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LITERATURE & HUMANITIES
Meetings chaired by Peter Rex Valentine unless otherwise stated SAUL BELOW'S 'HERZOG'Betty Suchar, BRLSI Member, on 17 Feb. 2004
Chicago is the city most associated with Bellow. When its mayor, the notorious Mayor Daley, presented Bellow an award for Herzog on behalf of Chicago, a reporter asked him if he had read it? The Mayor responded "I've looked into it." Tonight we are discussing a book the New York Times Book Review called in 1964 "a masterpiece." After World War 1, America, previously so dependent upon European tradition, began to search for an individual identity. F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920's struggled with his obsessive aspiration to write The Great American Novel that would represent the essence of American culture. The quest continued after World War 2 as writers of Bellow's generation eagerly embraced the challenge. Before attempting the GAN, Bellow sought to learn all he could about European literature and thought. What he vigorously opposed was the terminology then being used to describe contemporary writers: provincial, midwestern, Jewish, immigrant, etc. Bellow the novelist wanted no modifying adjectives bestowed on his work. James Atlas, Bellow's most recent biographer, acknowledged that through Bellow's efforts Jewish literature became American literature. Bellow's objective was to convey a universal theme while embodying in his novels much of himself. Consequently, it's useful to understand something of Bellow the man before discussing his novel, Herzog, in some detail. The family name was originally spelled BELO meaning white. When this Russian immigrant family settled in Canada, the name became Bellow. Saul was the only member of his immediate family to be born in the new world and from the beginning his identity was to be different from the rest of his family. In 1915, two years after his parents had settled in Lachine, a suburb of Montreal, Bellow was born. The family struggled to survive and in 1924, the beginning of the Prohibition era, decided their chances of economic success might be better in Chicago. Bellow's father, whom Bellow called a princely immigrant and an ineffectual bootlegger, and his older brothers eagerly embraced the American dream. For Saul the making of money had no appeal and neither did the plans of his mother for him to become a rabbi. "I appeared to be doing nothing but I'm resisting not being what my father and brothers want me to be, " he said. Bellow became a street-wise kid who observed the largely eastern European Jewish community of his Chicago neighbourhood and selected as friends those whose ambition like his own was to lead an intellectual life and to become an American writer. Bellow took pride in his knowledge of Chicago, a city associated with crime, stockyards, noise, wind, smells and energy. Bellow never worried about living in the midwest in fact he considered it an advantage over the east coast for the following reasons:
Bellow attended the University of Chicago during the Great Books era led by Robert Maynard Hutchins and graduated from Northwestern in 1937. Although entering a world still suffering from the depression, Bellow smiled on his misfortune as it meant there was little pressure on him to find employment and he could spend his days in the library. He read mostly Russian authors particularly Dostoevsky as well as Flaubert, Joyce and midwestern writers like Theodore Dreiser. Hired by the Federal Writers' Project, one of FDR's work programmes set up to fight unemployment during the depression, to prepare biographies of contemporary writers provided him with an opportunity to sharpen his critical abilities. Bellow began to look for outlets for his writing. His preferred magazine, The Partisan Review, was America's leading intellectual periodical (1934). Bellow published his first story (Two Morning Monologues) in the May/June l941 issue. From his Russian/Jewish background, Bellow absorbed his parent's 19th century ideals, fundamental moral principles, belief in the dignity of man and the importance of marriage and the family to the fabric of life. At the same time he was attracted to the new ideas of liberation particularly the modern view that man should explore sexual freedom, The conflict between the ideas of his heritage and the ideas advanced by 20th century culture produced a dilemma for Bellow that affected his personal life and his writing. He married 4 times and each marriage failed. Then in l989 he married for a 5th time at the age of 74. Before Herzog, Bellow published 5 novels. Running through all Bellow's novels are elements of his real life and similar themes:
Herzog was published in the United States in 1964 and in the UK in l965. Bellow had previously written Dangling Man (1944), The Victim (1947), The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956) and Henderson The Rain King (1959). Herzog was on the NY Times Best-seller list for 42 weeks selling 142,000 hardback copies. It overtook The Spy Who Came in From the Cold to reach Number 1. A brief outline of the book. Moses E. Herzog, a middle-age Jewish intellectual academic has married twice and had a child by each wife. Now Herzog has learned that his second wife, Madeleine Pontritter or Mady is leaving him for another man--his good friend. The desertion by Mady and the betrayal by his friend Valentine Gersback produce a crisis for Herzog. He associates the desertion by Mady with the earlier rejection by his hasty and impulsive father whom he nevertheless considers a man of dignity who understands the need of tradition and the spiritual. Herzog knows he has failed his father by not becoming a proper Jewish family man. Our protagonist now sees himself as an ungrateful son, a bad husband and an irresponsible father. The book examines with how Herzog handles this crisis. As he assesses his predicament, he finds the situation particularly terrifying because he seems to lack the resources needed to cope. First, because he's chosen to alienate himself from his Jewish heritage and the domestic security of his childhood home and secondly because although theoretically well educated, a Ph. D. recipient from a top university, his higher education hasn't equipped him to deal with women, relationships or extreme despair. Being an intellectual has resulted in his isolation. Herzog believes he is misunderstood and condemned to facing the crisis alone in his large, empty, rundown house in Ludeyville, Massachusetts. He begins his self-analysis haphazardly using the resources of a typical intellectual: words and constructs. He creates an environment not of reality but of philosophic abstractions. He anxiously converts personal issues such as Am I Worthy? into the more removed Is Man Worthy? His reminiscences become intertwined with feverishly written letters to friends, politicians and thinkers none of which he actually sends. His world is very much of the 1960's full of doomsayers, particularly Nietzche, T. S. Eliot and Heidegger, lost belief and lack of metaphysical concerns. Herzog cannot accept these gloomy forecasts. Within his mind he tries to come to terms with the pull of his egocentric personality to enjoy the freedom especially the sexual freedom being advocated in the 1960's environment and what he deeply believes about the fundamental value of human nature which gives significance to life. The difficulty of reconciliation originates from his Jewish heritage which recognises that from relationships arise notions of duty and obligation ie responsibilities which by definition restrict individual freedom. For 5 days Herzog struggles to examine various thoughts and events which caused his despair. Real time serves little narrative purpose. The discussion of events instead relates to Herzog's emotional needs.. Many names emerge as he takes this mental journey: Martin Buber, Berdyaev, Valery, Nietzche, Whitehead, Rilke, Comte, Stevenson, Eisenhower, Kennedy and events like the civil rights movement, the lessening stigma of divorce, the desire of women for a larger role and Vietnam. Basically we have Herzog's perception of the world. The moment of realisation or redemption occurs while Herzog is witnessing his daughter being bathed. In this simple human act, Herzog recognises the human spirit and regains his balance. The novel then continues in reality rather than in contructs. We are lift to judge if Herzog can now manage. How is the story told? Bellow said in the forward to The Closing of the American Mind (1987) by his friend Alan Bloom that Herzog was intended as a comic novel "to provide a caricature, to make fun of my own type." . The tone of the novel ranges from humorous to wry sadness. The use of language is inventive, a blend of the vernacular and the elegant. Irving Howe calls Bellow's style neo-baroque because of the abundant use of grandiose philosophy and slang, peculiar facts and eccentric theories. In other words there is much ornamentation and through it all Bellow's cosmopolitan intellectual nature permeates. I want to read one of Herzog's letters to give you a flavour. (Read letter to Governor Stevenson) In Herzog, two theories or movements predominate: Romanticism and Existentialism. Romanticism. Isaiah Berlin in The Roots of Romanticism said "The notion from which Judaism and Christianity to a large degree sprang is the notion of a family life, the relations of a father and son…" Bellow as a child lived in a family with a strong understanding of fundamental relationships which he accepted as the basic building blocks of human life and the brotherhood of man. He understood that reason could not provide every answer and that Romanticism and Christianity with their elements of feeling offered men hope, direction and comfort which reason alone could not always provide. As Bellow experienced first-hand, man's intellect could be overwhelmed by guilt, anxiety or an uncontrollable will. Romanticism encouraged individuals to create, and to follow personal ideals. In the 19th century these individual ambitions were underpinned by concepts of family duty, obedience, obligation, and various codes of behaviour and religious habits. Romanticism encouraged an overvaluation of self which Christianity put into context. Bellow contends that the modern world now needs a new set of sustaining beliefs because the loss of Christianity has left a void in men's lives and individualism without a counter force. Bellow argues that men now run their lives as businesses or for hedonistic pleasure. Bellow uses his own personal problem as the starting point for finding answers that will have broader applications. During this introspective consciousness, he said "I meant to show how little strength higher education had to offer a troubled man." Bellow is convinced the answer lies in the golden age of his childhood. Bellow was never able to totally repudiate his heritage. He doesn't seek faith in the traditional sense, but he holds to the idea of spiritual capacity. An unexamined life is meaningless for Bellow. Like the American Romantics eg Emerson, Thoreau, Bellow sees self-absorption and the development of an internal source of strength as positive but cannot accept permanent isolation. It is a conflict between personalism and community that he is trying to resolve. 2. Being at University at the time, I can testify that existentialism was extremely prevalent on American university campuses in the 1960's. Bellow rejected many of the ideas of Heidegger, Sartre, and Nietzsche. Clearly after the upheaval of the war there had been a tendency for men to seek the routine. Corporate men accepted conformity in dress and behaviour. Sartre etc. observed and declared the self in retreat. Bellow felt their philosophy of despair was not justified. Bellow rejects Eliot's idea of the modern age as a wasteland and Sartre's view that men are shaped by external conditions and choose to retreat from their environment. Bellow's man accepts solitude only as a way of reaching understanding about how to interact with the external world and to find something larger than himself. In existentialism existence is prior to essence ie subjective man defines himself, is responsible for making himself. Bellow believes essence precedes existence, he believes in a universal truth rather than personalism. Basically Herzog is still controlled by his father's values. Although alienated in many ways from his past, he still says he wants community rather than a life with "I" at the centre. He found the sexual revolution and his own ego or will pulling him away from the type of universal relationship and brotherhood he aspired to reach. Self-centred egotism and materialism he argued was robbing man of transcendental experiences, of the spiritual and of the mysterious. The way to rediscover these lay in the examination of human nature. Bellow believed like Martin Buber who said "God can be beheld in each thing and reached through each pure deed." The turning point in the novel comes when Herzog watches Gersback washing his daughter June, It provides a sense of the significance of life and for Bellow the ultimate resolution for in this act he found the embodiment of the universal. Bellow drew from existentialism a concern with the consciousness of being. This fit in with his focus on self-analysis. But Bellow felt "the moral writer should affirm meaningfulness and show possibilities in an individual's life." That life should have a moral dimension. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said in "The Crack-Up" "The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Herzog had essentially lost the ability to function as he struggled to reconcile opposites. The novel was a plea for resolution of the conflict between egotism and love, a championing of the spiritual over the material. It's a book full of optimism as he rejects the pessimism and negativism he hears all around him and finally demonstrates certain human acts have the power to touch a person and put them in harmony with the larger human community. Once Herzog has this revelation, he can accept ambivalence and in Fitzgerald's terms has "the ability to function." The process of reaching his goal involved applying his mental energy. He sought to refute through the proliferation of ideas the dominance of a single message, "nothingness," being offered by the existentialists and to provide a feast of other possibilities. Significantly, it wasn't words that ultimately brought about his redemption but a human act. I haven't said much about Bellow and women. This is partly because female stereotypes of the l960's have moved on. At the time of writing Herzog, Bellow felt women were better at relationships. In his words "relationships are more of a feminine game. Women seem to be better able to achieve this closeness with the basic element of living." D. H. Lawrence said "each soul is alone and the aloneness of each soul is a double barrier to perfect relationships between two beings." Herzog says he thinks alone because he is lacking in relationship skills. What strength he possessed arose from his childhood belief in the fundamentals of family life, an optimism about life and in an universal essence. Herzog's strategy in the face of despair had been to live with words rather than in the real world. His redemption was achieved from witnessing a modest human act. So the book concludes with Herzog being restored and his final message "not a single word." People who will enjoy Herzog are those who can appreciate Bellow's humour as well as his intellectual gymnastics. People who aspire to human relationships and recognise how difficult they are to achieve. People willing to forsake self-centred freedom for some metaphysical element. Bellow never wrote the Great American Novel. I think he came to realise that the time for consensus of mind, or of spirit or the acceptance of a universal theme had passed. The message he decided to deliver with Herzog was one of hope. Betty Suchar I
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