A never-before-published collection of letters-an intimate self- portrait as well as the portrait of a century.

Saul Bellow was a dedicated correspondent until a couple of years before his death, and his letters, spanning eight decades, show us a twentieth-century life in all its richness and complexity. Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages. Some of the finest letters are to Bellow's fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, and Wright Morris. Intimate, ironical, richly observant, and funny, these letters reveal the influcences at work in the man, and illuminate his enduring legacy-the novels that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of the world over. Saul Bellow: Letters is a major literary event and an important edition to Bellow's incomparable body of work.

Review

Best of 2010 Lists The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani's Top Ten of 2010
The Washington Post, John Yardley's Best of 2010
Minneapolis Star Tribune

"It comes as no surprise to find that the great novelist was a great correspondent as well. I hungrily read the book through in three nights, as though I'd stumbled upon a lost Bellow masterpiece only recently unearthed."
?Philip Roth

"In the Letters, as in everything he wrote, Saul Bellow never dipped below a certain level?and that level is stratospheric."
?Martin Amis

"These aren't dashed-off notes, but letters that required considerable care and meant much to the author, as he expresses affection and support for other writers (Ellison, Roth, Malamud, Cheever, Amis et al.), takes critics and journalists to task with well-formed arguments and offers critical commentary on the culture that provides the context for his work (a culture that no longer values the art of writing letters)."
?Kirkus Reviews

"Feisty, smart, but most of all thrillingly intimate, these letters ripen and mature as they go along, just as some people do."
?Chicago Tribune

"Benjamin Taylor has done a superb job in both his selection and his introduction to these salient letters from a gone world when literature was all the rage."
?Tablet Magazine

"Benjamin Taylor's introduction and frequent brief indentifying notes are models of elegant scholarly restraint."
?Boston Globe

"Collected and annotated by Benjamin Taylor, these letters reveal in Saul Bellow a rare consistency: From the first letter in 1932 to the last in 2005, Bellow's ex-wives accrue, his fortunes rise and fall, but his character-as a man generous and preoccupied by literature-remains fixed."
?Time Out New York

"Vibrant, witty, and revealing, the collection is truly captivating."
-Kiara, Bookseller, Booksmith

About the Author

Editor Benjamin Taylor is the author of a book of essays, Into the Open, and two novels, Tales Out of School, winner of the 1996 Harold Ribalow Prize, and The Book of Getting Even, a Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of 2008. He is a member of the graduate writing faculty of The New School in New York City.
Saul Bellow (1915-2005) is the only novelist to have received three National Book Awards. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976.

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