Back Novels 1970–1982

Saul Bellow: Novels 1970–1982

Mr. Sammler’s Planet | Humboldt’s Gift | The Dean’s December

Edited by James Wood

The Library of America’s landmark Saul Bellow Edition continues with a collection of three mid-career masterpieces.

Overview

Overview

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The third volume of The Library of America edition of Saul Bellow’s complete novels collects three essential works: Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970), Humboldt’s Gift (1975), and The Dean’s December (1982). In each, Bellow shows himself a master of biting social commentary and bold characterization—above all through a trio of unforgettable protagonists. These novels, written in the period of Bellow’s greatest literary and popular acclaim—he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976—are unsparing yet humane, and range widely in their philosophical and cultural concerns. They offer the indispensable voice of a great American raconteur and thinker.

In Mr. Sammler’s Planet, the anarchic forces of late-1960s America are set loose on Artur Sammler, a highly cultured septuagenarian and European émigré who seeks “with God, to be free from the bondage of the ordinary and the finite.” A Holocaust survivor living out his latter days in Manhattan, Sammler endures the city’s everyday barbarism, as shocking as it is casual, and must contend with absurd complications when a manuscript goes missing. Written shortly before the first moon landing, the novel’s dark speculations, filtered through Sammler’s urbane intelligence, are cosmic in scope.

Humboldt’s Gift depicts the deep and troubled friendship between the tormented poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and the renowned writer Charlie Citrine. Humboldt has died in squalid obscurity, but for Citrine the memory of their earlier days persists as counterpoint to a middle age studded with difficulties: a messy divorce, a demanding mistress, and the attentions of a Chicago hoodlum who claims that Charlie has cheated him. Writing of the book’s “rich and suggestive” narrative voice, Sven Birkerts observes, “There is a feeling when reading this novel that a tightly rolled sultan’s carpet has splashed open before our eyes.”

In The Dean’s December, Albert Corde experiences totalitarianism firsthand when he travels to Bucharest to visit his dying mother-in-law. As a college dean in Chicago he has attracted controversy through his journalism and his role in a racially charged murder trial. Alternating between Romanian and American settings, the novel is a profound indictment of official hypocrisy and corruption on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

James Wood, editor of The Library of America’s multi-volume edition of Saul Bellow’s works, is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and the author of How Fiction Works, among other books.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-079-7 1064 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 209 Library of America Series

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Saul Bellow: Novels 1970–1982

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