There Is Simply Too Much to Think About
  • Published: 15 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143108047
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $55.00

There Is Simply Too Much to Think About

Collected Nonfiction

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A sweeping collection and a tribute to one of the most influential, daring, and visionary minds of the twentieth century

“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
 
One of the supreme fiction writers of the twentieth century, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow was also deeply insightful in his lesser-known roles as essayist, critic, and lecturer. Gathered together in this stunning compilation, Bellow’s vast range of nonfiction reveals the same wit, daring, and wisdom that distinguish The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift, and other masterly novels. In There Is Simply Too Much to Think About, as in the novels, the twentieth century comes fiercely to life through Bellow’s unrivaled human understanding and singular style.
 
Benjamin Taylor, editor of the acclaimed Saul Bellow: Letters, joins Bellow’s better-known essays to previously uncollected works selected from his criticism, interviews, speeches, and other reflections. Featuring Bellow’s commentary on such fellow writers as Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, and J. D. Salinger, a remembrance of Franklin D. Roosevelt, dispatches from Paris, Spain, and Israel, and indelible portraits of his hometown, Chicago, this collection brings together writing from every phase of his career. There Is Simply Too Much to Think About is a guided tour of the twentieth century—what we did, suffered, survived—conducted by one of modern life’s most inspiring minds.
  • Published: 15 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143108047
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $55.00
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About the author

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was born in Canada but brought to Chicago at the age of nine and educated there. He attended the Universities of Chicago, Northwestern and Wisconsin as well as fitting in a wartime stint in the Merchant Marine.
His first novel - Dangling Man - was published when he was in his twenties. Later novels, The Victim, The Adventures of Augie March, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, The Dean's December and Him With His Foot In His Mouth And Other Stories have brought him innumerable literary grants, awards, prizes, scholarships, fellowships and honours not only in his own country but internationally as well. He is probably the only man to have received an Honorary Degree from both Harvard and Yale in the same year. He has also written plays, short stories, articles for learned journals, been a war correspondent in Israel and held positions in a number of universities in the United States and elsewhere. He speaks four or five languages and has travelled extensively.
In 1976 Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1984 President Mitterand made him a commander of the Legion of Honour.

Also by Saul Bellow

The Actual
Leaving the Yellow House
Mr Sammler's Planet
It All Adds Up
Ravelstein
The Adventures of Augie March
Herzog
See all

Praise for There Is Simply Too Much to Think About

"Rare are the novelists who write nonfiction comparable in strength to their fiction. Now that the bulk of his nonfiction has been drawn together from where the pieces first appeared separately, one sees that, like Henry James and John Updike, the great Saul Bellow was no less the master of the one genre than the other. This book overwhelms one like any artistic treasure newly discovered. When it came to wondrous lucidity in the service of an uncanny literary empathy--to a steady downpour of intelligence--to a direct contact with reality--to a sensibility attuned to the contradictions and the incongruities--he was unrivaled. Like the book of Bellow's correspondence collected several years back by Benjamin Taylor--the same intrepid editor who is the harvester here--There Is Simply Too Much to Think About further extends our sense of Bellow's extremely humane way of experiencing books, people, events, and places. One witnesses his excited mind, in a molten state, running over." -- Philip Roth

"A nonfiction collection celebrates the centennial of Saul Bellow's (1915-2005) birth. . . . Organized by decade, the 57 pieces in this volume, edited by Taylor, trace both Bellow's writing career and his outspoken opinions on politics, literature and intellectual life in America during the second half of the 20th century. . . .This comprehensive collection illuminates Bellow's sense of his own identity and his changing world." -- Kirkus Reviews

"This rich . . . 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.'" -- Publishers Weekly

"Rare are the novelists who write nonfiction comparable in strength to their fiction. Now that the bulk of his nonfiction has been drawn together from where the pieces first appeared separately, one sees that, like Henry James and John Updike, the great Saul Bellow was no less the master of the one genre than the other. This book overwhelms one like any artistic treasure newly discovered. When it came to wondrous lucidity in the service of an uncanny literary empathy--to a steady downpour of intelligence--to a direct contact with reality--to a sensibility attuned to the contradictions and the incongruities--he was unrivaled. Like the book of Bellow's correspondence collected several years back by Benjamin Taylor--the same intrepid editor who is the harvester here--There Is Simply Too Much to Think About further extends our sense of Bellow's extremely humane way of experiencing books, people, events, and places. One witnesses his excited mind, in a molten state, running over." -- Philip Roth

"A nonfiction collection celebrates the centennial of Saul Bellow's (1915-2005) birth. . . . Organized by decade, the 57 pieces in this volume, edited by Taylor, trace both Bellow's writing career and his outspoken opinions on politics, literature and intellectual life in America during the second half of the 20th century. . . .This comprehensive collection illuminates Bellow's sense of his own identity and his changing world." -- Kirkus Reviews

"This rich . . . 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.'" -- Publishers Weekly