Herzog (Penguin Classics)
by Saul Bellow
List Price:
Our Price: $1.99
You Save: $14.01 (88%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Saul BellowIntroduction: Philip Roth
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-02-25
ISBN: 0142437298
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Herzog (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Bellow against Nihlism
Summary: 5 Stars
What role does the intellect play in both an individual life and the wider culture? This is the exploration that lies at the heart of "Herzog," the deeply philosophical novel by Saul Bellow. Moses Herzog is a man under the spell of writing letters to anyone under the sun, dead or alive. This habit leads others to suspect his mental stability, though in fact he is "confident, cheerful, clairvoyant, and strong." This is not always obvious when reading his manic, incomplete letters, or observing his choices and behavior regarding his family and career. Yet, Herzog's untidy, frustrating life, full of yearning and error, supplies an apt metaphor for the novel's wider philosophical position: man must face his own life, his own ordinariness, and seek value. To do otherwise is nihilism, and to hope for a tidy, unified fulfillment is a dream.
While Moses Herzog in his world, and Saul Bellow and ours, are widely identified as exemplars of the intellectual, this novel is keenly aware of the limits of thought and erudition, and deeply suspicious of the learned. Above all, Herzog rejects the idea authentic experience resides in the life of the mind, or more specifically, in theory and abstraction. One can't think fulfillment. Values and relationships provide fulfillment. Yet our philosophical tradition has begun to reject value, and become elitist and nihilistic. Socrates began in saying that he only knew that he knew nothing, and we have gone no farther than the idea that life and value are nothing and philosophy is only a word game. Herzog is
"...tired of the modern form of historicism that sees in this civilization the defeat of the best hopes of Western religion and thought, what Heideggar calls the second Fall of Man into the quotidian or ordinary.... The question of these modern centuries,..-The strength of a man's virtue or spiritual capacity measured by his ordinary life."
To be learned in not to be more moral or valuable, and there is a troubling malice behind the aesthetic revulsion towards modern society.
"Reaching at last the point of denying the humanity of the industrialized, "banalized" masses. It was easy for the wastelanders to be assimilated to totalitarianism. Here the responsibility of the of artists remains to be assessed. To have assumed, for instance, that the deterioration of language and its debasement was tantamount to dehumanization led straight to cultural fascism."
This naturally leads to the exhortation, "The world should love lovers; but not theoreticians. Never theoreticians. Show them the door. Ladies, throw out the bastards!
And what of the plot? The story lacks a neat, plotted drama, and its details are not what stick with me, but it has its moments. The central conflict is the relationship between Herzog and a younger, hipper love, and his separation from their daughter. It does devolve into tedium at times, but as I reflect on the novel, I rarely recall those moments. Too many modern novels involve the tawdry affairs of the cultural elite. Yet, "Herzog" is successful because it is juxtaposed with Herzog's thought. An argument in favor of the ordinary is well supported by conflicts that can't be regarded as romantic. The story should be ordinary.
Yet make no mistake, this is a novel of ideas. To underline every insight is to use much ink. The advantage of couching all of this thought into a novel is that, paradoxically, the aphorisms can stand on their own. They don't have to be absorbed in, or tailored to a broader philosophical scheme or thesis. Herzog writes to Schopenhaur, and I wonder if Bellow would share Nietzsche's appreciation of Schopenhaur's willingness to contradict himself, to affirm that all contradiction can not be ironed out of experience. Man is not a syllogism.
Just as our fall from grace provided us with a necessary distance to recognize and appreciate, though not comprehend, God, so does thought and art augment our experience, make us more aware of it, and allow us to frame it differently. However, Herzog gains no actual, practical guidance as to the living of his own life. Witness the mess that is Moses Herzog's life. "But can thought wake you from the dream of existence? Not if it becomes a second realm of confusion, another more complicated dream, the dream of intellect, the delusion of total explanation."
"Herzog" requires reflection and re-reading. There are moments of tedium, but it remains tremendous force in favor of humanity. "We have ground to hope that a Life is something more than such a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible, and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light." But there is light. This is life-affirming, melancholy, and inspiring. True art.
Summary of Herzog (Penguin Classics)
In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity of existence and longing for redemption.Introduction by Philip Roth
A novel complex, compelling, absurd and realistic, Herzog became a classic almost as soon as it was published in 1964. In it Saul Bellow tells the tale of Moses E. Herzog, a tragically confused intellectual who suffers from the breakup of his second marriage, the general failure of his life and the specter of growing up Jewish in the middle part of the 20th century. He responds to his personal crisis by sending out a series of letters to all kinds of people. The letters in total constitute a thoughtful examination of his own life and that which has occurred around him. What emerges is not always pretty, but serves as gritty foundation for this absorbing novel.
Classics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Classics Books
Native sonby Richard Wright
Perennial Library; Published: 1987; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.75
Native Son: And How Bigger Was Bornby Richard Wright
Perennial; Published: 1993-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $60.00
Raphael and the Noble Taskby Catherine Salton
Harper; Published: 2000-10-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.49
Price in other shops:
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.86
Price in other shops:
The Great Divorce CDby C. S. Lewis
HarperAudio; Published: 2003-11-25; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $13.10
Price in other shops:
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Black Coffee (Poirot)by Agatha Christie
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2002-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $68.32
Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1960s)by Joan Didion
Flamingo; Published: 2001-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.25
Similar Books and other products
Mr. Sammler's Planet (Penguin Classics)by Saul Bellow
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.08
Price in other shops:
Howl and Other Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, No. 4)by Allen Ginsberg
City Lights Publishers; Published: 2001-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.82
Price in other shops:
The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Poundby T. S. Eliot
Mariner Books; Published: 1974-03-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.00
Price in other shops:
Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust (New Edition) (New Directions Paperbook)by Nathanael West
New Directions; Published: 2009-06-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.86
Price in other shops:
The Dream Songsby John Berryman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-04-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.12
Price in other shops:
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement (P.S.)by Sylvia Plath
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2005-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.19
Price in other shops:
Life Studies and For the Union Dead (FSG Classics)by Robert Lowell
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
Price in other shops:
Seize the Day (Penguin Classics)by Saul Bellow
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Humboldt's Gift (Penguin Classics)by Saul Bellow
Penguin Classics; Published: 2008-10-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.45
Price in other shops:
The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)by Saul Bellow
Penguin Classics; Published: 2006-10-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops: