Talk:Saul Bellow/Archive 1

Canadian born
Not that it isn't important, but it seems a bit weird to put it in the opening sentence. Tfine80 01:56, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Attribution and Additions
I want to add material to this entry, drawing on the New York Times obit for Bellow as well as a couple books. The entry needs attribution and more material. I just wanted to give fair notice, but I appreciate any feedback. I plan to add a few things next week. CiscoLeo 04:33, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Re-organizing the page
I have made a few additions and changes to the page in the last couple days, and I just wanted to suggest some other changes. The transition between Early Life and Career is jolting, so I think we should fold Early Life and Career into one Biography section. Also, the page could use a couple other sections, maybe Works, Themes or Influences. These are just ideas based on how other author pages are organized. The ultimate goal is to add more material, clean up the page and improve its rating. I changed the date of birth on the article because the New York Times obit indicated his birthday might have been June 10, instead of the 11th. I also found other stuff on the Web backing up the June 10 date. CiscoLeo 01:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Tanenhaus out of context
In the criticism section, I believe Sam Tanenhaus is taken out of context. His criticism of Bellow is setting up his ultimate point that Bellow is beyond criticism, which is the title of his essay. I think this should be pointed out in the text or the Tanenhaus section should be deleted. Maybe it could be replaced by this section of a Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum that's more critical of Bellow, and finds that Bellow's latest novel Ravelstein was his only worthwhile book. Here's Rosenbaum:

My problem with the pre-Ravelstein Bellow is that he all too often strains too hard to yoke together two somewhat contradictory aspects of his being and style. There's the street-wise Windy City wiseguy and then—as if to show off that the wiseguy has Wisdom—there are the undigested chunks of arcane, not entirely impressive, philosophic thought and speculation. Just to make sure you know his novels have intellectual heft. That the world and the flesh in his prose are both figured and transfigured. ... I know he wants you to see the connection between his marital-problem-plagued Herzog and the world historical views of Hegel, but to me it's always been a heavy-handed juxtaposition rather than a novelistic fusion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by CiscoLeo (talk • contribs) 08:03, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Less-horrifying photo
I know the man has moved on, but does he need to be a living corpse in the photo? Any better? I don't know anything about wikicommons and the like. -- Sammermpc 00:43, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Pass for Version 0.7
This article looks decent enough for our DVD release. I notice it was rated 6 months ago as Start-Class, but it looks B-Class to me at this point. Is there something horrendous that I'm missing, or is it now B-Class? Please comment if you disagree with the B. Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 04:42, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

The Moronic Inferno
This is in the great novel "Humboldt's Gift." Somewhere I read that moronic inferno was coined by some guy in the 1920's, and then later popularized by Saul Bellow. Does anybody know the name of the man who invented this expression? I thought this used to be in the article.hgwb (talk) 06:54, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Untitled
There is an inconsistency of the main page between the text and the summary box. The text gives Bellow's original name as Bello, while the box gives it as Bellows. Which is right? --csa Carole.appel (talk) 00:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced material
It looks like quite a bit of unsourced material was added by user CiscoLeo a while back. It seems good faith but still unsourced. Thank you. --70.181.45.138 (talk) 23:43, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, wasn't that much added, more copy edit, not really sure, no biggie. --70.181.45.138 (talk) 23:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Please check out the source that has been cited for many of the statements in article, the NY Times obituary, clearly a reliable source. (It requires a free subscription for access.) The two statements you questioned are right there in the cited source. --EPadmirateur (talk) 17:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Multiple awards and nominations
In the lead I have revised National Book Award=>National Book Award for Fiction.
 * (quote) "He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and the only writer to have been nominated for it six times."

three-time winner. Bellow alone has won that one three times (source is my manual count); I don't know about the six-time nomination. Neither claim is true about the NBAwards over all categories (Peter Matthiessen, three awards in different categories; Lloyd Alexander, six Children's titles nominated (two winners) --sources are my manual counts), although three and six may be ties for the maximum numbers. --P64 (talk) 18:22, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * six-time finalist. Philip Roth claims two wins and four other finalists, which is correct according to my manual count at our National Book Award for Fiction. I have deleted the count of Bellow' nominations entirely; replaced it with his lifetime Medal from NBF:
 * (quote) "He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times and he received the Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990."
 * fwiw I doubt that either "three other" Fiction finalists or the NBF lifetime Medal warrants mention in the lead. Perhaps Bellow has received enough lifetime honors that all except the Nobel Prize should be relegated to a concluding section. --P64 (talk) 15:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Criticism and controversy
I don't want to make the criticism section into just pure Bellow-knocking, but the quote from Chomsky's review of To Jerusalem and Back (the most detailed version of which was actually in Towards A New Cold War) doesn't really elucidate Chomsky's criticism of the book, which was basically that Bellow was hopelessly sentimental and naive about Israeli society; right now it just looks like Chomsky criticised Bellow for saying what most pro-Israeli Americans think anyway. Likewise, Joan Peters' book does not 'challenge the conventional history of the Palestinian people'; it supports the conventional history of the Palestinian people as it exists in the minds of pro-Israeli Americans (and some Israeli hawks). Peters wrote the book in an attempt to defend the dominant thesis that the Palestinians had no right to the land of Palestine. In other words, I think the nature of Chomsky's criticisms could be clearer, and that Peters' book does not do what this article says it does. Lexo (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Amazing how the ACTA met with such "wide criticism" that the editor was able to find a grand total of one source voicing that supposedly "wide criticism". And to make matters worse, the link provided for that source doesn't even work. As for the above comment, it is pretty hilarious that we are treated to the completely one-sided nonsense of Noam Chomsky, who claims that Bellow is one-sided. 74.138.112.195 (talk) 17:57, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

One reference is to "cite web|url=http://www.campusactivism.org/ |title=Campus Activism |publisher=Campus Activism |accessdate=28 February 2010" but I cannot find the item referred to. Can someone? Thanks, - phi (talk) 10:33, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Examples of Prose
Why is the majority of the "Examples of Prose" section taken up with the words of a critic, not Bellow himself?


 * It's called framing. You can't just stick a lump of prose in there without explaining its significance, its merits or demerits. I felt James Wood was rather better qualified than I am, so I let him have some space.

Concerning the "Canadian Born"
In my experience, when a biographical article introduces someone, they usually identify them by where they were born as well as the nationality in which they spent much of their life. For example, it would not sound unusual to introduce Cassini as a Italian-born, French astronomer.