Herzog (novel)
Encyclopedia
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
. Letters from the protagonist constitute much of the text.
Herzog won the 1965 National Book Award for Fiction and the The Prix International
Prix Formentor
The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...
. Time Magazine included the novel in its All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels.
Plot summary
Herzog is a novel set in 1964, in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and is about the midlife crisis
Midlife Crisis
"Midlife Crisis" is a song by the American rock band Faith No More. It was released on May 26, 1992 as the first single from their fourth album, Angel Dust...
of a Jewish man named Moses E. Herzog. At the age of forty-seven, he is just emerging from his second divorce, this one particularly acrimonious. He has two children, one by each wife, who are growing up without him present. His career as a writer and as an academic has floundered. He is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but finds himself running away from commitment.
Herzog's second marriage, to the demanding, manipulative Madeleine, has recently ended in a humiliating fashion. Madeleine convinced Moses to move her and their daughter Junie to Chicago, and to arrange for their best friends, Valentine and Phoebe Gersbach, to move as well, securing a solid job for Valentine. However, the plans were all a ruse, as Madeleine and Valentine were carrying on an affair behind Moses's back, and shortly after arriving in Chicago, Madeleine throws Herzog out, securing a restraining order (of sorts) against him, and attempting to have him committed to an asylum.
Herzog spends much of his time mentally writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures. The recipients may be dead, and Herzog has often never met these people. The one common thread is that Herzog is always expressing disappointment, either his own in the failings of others or their words, or apologizing for the way he has disappointed others.
The novel opens with Herzog in his house in Ludeyville, a town in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. He is contemplating returning to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to see Ramona, but instead flees to Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
to visit some friends. He arrives at their house, but writes a note - this one an actual note - saying that he has to leave:
- "Not able to stand kindness at this time. Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition. Unfinished business."
He heads to New York to start trying to finish that business, including regaining custody of his daughter, Junie. After spending a night with Ramona, he heads to the courthouse to meet his lawyer to discuss his plans, and ends up witnessing a series of tragicomic court hearings, including one where a woman is charged with beating her three-year-old to death by flinging him against a wall. Moses, already distraught after receiving a letter from Junie's babysitter about an incident where Valentine locked Junie in the car while he and Madeleine argued inside the house, heads to Chicago. He goes to his stepmother's house and picks up an antique pistol with two bullets in it, forming a vague plan of killing Madeleine and Valentine and running off with Junie.
The plan goes awry when he sees Valentine giving Junie a bath and realizes that Junie is in no danger. The next day, after taking his daughter to the aquarium, Herzog is in a car accident and ends up charged with possession of a loaded weapon. His brother, the rational Will, picks him up and tries to get him back on his feet. Herzog heads to Ludeyville, where his brother meets him and tries to convince him to check himself into an institution. But Herzog, who had previously considered doing just that, is now coming to terms with his life. Ramona comes up to join him for a night - much to Will's surprise - and Herzog begins making plans to fix up the house, which, like his life, needs repair but is still structurally sound. Herzog closes by saying that he doesn't need to write any more letters.
Through the flashbacks that litter the novel, other critical details of Herzog's life come to light, including his marriage to the stable Daisy and the existence of their son, Marco; the life of Herzog's father, a failure at every job he tried; and Herzog's sexual molestation by a stranger on a street in Montreal.
Style
"People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas", Bellow once wrote. "We live among ideas much more than we live in nature." Herzog is such a person. In fact, he considers his addiction to ideas to be his greatest virtue. And, it should be noted, Herzog's ideas, as expressed in his letters, are brilliant and seductive; "After Herzog", the New York Times book reviewer exulted, "no writer need pretend in his fiction that his education stopped in the eighth grade." But, said Bellow in an interview, Herzog "comes to realize at last that what he considers his intellectual 'privilege' has proved to be another form of bondage." It is only when he has loosened this bondage and gotten in touch with the "primordial person" who exists outside this ideology that Herzog can "achieve the experience of authentic being."The story is told entirely from Herzog's point of view. But more than that. "We are", as Irving Howe wrote, "made captive in the world of Herzog... the consciousness of the character forms the enclosing medium of the novel." The beauty of the novel lies in this dissection of Herzog's mind. In typical Bellow style, the descriptions of characters' emotions and physical features are rich in wit and energy.
Herzog's relationships are the central theme of the novel, not just with women and friends, but also society and himself. Herzog's own thoughts and thought processes are laid bare in the letters he writes.
As the novel progresses, the letters (represented in italics) become fewer and fewer. This seems to mirror the healing of the narrator's mind, as his attention turns from his inner struggles and the intellectual ideas that fascinate him towards the real world outside and the real options offered by his current situation – not having to be a scholar, the possibility of starting afresh with Ramona, and so on. In other words, the psychological clarification that is taking place at the level of content is reflected stylistically in the movement from a predominantly epistolary mode towards a more linearly organized narrative.
Autobiographical elements
The character of Herzog in many ways echoes a fictionalized Saul Bellow. Similarities between Herzog and Bellow include:- Both grew up in CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. - Both are Jewish.
- Both have parents who had emigrated from RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
(St. Petersburg). - Both lived in ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
for significant periods of time. - Both were divorceDivorceDivorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
d twice (at the time of writing; Bellow would go on to divorce four of his five wives.) - Both were sons of bootleggerRum-runningRum-running, also known as bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law...
fathers. - They are the same age.
- The character of Valentine Gersbach is based on Jack Ludwig, a long-time friend of Bellow who had an affair with Bellow's second wife, Sondra.
Asked about these similarities, Bellow said "I don't know that that sort of thing is really relevant. I mean, it's a curiosity about reality which is impure, let's put it that way. Let's both be bigger than that."
Trivia
- In the Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
novel Stanley and the Women (1984), Stanley's son Steve reads a copy of Herzog and abruptly tears it up. - Ian McEwanIan McEwanIan Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
begins his 2005 novel SaturdaySaturday (novel)Saturday is a novel by Ian McEwan set in Fitzrovia, London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, during a large demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the...
with an extended epigraph from Herzog. - The middle name E. in Moses E. Herzog stands for Elkanah
- A peripheral character named Moses Herzog appears in James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's novel UlyssesUlysses (novel)Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. Whether Bellow names his protagonist after Joyce's character is unknown. - The narrator/protagonist of J. M. Coetzee's "The Vietnam Project" in Dusklands has in his possession before being committed to an asylum a copy of Herzog in addition to Patrick White's Voss.
- The plot of the movie A Serious ManA Serious ManA Serious Man is a 2009 dark comedy written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesota Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading to questions about his faith...
from the Coen brothersCoen BrothersJoel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
is partly similar to the plot of Herzog, as the main character in both is a middle-aged Jewish professor whose wife leaves him for their family friend. In both the wife asks him to leave his own house, and he passively agrees without arguing. As a consequence, he teeters on the verge of losing his mind and his academic career suffers.