By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature I think it A Work of Genius. I think it The Work of a Genius. I think it brilliant, splendid, etc. If there is literature (and this proves there is), this is where it's at.
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John Cheever Bellow's incremental sound–or noise–rejects imitation the way the human immune system will reject foreign tissue. There are no part-Bellows or next-generation Bellows; there are no literary descendants.
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Cynthia Ozick Bellow's special appeal is that in his characteristically American way he has managed brilliantly to close the gap between Thomas Mann and Damon Runyon.
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Philip Roth, The New Republic Saul Bellow is probably the greatest writer of American prose of the twentieth-century–where greatest means most abundant, various, precise, rich, lyrical. Reading Bellow is a special way of being alive.
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James Wood, The New Republic No modern writer has better constructed this anxious and very serious comedy, more clearly defined the encounter between thought and the labyrinth, more exactly captured the strange Byzantine, parrot-filled meeting places of modern thought, modern heart, and modern silence.
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Malcolm Bradbury, The Guardian Sharp, erudite, beautifully measured . . . [Bellow] is one of the most gifted chroniclers of the Western world.
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The Times (London) Bellow's prose is poetic, wistful and ironic, rich in humor and packed with ideas . . . If William Faulkner was the most celebrated American novelist of the twentieth century's first half, Saul Bellow has owned the second fifty years.
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Chicago Sun-Times [Saul Bellow is] a powerful and elegant voice reminding us of the essential truths of our human nature.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch Bellow is at home . . .in the hopeful humanism of the heart.
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Chicago Tribune
