There Is Simply Too Much to Think About
Collected Nonfiction
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
“Bellow’s nonfiction has the same strengths as his stories and novels: a dynamic responsiveness to character, place and time (or era) . . . And you wonder—what other highbrow writer, or indeed lowbrow writer has such a reflexive grasp of the street, the machine, the law courts, the rackets?” —Martin Amis, The New York Times Book Review
The year 2015 marks several literary milestones: the centennial of Saul Bellow’s birth, the tenth anniversary of his death, and the publication of Zachary Leader’s much anticipated biography. Bellow, a Nobel Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and the only novelist to receive three National Book awards, has long been regarded as one of America’s most cherished authors. Here, Benjamin Taylor, editor of the acclaimed Saul Bellow: Letters, presents lesser-known aspects of the iconic writer.
Arranged chronologically, this literary time capsule displays the full extent of Bellow’s nonfiction, including criticism, interviews, speeches, and other reflections, tracing his career from his initial success as a novelist until the end of his life. Bringing together six classic pieces with an abundance of previously uncollected material, There Is Simply Too Much to Think About is a powerful reminder not only of Bellow’s genius but also of his enduring place in the western canon and is sure to be widely reviewed and talked about for years to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This rich but unorganized collection of Bellow's reviews, essays, speeches, and interviews illuminate his lifelong exploration of what it means to be an American, a Jew, and a writer. As assembled by Taylor, the pieces succeed in showing that Bellow's calling was, in the novelist's own words, "not to preach but to relate." In the essay "The Writer as Moralist," Bellow rejects the art-for-art's-sake ethos of novelists like Flaubert and Joyce, but stops short of claiming to be a moralist. In "Machines and Storybooks: Literature in the Age of Technology," Bellow examines the dilemma facing writers in American culture, asking, "How do you overcome this noise?" His answer is that storytelling acts like a nervous system, filtering the modern world's abundance of sensation and information and allowing us to find the "quiet of the soul that art demands." Some readers will appreciate that Taylor does not impose his own perspective on the pieces, yet in the absence of any introduction, commentary, or footnotes, those new to Bellow may have the same problem he did: "there is simply too much to think about."
