Matthew Rubio’s Reviews > It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future > Status Update

Can anyone today hold a torch near Bellow’s intellect, his humor? Every essay is epiphanic, ecstatic, an elegy to the total corruption of any sense of compelling culture these days. Bellow’s brand of optimism is perverse, certainly. You are supposed to absorb literature into your soul, live by it. Bellow, in this collection, gives us something to live by.