THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: Saul Bellow's Herzog

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit grandhotelabyss.substack.com

Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the ninth in a 15-week sequence on the modern American novel. It concerns Herzog by Saul Bellow. We consider Bellow’s biography and the controversies occasioned by his use of his biography in his fiction, including recent allegations of domestic violence related to Herzog itself; we appreciate Bellow’s technical achievement in this latter-day modernist novel of ideas, its popular success, and pop-culture successors; we grapple with the novel’s portrayal of men and women, querying the source of its misogyny and masculine anxiety; we explore its portrayal of Jewish identity and class and cultural mobility; we articulate its philosophical argument about the nature of modernity, the legacy of Romanticism, and the failure of the radical and reactionary European intelligentsia from Herzog-Bellow’s humanistic American perspective; and more. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall: