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Herzog

by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth (Introduction)

3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 · rating details · 7,458 ratings · 437 reviews

This is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, mourner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him - he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife to his best friend - Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and...more

Paperback, 371 pages

Published February 25th 2003 by Penguin Classics (first published 1964)

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Jul 12, 2009 Dave Russell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels, jewish-literature, worst

Dear Saul,
I'm afraid it's over. I can no longer have you on my favorite authors list. (No, no let go of F. Scott's sleeve. You're only making this harder than it needs to be.) I want to tell you how much I loved Henderson the Rain King. One of my favorites. It was so full of wit and energy. Then I had to go and read this piece of crap, Herzog. Whereas Henderson was an adventure, this was just a big long bitch session. (Hey, give Borges back his cane.) Yes, fine maybe it's me. In fact I'm sure it...more

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Jun 06, 2009 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

During the time I was reading "Herzog," NPR coincidentally ran one of its "You Must Read This" pieces, this one by Jeffrey Eugenides and touting Saul Bellow's novel. In the piece, Eugenides says:

There's a little thing I do when I can't write: When I'm feeling sleepy, when my head is in a fog, I reach across my desk, digging under the piles of unanswered mail, to unearth my copy of "Herzog" by Saul Bellow. And then I open the book — anywhere — and read a paragraph.

It always works. Right away I'm

...more During the time I was reading "Herzog," NPR coincidentally ran one of its "You Must Read This" pieces, this one by Jeffrey Eugenides and touting Saul Bellow's novel. In the piece, Eugenides says:

There's a little thing I do when I can't write: When I'm feeling sleepy, when my head is in a fog, I reach across my desk, digging under the piles of unanswered mail, to unearth my copy of "Herzog" by Saul Bellow. And then I open the book — anywhere — and read a paragraph.

It always works. Right away I'm restored to full alertness and clarity. Style, in literature, has gone out of style. People think it's just ornament. But it's not: The work that goes into a writer's style, the choices that are taken, the cliches that are chucked, represent a refining of thought and feeling into their purest, most intelligent, most moral form.

The danger with great stylists such as Bellow, Eugenides says, is that the style can overshadow the substance. Bellow, he argues, successfully avoids this potential pitfall. "His sentences pack maximum sensual, emotional and intellectual information into minimum space — all the while generating an involving, deeply moving story." Eugenides goes on to say:

The impulse here is to quote. Every single page of "Herzog" teems with jokes, apercus, deep-thinker riffs — little genius moves every other sentence. The impulse is to read the entire book out loud.

I quote Eugenides at length here because I think he hits the nail right on the head. While "Herzog" is the only Bellow book I've read so far (Eugenides, in the New York Times, called it "the best of Bellow’s great novels") I feel I can already say that he's one of the great ones — one of the great 20th century prose stylists, along with such writers as Nabokov. (I single out Nabokov mostly because I just read "Pnin" for the first time a few weeks back, and find him to be another novelist, like Bellow, who truly loves and makes the most of the English language.) Just as I plan to read more Nabokov almost solely for his prose style, I'll be reading more Bellow as well.

So why four stars rather than five for "Herzog?" While Bellow's prose style is wonderful, and serves the story well and the character of Moses Herzog perfectly, the story itself felt a bit thin at times. That caused the novel, even at just 350 pages, to be a bit of a slog to get through at some points. (And I say this even though I was reading the almost 1,500-page "Count of Monte Cristo" at the same time. It'd be an overstatement to say that book seemed shorter than "Herzog," but they perhaps felt close to the same length.)

"Herzog" is nevertheless worth reading by anyone who enjoys great prose stylists — writers who know how to match their style to their story, while avoiding the use of verbal gymnastics simply to show off. Such writers are a rare find.(less)

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Dec 06, 2010 Kemper rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 100, classic-lit, plain-old-fiction

Most of us have one big advantage over rich people and fictional characters when it comes to dealing with our personal issues. For example, look at Moses Herzog in this book. Herzog goes through an ugly divorce, and his circumstances allow him to wallow in his misery and behave erratically for months. I’m sure any of us in similar circumstances would like to put our lives on hold as we picked at our emotional scabs while ignoring our jobs and taking trips across Europe.

However, most of us don’t...more Most of us have one big advantage over rich people and fictional characters when it comes to dealing with our personal issues. For example, look at Moses Herzog in this book. Herzog goes through an ugly divorce, and his circumstances allow him to wallow in his misery and behave erratically for months. I’m sure any of us in similar circumstances would like to put our lives on hold as we picked at our emotional scabs while ignoring our jobs and taking trips across Europe.

However, most of us don’t get that luxury. Those are usually the times when we can least afford to screw up so even though all you really want to do is hide under the covers or drink heavily or eat ice cream or drink heavily while eating ice cream under the covers, we gotta get up and go to work. And pay the bills. And do the laundry. And get the oil changed in the car.

And that’s to our advantage. Because getting over something like a divorce means moving on, even if you’re faking it half the time. Eventually, you’re not faking it anymore, you are actually living your life, and that’s how you finally recover.

Or you just completely lose your shit and end up getting stuck in endless loops inside your own head as you ping pong from one impulsive thought and whim to another until you’re completely unable to tell the good ideas from the bad. Like Moses Herzog. If he would have had to get off his ass and go back to work rather than mooching off his family then he might not have gone cuckoo for Coco-Puffs and come unglued while writing a series of bizarre letters to family, friends, celebrities and dead historical figures.

Yes, I know that Saul Bellow was using Herzog to make a statement about how a modern man viewed his life and society in the ‘60s, and the writing is as good as his reputation. But I just couldn’t get into it, mainly because I wanted someone to give Moses a brisk slap and tell him to grow up and get over himself. I didn’t dislike the character, I actually felt bad for him. That just made me wish even more that Herzog could start pulling his life back together instead of indulging in his self-involved musings.(less)

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Apr 24, 2012 Elisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: preferiti

Ah, la magniloquenza dell'autogiustificazione, pensò Herzog. Che genio sapeva suscitare nei mortali, perfino in quelli con il naso più rosso.

Ah, poveretto!- e Herzog per un momento si unì al mondo obiettivo, e da quell'altezza guardò giù, a se stesso. Anche lui poteva sorridere di Herzog e disprezzarlo. Ma rimaneva sempre il fatto. Io sono Herzog. Io sono obbligato a essere quest'uomo. Nessun'altro può esserlo al posto mio.

Mentre parlavo con una cara amica dell'ultimo film di Woody Allen, all'us...more Ah, la magniloquenza dell'autogiustificazione, pensò Herzog. Che genio sapeva suscitare nei mortali, perfino in quelli con il naso più rosso.

Ah, poveretto!- e Herzog per un momento si unì al mondo obiettivo, e da quell'altezza guardò giù, a se stesso. Anche lui poteva sorridere di Herzog e disprezzarlo. Ma rimaneva sempre il fatto. Io sono Herzog. Io sono obbligato a essere quest'uomo. Nessun'altro può esserlo al posto mio.

Mentre parlavo con una cara amica dell'ultimo film di Woody Allen, all'uscita dal cinema, ho avuto la brillante idea di spostare il discorso su uno dei personaggi (la ragazza tutta pose intellettualoidi). Mi ricorda tantissimo C., dico ridendo sotto i baffi, una nostra vecchia conoscenza. Lei, accogliendo la risata con un sorriso un po' più prudente, mi ha detto che in realtà quel personaggio le ha messo addosso la paura di risultare così agli occhi della gente, nel parlare di arte e letteratura al suo solito modo entusiasta. E' stata una stilettata. La risata mi è morta sulla bocca, e la domanda è arrivata in un secondo: è C. o sono io? Cosa mi impedisce di essere la ragazza tutta pose intellettualoidi durante un discorso? Non cerco forse anche io di calcare il personaggio, di dare lustro al mio ego, oltre a esprimere un interesse? Il mio discorso frivolo puzzava.

Ecco, c'è chi queste domande autoindagatorie le evita del tutto, non andando a fondo nel cercare la sorgente della puzza. C'è, poi, chi ricorre alla servizievole, sempiterna filosofia del "eh-ma-io". Rido di un comportamento altrui e, nel momento in cui mi accorgo di aver fatto la stessa cosa qualche tempo prima, reprimo il tutto con un celere cerotto "eh-ma-io", che sembra gonfio di giustificazioni sensate, ma in realtà è solo fumo negli occhi (i miei, gli altri ci credono solo se spinti da un affetto fiducioso). Eh-ma-io l'ho fatto per una ragione. Eh-ma-io l'ho fatto diversamente. Eh-ma-io sono io.

A contorno di questa serata, arriva Herzog con la sua burbera necessità di scrivere lettere a chi gli pare, per lamentarsi, muovere critiche, specificare, spiegare, fare scacco. Scrive, scrive, e non spedisce mai. Quante volte l'abbiamo fatto? Io sono sempre stata un Herzog. In preda alla rabbia o all'umiliazione, ci organizziamo il discorso del secolo, quello capace di far ammutolire il mondo per un istante, la zia arcigna, la cugina con l'acidità nel sangue (più o meno del nostro?), parenti serpenti ed ex amici che ancora si gloriano di avere avuto la meglio su di noi. Ci dedichiamo cumulativamente ore e ore - giorni, anni - a questi sogni a occhi aperti, a queste opere d'arte. Potiamo e innestiamo in modo da ottenere il meglio e vincere che? Solo un sospiro di sollievo dal mondo, che si disperde in fretta e non lascia odore.

Io non ho potuto fare a meno di affezionarmi a Herzog. Con un piede sul suo io imbizzarrito (ora attraverso la prima persona, ora sbirciando le sue lettere), e con l'altro sulla terra solida accanto a lui, Bellow lo osserva da dentro e da fuori, serpeggiando. I personaggi che si avvicendano tra le pagine intorno a Herzog ci sembrano quasi tutti meschini, falsi, capaci di condotte miserande e di mantenere al contempo una brillantissima faccia tosta. Come quelli che popolano il nostro mondo, d'altronde: gli stronzi ci danzano attorno, e noi li guardiamo dal nostro baluardo di innocenza.

Herzog, dal canto suo, è una corda tesa di emozioni, pronte a vibrare al minimo tocco. La rabbia improvvisa limata dall'autoanalisi, la profonda sofferenza, la cecità di fronte all'inganno, la spietata fede nell'amico più caro, l'amore cagnesco che non scompare dopo una raffica di pugni: è un pagliaccio sofferente. Cede alla tentazione dell'eh-ma-io, ma pian piano aggiusta la rotta e se le dà di santa ragione, da solo. Scopre.
Sarebbe anche il nostro turno, magari.

Una nota a margine: c'è una cosa che adoro nei buoni libri, ed è la capacità di descrivere una sensazione passata sulla pelle di tutti in un modo semplice ma efficace. Ecco, in questi libri le descrizioni diventano leggere come poesie. Herzog è pieno di poesie annidate tra le righe.
Ciò che le rende diverse dai libri cattivi (quelli cattivi per me) è che nessuno ti avvisa. Il timbro del narratore non si gonfia di solennità come se avesse tossito per schiarirsi la voce (ascolta bene, sto per illuminarti), ma lascia scorrere le parole come se parlasse d'altro.
Tu afferrale.(less)

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Mar 03, 2013 Marzieh rasouli rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

هرتزوگ تقریبن تو کتابفروشیا پیدا نمی‌شه. من تو شهر کتاب آپادانا یه نسخه‌شو پیدا کردم که معین بهم گفته بود. شاید هنوز داشته باشه ازش. هرتزوگ ماجرای زندگی مرد محقق و روشنفکریه که زنش به گا داده‌ش. برای همه نامه می نویسه و اشتباهاتشون رو بهشون گوشزد می‌کنه. از رئیس‌جمهور گرفته تا مقاله نویس روزنامه و آدم هایی که سالها از مرگشون می گذره. مهرجویی بعضی از صحنه‌های هامون رو عینن از رو هرتزوگ کپی کرده. مثل اون صحنه‌ای که هامون به زنش غر می‌زنه که اینا چیه رفتی براشون پول دادی. چند تا تیکه‌ی درخشان داره...more

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Nov 23, 2012 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels-english-american-writers

This book has warts – oh, does it have warts…! Like Moses Herzog himself, this book is marred and marked with warts…. But it is a book of genius nonetheless – and not just in parts, but in whole – in scope and in depth….

I rarely write reviews about fiction – I’m not a literary type. One of the very few I’ve written worth reading is that of The Sun Also Rises. Fiction is not amenable to the type of analysis that comes most naturally to me.

Besides, I’ve only been reading fiction, after a long hi...more This book has warts – oh, does it have warts…! Like Moses Herzog himself, this book is marred and marked with warts…. But it is a book of genius nonetheless – and not just in parts, but in whole – in scope and in depth….

I rarely write reviews about fiction – I’m not a literary type. One of the very few I’ve written worth reading is that of The Sun Also Rises. Fiction is not amenable to the type of analysis that comes most naturally to me.

Besides, I’ve only been reading fiction, after a long hiatus, for a year or two -- so really…, what’s to say?

But since most of my GR friends who liked this book have not commented on it; while those who have, mostly don’t like it – I feel I need to say something in defense of poor Herzog.

When I started this, I had the sinking feeling I had when I tried to read Henderson, The Rain King – many, many years ago. Something just didn’t click. Bellow’s names sound (indeed, they *are*) artificial – something that bugs me no end in a book…; and it’s hard to construct a universe in the opening pages, in any event – so that one has doubts early on…. And so, I almost gave up.

But that would have been a great mistake. For this is a large book, a book written ‘in grandi dimensioni’.

Andre Gide (I think it was) commented about Dostoevsky that, in his novels, ideas became flesh. He was thinking of The Brothers Karamazov, as I recall. And indeed, of the postwar American novelists, Bellow perhaps comes closest to this – as his characters not only ‘represent’ ideas, but utterly *live* them, engage them, struggle with them, breath them, exude them… – not only intellectually (though that, of course!), but also as LIVED maxims, as lived DILEMMAS… It is a philosophy of life, he wants… a philosophy FOR life that he seeks – one steeped in our historical moment, of course, because the hallmark of modernity is, after all, its historicity…. And by this enormously ambitious standard, Bellow – and already the Bellow of Herzog – succeeds admirably, brilliantly, convincingly… in bringing modern, urban, cosmopolitan – that is, Jewish intellectuals onto the tragicomic stage that was, perhaps, in one sense – that of the hyper-learned, sensate, quivering, irreverent, sexualized, incandescent, doubting, longing intellectual of late modernity – that of Freud made flesh in the bookstalls of the Upper West Side – the peak and apex of Western modernity -- a modernity, indeed, a West..., now in terminal decline.

Well… what can I say…? I wax nostalgic….

But a rich and wonderful book…. warts and all.
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Oct 19, 2012 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, fiction, make-you-put-a-gun-in-your-mouth

This book set off bad chemical reactions in my brain.

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Aug 11, 2007 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Dear Sirs, The size and number of the rats in Panama City, when I passed through, truly astonished me. I saw one of them sunning himself beside a swimming pool. And another was looking at me from the wainscoting of a restaurant as I was eating fruit salad. Also, on an electric wire which slanted upward into a banana tree, I saw a whole rat-troupe go back and forth, harvesting. They ran the wire twenty times or more without a single collision. My suggestion is that you put birth-control chemical...more

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May 12, 2012 Henry rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm giving it five stars even though i started it three years ago, got to page 162 then gave up...a few weeks ago i gave it another go and i am delighted i did...it was a joy, i think i gave up on it because it is so intensely focussed inside one individual's mind and that mind is convoluted and confused and sometimes on the edge of sanity, but i think one needs to go with it, luxuriate in the style and prose because every page has at least one breathtaking sentence, my version is peppered with...more

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Dec 23, 2007 Courtney rated it 3 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book very much, despite its interesting moments. Moses is a college professor, Jewish, 47-years-old in the 1960s and struggling to come to terms with a shattering divorce. His is philosophical and haunted by his family's past, as well as by the Holocaust, the sexual revolution, and the cold war thread of nuclear annihilation. Despite his intellect, it is his emotions and his urges that drive his actions. He obsessively writes letters he will never send and struggles to get thr...more

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Jun 22, 2012 robxyz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished, on, sep, 3, 2011

Sono partito immaginando che proprio da questo romanzo Mordecai Richler avesse tratto uno spunto per costruire quel personaggio formidabile di Barney Panofsky. L'idea poteva avere senso: autori canadesi, entrambi di origine ebrea, contemporanei, magari si conoscevano pure. Perch� ci sono diverse cose in Herzog che rimandano ad un Barney in embrione, solo che il secondo � mirabilmente meglio riuscito del primo. Bellow realizza una tranche de vie splendida, intessendo una trama descrittiva finissi...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

I should start by saying that I love Bellow. Henderson, Mr Sammler, Seize the Day, Augie: I found each of these exceptional. And then I came to Herzog. Let's just say I would have rated this lower if i weren't previously biased.

So what happened here? For one, the novel is an intellectual minefield full of philosophical musings, rants, incoherences, etc. Sure this is not so bad, there are glimpses of this in Mr Sammlers Planet as well. Most of it goes over my head. A reader doesn't like to feel l...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Oliver Ho rated it 4 of 5 stars

It took me a while to get into this novel, but once I did I really enjoyed it, especially Moses Herzog's hyper-intense, neurotic engagement with nearly everything and everyone he's ever encountered, every book he's ever read, every thought he's ever had. There are a lot of great lines and moments. In particular, I loved this story, which he tells his young daughter, June, while they're waiting in a police station:

“Papa?”

“Yes, June.”

“You didn’t tell me about the most-most.”

For an instant he di

...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: jewish-fiction

Bellow's "Herzog" comes out of what some might consider "the golden age" of Jewish literature--or at least when Jewish literature went mainstream--where putzy alter-egos of the author took center stage to highlight a growing distance from traditional Judaism and (especially in the case of Herzog) a growing distance of most everything. The book chronicles several personifying letters that protagonist and academic Moses Herzog doesn't send to his family and friends and others as he divorces his se...more Bellow's "Herzog" comes out of what some might consider "the golden age" of Jewish literature--or at least when Jewish literature went mainstream--where putzy alter-egos of the author took center stage to highlight a growing distance from traditional Judaism and (especially in the case of Herzog) a growing distance of most everything. The book chronicles several personifying letters that protagonist and academic Moses Herzog doesn't send to his family and friends and others as he divorces his second wife and his career suffers.

In college, I pasted this quote into my journal, which uses clothes to highlight his relationship with Judaism. It gives a family-centered look into American Jewish life and literary psychosis of the mid-20th century.

"At home, he tried on his purchases. The bathing trunks were a little tight. But the oval straw hat pleased him, floating on the hair which still grew thickly at all sides. In it he looked like his father’s cousin Elias Herzog, the flour salesman who had covered the northern Indiana territory for General Mills back in the twenties. Elias with his earnest Americanized clean-shaven face ate hard-boiled eggs an drank prohibition beer—home-brewed Polish piva. He gave the eggs a neat rap on the rail of the porch and peeled them scrupulously. He wore colorful sleeve garters and a skimmer like this one, set on this same head of hair shared also by his father, Rabbi Sandor-Alexander Herzog, who wore a beautiful beard as well, a radiant broad-strung beard that hid the outline of his chin and also the velvet collar of his frock coat. Herzog’s mother had had a weakness for Jews with handsome beards. In her family, too, all the elders had beards that were thick and rich, full of religion. She wanted Moses to become a rabbi and he seemed to himself gruesomely unlike a rabbi now in the trunks and straw hat, his face charged with heavy sadness, foolish utter longing of which a religious life might have purged him. That mouth!—heavy with desire and irreconcilable anger, the straight nose sometimes grim, the dark eyes! And his figure!—the long veins winding in the arms and filling in the hanging hands as an ancient system of greater antiquity than the Jews themselves. The flat-topped hat, a crust of straw, had a red and white band, matching the coat. He removed the tissue paper from the sleeves and put it on, swelling at the stripes. Bare-legged, he looked like a Hindu."(less)

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Dec 05, 2012 Garth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: damn-good-book, fiction, philosophy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Bellow's novel tells the story of Moses Elkanah Herzog, a scholar of Jewish heritage who is losing faith in himself. The novel opens shortly after his divorce from his second wife, Madeleine, who has taken up with his closest friend, Valentine Gersbach. Moses grows paranoid and is convinced that various figures in his life - his doctor, his lawyer, his therapist, and his aunt - conspired in the destruction of his marriage. He begins writing letters to friends, acquaintances, public figures and...more Bellow's novel tells the story of Moses Elkanah Herzog, a scholar of Jewish heritage who is losing faith in himself. The novel opens shortly after his divorce from his second wife, Madeleine, who has taken up with his closest friend, Valentine Gersbach. Moses grows paranoid and is convinced that various figures in his life - his doctor, his lawyer, his therapist, and his aunt - conspired in the destruction of his marriage. He begins writing letters to friends, acquaintances, public figures and philosophers, none of which he sends, in a quest to make sense of his situation.

He spends the first half of the book in transit, first isolating himself in the country home he had bought for Madeleine, before fleeing to New York. There he meets up with his longtime lover, Ramona, but upon finding himself alarmingly susceptible to her charms, departs for Martha's Vineyard with a view of pursuing a less weighted affair in the sympathetic arms of Libbie, a recently married friend. As his ferry nears the port, Moses is overcome with guilt for taking advantage of Libbie's sympathy. He leaves after a short visit and returns to his bed in New York, discovering a letter from the babysitter of his and Madeleine's daughter, June. The letter tells of Valentine locking and abandoning tearful June in the car during a fight with Madeleine. Moses is outraged; the first hints of fatherly responsibility are revived in him.

The following morning, Moses writes more letters, bearing witness to Madeleine's abusive childhood and subsequently maniacal nature. We learn about Moses' cool, organized first wife, Daisy, and a little about his childhood in Montreal. Through writing letters, Moses seems to be rediscovering different parts of himself. He meets Ramona for dinner that night and finds himself overflowing with talk of his problems. Ramona eventually soothes him with sex, though Moses can never shut off his philosophizing brain.

After bidding Ramona goodbye the next morning, Moses elects to take charge of his fatherhood and fight for custody of June, determined to protect her from the seemingly abusive Valentine. He also resolves to reconnect with Marco, his son from his first marriage, after a long period of estrangement. He convinces his divorce lawyer, Simkin, to meet with him at the courthouse to discuss Junie's custody. Like almost everyone else in his life, Simkin alludes to Moses' mental instability. Eventually, however, he agrees. While waiting for Simkin at the courthouse, Moses is disturbed by a number of trials he witnesses, particularly one involving a mother accused of murdering her child. He experiences a painful flashback he has swallowed since his youth - of being raped on the street.

Alive with even more familial emotion, Moses travels to Chicago to visit the house of his ex-wife, Madeleine. On the way, he visits his father's old house and his widow, Taube, with whom he reminisces about his youth. Moses takes his father's old pistol, with which he himself was once threatened. He has a mind to kill Madeleine and Gersbach. He finds himself unable, however, to go through with it, having witnessed through the windows of Madeleine's home what a tender, gentle, loving stepfather Valentine is. He realizes that his father never meant to shoot him either and only meant to threaten him. He regains some faith in humanity.

He stays with a friend, Asphalter, to whom he addressed a letter earlier in the book and who was his informant on Madeleine's affair. Asphalter is in bereavement for his late monkey, whom he cherished. He describes for Moses the therapeutic effect of simulating one's own death and admitting to oneself the whole truth of what one feels for others. This warms Moses' heart. Asphalter arranges for Moses a meeting with his daughter to take place the next day.

Moses and June are enjoying a delightful outing when they suddenly get into a car crash. The police find Moses' unlicensed pistol and take him in for questioning. Madeleine comes by to pick up June and intimates Moses' dangerous insanity. Moses frightens her away. He is placed in jail until his brother, Will, comes to bail him out, whereupon he moves back out to the country house in Ludeyville. Here he writes and sends a few letters; for the first time in the novel, his voice is joyful. He resists his sibling's concerned urges for hospitalization, and instead sets about fixing up the house. He reunites with Ramona, and the novel ends as he is preparing dinner for her. He finally feels at this moment that he no longer needs to write. He is cured.

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Aug 05, 2012 Marc L rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-literature

Dit is een moeilijke om te beoordelen. Moses Herzog is een typische (joodse) intellectueel die absoluut niet kan omgaan met de gewone dingen van het leven. Na twee scheidingen wordt hij hard met de realiteit geconfronteerd. Hij probeert zijn midlifecrisis en de opkomende waanzin te bestrijden door tientallen brieven te schrijven naar kennissen, maar ook naar beroemdheden. Na veel omzwervingen vindt hij, via een nieuwe vrouw en de eenzame contemplatie van de natuur, min of meer vrede met zichzelf...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Liz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-s-top-one-hundred

Saul Bellow, had got to be one of the humorous authors, and his novels prove it.
Professor Herzog has lived a very strange life, and in writing hilarious letters to his companions, lovers and family his life really only gets funnier.

Favorite Quotes:

Crumbs of decency--- all that we paupers can spare one another.

The dream of man's heart, however much we may distrust and resent it, is that life may complete itself in significant pattern. Some incomprehensible way. Before death. Not irrationally but...more

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Feb 20, 2012 Carmen Neke rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

El nombre del protagonista de la novela, Mozes Elkanah Herzog, está tomado de un personaje secundario del Ulises de James Joyce. Y el propio personaje, intelectual de segunda categoría burlado y abandonado por su mujer, que anda meditando por la vida sin llegar a entrar en acción, también recuerda bastante a la figura de Leopold Bloom. Por suerte las divagaciones de Herzog están escritas en un lenguaje mucho más comprensible que las de Bloom.
La narración del libro se centra en la figura de Herzo...more El nombre del protagonista de la novela, Mozes Elkanah Herzog, está tomado de un personaje secundario del Ulises de James Joyce. Y el propio personaje, intelectual de segunda categoría burlado y abandonado por su mujer, que anda meditando por la vida sin llegar a entrar en acción, también recuerda bastante a la figura de Leopold Bloom. Por suerte las divagaciones de Herzog están escritas en un lenguaje mucho más comprensible que las de Bloom.
La narración del libro se centra en la figura de Herzog y vemos todos los sucesos desde su punto de vista, a pesar de ser una narración en tercera persona. Pero este narrador nos presenta solamente la imagen que Herzog ofrece al mundo, en sus cartas y en las conversaciones que rememora saldrán a relucir aspectos de su historia y su personalidad que no eran tan aparentes a primera vista. Las cartas que Herzog escribe a los seres más variopintos funcionan a modo de monólogos interiores del personaje, donde éste va revelando sus pensamientos e ideas. Y los diálogos con familiares y amigos sirven para introducir los puntos de vista de terceras personas implicadas en la historia, que muchas veces contradicen las afirmaciones que había hecho Herzog con anterioridad y obligan al lector a replantearse la situación. De esta manera, poco a poco se va desvelando la verdad de los hechos, si es que tal cosa existe. Herzog se ve a sí mismo como la víctima de una mujer fría y calculadora y de su amante, pero también admite haber sido un hombre rudo, violento, egoísta y exigente con esa mujer a la que ahora culpa de todas sus desgracias.
Moses Herzog no es un personaje por el que se sienta una especial simpatía, pero es apasionante ver cómo va desgranando sus miserias vitales ante nuestros ojos. Hay mucho humor en esta novela, sobre todo en los comentarios al margen que hace Herzog al criticar a alguno de sus familiares, amigos o conocidos, o cuando se critica a él mismo (cosa que hace con la misma frecuencia, hay que reconocerle).
Saul Bellow demuestra en Herzog su extraordinario dominio del lenguaje, esta novela está escrita en un lenguaje preciso y precioso, muy estudiado y bien efectivo. Cada palabra está en su sitio y ha sido escogida por su precisión significativa. El libro es una verdadera obra maestra, para ser leído en una buena traducción.
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Jan 03, 2012 Brant Heflin rated it 4 of 5 stars

First, anyone reading this review should take into account that it is my first review of any book I have read. This is the second book by Saul Bellow that I have taken on. I say taken on, because it is a challenge to read as the hero of the book is a highly educated but troubled soul. Moses Herzog starts the book with the thought "If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me." Almost all accounts of his life are in his head as Herzog struggles to find himself among his past relationship turmoi...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Eleanor rated it 4 of 5 stars

"How do you say blond little cushioned knuckles in French?"
"What do women really want? They eat green salad and drink human blood."
"'Do you think that any Christian in the twentieth century has the right to speak of Jewish Pharisees? From a Jewish standpoint, you know, this hasn't been one of your best periods.'"
"It's so fascinating that hatred should be so personal as to be almost loving. The knife and the wound aching for each other."
Happiness was an absurd and harmful idea, unless it was real...more "How do you say blond little cushioned knuckles in French?"
"What do women really want? They eat green salad and drink human blood."
"'Do you think that any Christian in the twentieth century has the right to speak of Jewish Pharisees? From a Jewish standpoint, you know, this hasn't been one of your best periods.'"
"It's so fascinating that hatred should be so personal as to be almost loving. The knife and the wound aching for each other."
Happiness was an absurd and harmful idea, unless it was really comprehensive."
"The whole feeling-sand-sensation market has shot up--shock, scandal priced out of range for the average man. You have to do more than take a little gas, or slash the wrists. Pot? Zero! Daisy chains? Nothing! Debauchery? A museum word from prelibidinous times! THe day is fast approaching--Herzog in his editorial state--when only proof that you are despairing will entitle you to the vote, instead of the means test, the poll tax, the literacy exam. You must be forlorn. Former vices now healthy measures."
"She was a clever woman, and even better, a dear woman. She had a good heart. And she had on black lace underpants. He knew she did."
"'He made his great pitch for you, and failed, so now he thinks he's under a curse and wants to kill himself. He'd be better off at home, on his sofa, drinking a can of beer, watching Perry Mason.'"
""Dear Dr. Morgenfruh, Latest intelligence from teh Olduvai Gorge in East Africa gives grounds to suppose that man did not descend from a peaceful, arboreal ape, but from a carnivorous, terrestrial type, a beast that hunted in packs and crushed the skulls of prey with a club or femoral bone."
"A curious result of the increase of historical consciousness is that people thik that explanation is a necessity of survival. They have to explain their condition. And if the unexplained life is not worth living, the explained life is unbearable, too."

This to balance out my overall and unfair review..that reading this is like pulling teeth...case in point...: "Thoughts not casually connected were said by you [Spinoza] to cause pain. I find that is indeed the case. Random association, when the intellect is passive, is a form of bondage. Or rather, every form of bondage is possible then. It may interest you to know that in the twentieth century random association is believed to yield up the deepest secrets of the psyche."
What? brilliant? mad ramblings? I don't know, but there are pages and pages of it, and it makes my head swim..(less)

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Mar 08, 2011 monique rated it 3 of 5 stars

My dad and at least one of my sisters likes this book a lot - this was my primary inspiration for giving it a whirl, considering that as a rule, I find books about philosophy to be pretty inane. Not only do endless references to Hobbes, Kant, etc. require the reader to be well versed in an inordinately dull subject matter, but also the following explanations simply tell me nothing that I don't know already. I have to wonder, does any mature person with half a brain really get a "life lesson" fro...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Charles Matthews rated it 5 of 5 stars

Considering that it's a novel with nothing you could call a plot, Herzog is an inexhaustible book. It touches on elemental human relationships (sexual, familial, social) and spins off into lofty philosophical debates, reflections on civilization, on the meaning of death, and on the American experience. It tempts a reader into close analysis while at the same time mocking such analysis. Moses Herzog is at once the most meticulously observed of characters and the most impossible to grasp as a whol...more Considering that it's a novel with nothing you could call a plot, Herzog is an inexhaustible book. It touches on elemental human relationships (sexual, familial, social) and spins off into lofty philosophical debates, reflections on civilization, on the meaning of death, and on the American experience. It tempts a reader into close analysis while at the same time mocking such analysis. Moses Herzog is at once the most meticulously observed of characters and the most impossible to grasp as a whole.

It's a third-person narrative whose voice is clearly that of the person whose story is being told. The device isn't used for a coy ironic distancing, as in The Education of Henry Adams, but rather it grows out of the kind of fractured consciousness that is Herzog's. He feels his plight -- the cuckolded husband -- and feels it deeply, but at the same time he wants to observe it from the outside, to watch himself in the act of being "a loving but bad father" to his children, "an ungrateful child" to his parents, "affectionate but remote" to his siblings. "With his friends, an egotist. With love, lazy. With brightness, dull. With power, passive. With his own soul, evasive." He is, in short, a character in a novel that he is writing about himself.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, a letter he is writing to himself. One way of approaching Herzog is to treat it as an epistolary novel, in which Herzog, whose current intellectual pastime is to write letters to other people, is also writing this very long letter to himself about how he has wound up where he is. Which brings up a key problem: How do we know that Herzog is being honest with us -- or with himself? How do we know that his ex-wife, Madeleine, is the conniving shrew that he presents to us? Or that Valentine Gersbach is the oily opportunist that Herzog thinks him to be?

The truth is, we don't. Other people in the novel seem less perturbed by Herzog's plight, by Madeleine's and Gersbach's actions, than he is. This includes Gersbach's wife, Phoebe, who claims that Valentine and Madeleine are not having an affair. Is Herzog self-deluded? Everyone thinks he's crazy, and he has come to accept the fact that he might be. He is certainly unstable. His career is in a shambles, and two failed marriages have left him so wary of women that he can't trust his own instincts when it comes to his latest amour, Ramona, who seems to accept him for what he is. And when he finally starts to take some sort of action, it's utterly foolish and self-destructive. He is saved from its potentially disastrous consequences by his own ineptness.

Which is only to say that Herzog is like Leopold Bloom, a kind of Everyman. Like Bloom, he is a misfit who desperately wants to fit, a cuckold, a wanderer, a dreamer, and Herzog, like Ulysses, ends on a note that is positive enough to provoke hope, but also ambiguous enough to allow that hope to be dashed. Like the narrator of In Search of Lost Time, he is an intellectual with the potential to liberate himself from the past while at the same time so aware of his past that he becomes inextricably tied to it.

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Sep 18, 2010 Thurston Hunger rated it 3 of 5 stars

Is the Bellow recipe powerful writing wrapped around a nearly powerless main character? I've only read this and "Seize the Day," so I'll have to check out "Augie March" next, but I feel a pattern emerging. And it seems it may be one with autobiographical roots.

While I enjoy inner monologue/dialogue to a degree, this book strongly places you in the mind of Moses Herzog, which remains mostly sharp while his life is disintegrating. My favorite sections were typically the letters, often letters not...more Is the Bellow recipe powerful writing wrapped around a nearly powerless main character? I've only read this and "Seize the Day," so I'll have to check out "Augie March" next, but I feel a pattern emerging. And it seems it may be one with autobiographical roots.

While I enjoy inner monologue/dialogue to a degree, this book strongly places you in the mind of Moses Herzog, which remains mostly sharp while his life is disintegrating. My favorite sections were typically the letters, often letters not sent, and thus underscoring his impotency.

And yet, this mess of a man....like the main character in McEwan's "Solar" which I recently read and felt parallels with here...this mess of a man we are told is a magnet for women. Ramona to me seems to be some sort of perfect lover, and antidote for the madness that Madeleine incites in Herzog, and yet for all its complexity, this novel (rightly?) sees that relationship as the rebound one.

Perhaps Herzog is the "love me for my mind" prototype male? But I don't see a lot of evidence in captivity ;>

This read was a bit of a slog for me, not because its prose was impenetrable, but just for my lack of comfort in such constant introspection (to say nothing of examining/obsessing on a collapsed relationship). For me, a psychiatrist's couch would be a bed of nails, give me Bowles with his outward looking conduit over this.

Glancing back through now I do find sections of writing that fascinate.
Simkin riffs on big corporations and the world of perqs and deductions and institutional espionage, but within a page or two we are back to Herzog's heart cuckolded by Valentin. A few more pages and some comments about Jimmy Hoffa appearing on a TV show that intrigued me, but that dissipates into bitter mooning over Madeleine again.

I will say that the pace of the novel picks up at some point past halfway, in case you are mired in the mopey beginning. And the novel is rich with ideas, not just the unspent, unsent letters...but even the notion that over its few days, while Herzog seems mentally unable to shake his neurotic paralysis, he's traveling by nearly all means available. Plane, train, and car...interesting that when he pilots his own travels is when he hits trouble in the form of another car.

Anyways, I found the book less moving, but certainly worth the read.

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May 17, 2010 Rowland Bismark rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Internal Journey of Modern Man

Saul Bellow reacts to the horrors of history in a different way than do some other writers. The Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War caused widespread disillusionment, which was expressed by great artists such as the poet T.S. Eliot, who wrote the masterpiece "The Wasteland." Moses acknowledges the facts of war and death, but he does not become alienated as a result of them. Moses remembers thinking of the Holocaust when he went to P...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bellow is a real writer about real people, about their character and lives. I read him first after hearing Salman Rushdie say in a radio interview that The Adventures of Augie March was the best novel in English.

From the book:

He went on taking stock, lying face down on the sofa. Was he a clever man or an idiot? Well, he could not at this time claim to be clever. He might once have had the makings of a clever character, but he had chosen to be dreamy instead, and the sharpies cleaned him out. Wh

...more Bellow is a real writer about real people, about their character and lives. I read him first after hearing Salman Rushdie say in a radio interview that The Adventures of Augie March was the best novel in English.

From the book:

He went on taking stock, lying face down on the sofa. Was he a clever man or an idiot? Well, he could not at this time claim to be clever. He might once have had the makings of a clever character, but he had chosen to be dreamy instead, and the sharpies cleaned him out. What more? He was losing his hair. He read the ads of the Thomas Scalp Specialists with the exaggerated scepticism of a man whose craving to believe was deep, desperate. Scalp Experts! So … he was a formerly handsome man. His face revealed what a beating he had taken. But he had asked to be beaten too, and had lent his attackers strength. That brought him to consider his character. What sort of character was it? Well, in the modern vocabulary, it was narcissistic; it was masochistic; it was anachronistic. His clinical picture was depressive — not the severest type; not a manic depressive. There were worse cripples around. If you believed, as everyone nowadays apparently did, that man was the sick animal, then was he even spectacularly sick, exceptionally blind, extraordinarily degraded? No. Was he intelligent? His intellect would have been more effective if he had had an aggressive paranoid character, eager for power. He was jealous but not exceptionally competitive, not a true paranoiac. And what about his learning? — He was obliged to admit, now, that he was not much of a professor, either. Oh, he was earnest, he had a certain large, immature sincerity, but he might never succeed in becoming systematic. He had made a brilliant start in his Ph. D. thesis — The State of nature in 17th and 18th Century English and French Political Philosophy. He had to his credit also several articles and a book, Romanticism and Christianity. But the rest of his ambitious projects had dried up, one after another. On the strength of his early successes he had never had difficulty in finding jobs and obtaining research grants. The Narragansett corporation had paid him fifteen thousand dollars over a number of years to continue his studies in Romanticism. The results lay in the closet, in an old valise — eight hundred pages of chaotic argument which had never found its focus. It was painful to think about.

On the floor beside him were pieces of paper, and he occasionally leaned down to write.

He now set down, Not that long disease, my life, but that long convalescence, my life. The liberal-bourgeois revision, the illusion of improvement, the poison of hope.

He thought awhile of Mithridates, whose system learned to thrive on poison. He cheated his assassins, who made the mistake of using small doses, and was pickled, not destroyed.

Tutto fa brodo.

Resuming his self-examination, he admitted that he had been a bad husband — twice. Daisy, his first wife, he had treated miserably. Madeleine, his second, had tried to do him in. To his son and his daughter he was a loving but bad father. To his own parents he had been an ungrateful child. To his country, an indifferent citizen. To his brothers and his sister, affectionate but remote. With his friends, an egotist. With love, lazy. With brightness, dull. With power, passive. With his own soul, evasive.

Satisfied with his own severity, positively enjoying the hardness and factual rigour of his judgment, he lay on his sofa, his arms rising behind him, his legs extended without aim.

But how charming we remain, nonwithstanding.

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Jan 16, 2010 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

Herzog is Saul Bellow's satire of the serious minded individual (and in a sense himself). The title character Moses E. Herzog has lived a life quite similar to Bellow's own, having origins in the Jewish slums of Quebec and Chicago. The arc of his life has risen on academic accolades and fallen on romantic foibles. We meet Herzog on a narcissistic plateau of simultaneous self-doubt and monomania that essentially leaves his hands tied-up in writing vindictive missives--letters, we learn, that are...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2002

Lots of writers want to be the kind of writer you'd want to read if there were no plot, at least judging by the MSs I read all day. They think their sentences are so gemlike in their perfection, their observations so irresistibly familiar, their descriptions so apt that people will be willing to follow them for 400 pp just because. Actually, though, there are almost no writers that good. Saul Bellow, in an unpretentious and simple way, is one of them and that's why I love his stuff. (John Barth...more

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Oct 22, 2009 Katelyn marked it as to-read

want to read b/c I read this excerpt:

[H:]e was quivering. And why? Because he let the entire world press upon him. For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers with made th...more

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Aug 04, 2011 mampdx added it

FINALLY made it through, and actually enjoyed the final third, but it was tough sledding indeed. Found it so hard to empathize with the protagonist - I just wanted to slap him upside the head (I mean, really, your wife tells you she's retained your friend as her divorce attorney...and you go seek sanctuary with *that* person, who proceeds to manipulate you out of custody rights and assets?!). Consensus of my book club is that we were not eager to tackle more Bellow (though I've heard that early...more

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Nov 05, 2010 Natalie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dense, well-written but hard to read because I could never seem to read more than 3-7 pages at a time because I am so busy. But the subject and depth were good therapy. The main character, Moses Herzog has his life falling apart around him: his wife left him for his neighbor and friend, he can't seem to work (teaching and writing), he has no ability to handle money, cook for himself, or figure out how to get out from under the manipulation of those around him. We also get flashbacks of his terri...more

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About Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was pu...more Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944, and his second, The Victim, in 1947. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began The Adventures of Augie March,, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. Later books include Seize The Day (1956), Henderson The Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Humboldt's Gift (1975), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Both Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet were awarded the National Book Award for fiction. Mr. Bellow's first non-fiction work, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, published on October 25,1976, is his personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975.

In 1965 Mr. Bellow was awarded the International Literary Prize for Herzog, becoming the first American to receive the prize. In January 1968 the Republic of France awarded him the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by that nation to non-citizens, and in March 1968 he received the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish literature", and in November 1976 he was awarded the America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award was made to a literary personage.

A playwright as well as a novelist, Saul Bellow was the author of The Last Analysis and of three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He contributed fiction to Partisan Review, Playboy, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Esquire, and to literary quarterlies. His criticism appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Horizon, Encounter, The New Republic, The New Leader, and elsewhere. During the 1967 Arab-lsraeli conflict, he served as a war correspondent for Newsday. He taught at Bard College, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota, and was a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.(less)

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“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.” — 1,270 people liked it

“If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.” — 48 people liked it

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