., 1986; Cronin, G. L. and Goldman, L. H. (eds.) Saul Bellow in the 1980s: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1989; Current Biography 1988; Deitweiler, R. Saul Bellow, A Critical Essay, 1967; Dutton, R. R. Saul Bellow, rev. ed., 1982; Fuchs, D. Saul Bellow: Vision and Revision, 1984; Glenday, M. K. Saul Bellow and the Decline of Humanism, 1990.