The Collected Stories Of Saul Bellow

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"Simply the best writer we have." (The New York Times Book Review)Viking's publication of Saul Bellow's most recent novel, Ravelstein, was an event that garnered unanimous critical acclaim and placed its author back in the spotlight as one of America's literary treasures. Now, for the first time ever, here is a collection of shorter works chosen by Bellow himself: favorite stories that follow the arc of his distinguished career. Collected Fiction gathers together stories from Mosby's Memoirs, Him with His Foot in His Mouth, and Something to Remember Me By, as well as an early story that to date has appeared only in Esquire magazine. This volume contains a preface by Bellow's wife, Janis, and an introduction by James Wood and includes celebrated stories such as "Leaving the Yellow House" and "What Kind of Day Did You Have?" and the novella The Bellarosa Connection. Throughout, Bellow's trademark theme of self-awakening, his stunning ability to re-create a bygone Chicago, and his unique comic wisdom are magnificently illustrated. This collection is both a handsome anthology Bellow's avid readers will treasure and a superb introduction to those unacquainted with his genius.Amazon.com ReviewSaul Bellow's Collected Stories, handpicked by the author, display the depth of character and acumen of the Nobel laureate's narrative powers. While he has garnered acclaim as a novelist, Bellow's shorter works prove equally strong. Primarily set in a sepia-toned Chicago, characters (mostly men) deal with family issues, desires, memories, and failings--often arriving at humorous if not comic situations. In the process, these quirky and wholly real characters examine human nature.The narrative is straightforward, with deftly handled shifts in time, and the prose is concise, sometimes pithy, with equal parts humor and grace. In "Looking for Mr. Green," Bellow describes a relief worker sized up by tenants: "They must have realized that he was not a college boy employed afternoons by a bill collector, trying foxily to pass for a relief clerk, recognized that he was an older man who knew himself what need was, who had more than an average seasoning in hardship. It was evident enough if you looked at the marks under his eyes and at the sides of his mouth." This collection should appeal both to those familiar with Bellow's work and to those seeking an introduction. --Michael FerchFrom Publishers WeeklyThis collection of 13 of Bellow's (long) short stories, many of them classics, demonstrates the Nobel Prize winner's formidable literary presence. His characters have prospered in the American century, and now, in their old age, are beginning to doubt its endurance. Bellow likes to take a man at "the top of his field" and, from that perspective, survey the discontents of civilization. Some - like Victor Wulpy in "What Kind of Day Did You Have?" - refuse to retire and take mistresses in their mid-70s. Others, like Willis Mosby, the foreign relations guru writing his mandarin's memoirs in Oaxaca, consider retirement another chance to score points. Bellow's women still rise to the top as they did in the 1950s - by association with men. In "A Theft," Clara Velde, who has successfully formed her own journalism agency, still defines herself in terms of her husbands. Generally, these interior dramas are saturated with the realistic and metaphorical atmosphere of Chicago. Yet the crowning jewel here is "The Bellarosa Connection," in which the unnamed narrator is a retired Philadelphia memory expert who reflects on his friendship with a man still obsessed with his escape from WWII Europe and the legendary showbiz promoter who helped him. Bellow's stories spread rather than march in straight lines, like memory itself, giving a kinesthetic sense of a stained, bamboozled and fundamentally comic culture. A preface by the writer's wife, Janis, an introduction by essayist James Woods and an afterword by Bellow himself, in which he makes a prescient case for short fiction in this time of "noisy frantic monstrous agglomeration," add to the collection's appeal. (Nov. 1). Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.