Saul Bellow RIP
Saul Bellow, the last great American novelist,
passed away Tuesday at the age of 89. He had published a novel as recently as
2000, and rumors from the late nineties suggested there might be another
unfinished novel that he may (or may not) have been working on in his final
years. But whether he was working on anything or not, it would appear that a
major voice of American literature has been silenced for good.
The sad thing about it is that there is no one to
take his place. He was the last of the literary giants, the last of whom one
could say, without exaggeration, that he was a genuinely great writer. With
Bellow's passing, the American literary scene once again reverts to what it was
before Melville and Hawthorne entered the scene: a vast desert of and second and
third-raters. Now Phillip Roth, who, despite his immense talent, has never
written a great novel, who uses technique to hide the fact that he has no depth,
no real insight, no vision of things—all of which Bellow was well endowed
with—now Roth becomes are greatest living novelist,—a back-handed
honor if ever there was one.
Posted: Wed - April 6, 2005 at 05:31 PM