48 Facts About Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990.

Saul Bellow said that of all his characters, Eugene Henderson, of Henderson the Rain King, was the one most like himself.

Saul Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents, Lescha and Abraham Bellows, emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Saul Bellow had three elder siblings - sister Zelda, brothers Moishe and Schmuel.

Saul Bellow's family was Lithuanian-Jewish; his father was born in Vilnius.

When Saul Bellow was nine, his family moved to the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, the city that formed the backdrop of many of his novels.

Saul Bellow worked in a bakery, as a coal delivery man, and as a bootlegger.

Saul Bellow had been deeply religious and wanted her youngest son, Saul, to become a rabbi or a concert violinist.

Saul Bellow grew up reading Shakespeare and the great Russian novelists of the 19th century.

Saul Bellow attended Tuley High School on Chicago's west side where he befriended Yetta Barsh and Isaac Rosenfeld.

Saul Bellow attended the University of Chicago but later transferred to Northwestern University.

Saul Bellow originally wanted to study literature, but he felt the English department was anti-Jewish.

Saul Bellow later did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.

Saul Bellow was a Trotskyist, but because of the greater numbers of Stalinist-leaning writers he had to suffer their taunts.

In 1941, Saul Bellow became a naturalized United States citizen, after discovering, on attempting to enlist in the armed forces, that he had immigrated to the United States illegally as a child.

From 1946 through 1948 Saul Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota.

In 1948, Saul Bellow was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him to move to Paris, where he began writing The Adventures of Augie March.

In 1958, Saul Bellow taught at the University of Minnesota.

One of his students was William Kennedy, who was encouraged by Saul Bellow to write fiction.

Saul Bellow lived in New York City for years, but returned to Chicago in 1962 as a professor at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Saul Bellow taught on the committee for more than 30 years, alongside his close friend, the philosopher Allan Bloom.

Saul Bellow found Chicago vulgar but vital, and more representative of America than New York.

Saul Bellow was able to stay in contact with old high school friends and a broad cross-section of society.

Saul Bellow hit the bestseller list in 1964 with his novel Herzog.

Saul Bellow was surprised at the commercial success of this cerebral novel about a middle-aged and troubled college professor who writes letters to friends, scholars and the dead, but never sends them.

Saul Bellow returned to his exploration of mental instability, and its relationship to genius, in his 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift.

Saul Bellow used his late friend and rival, the brilliant but self-destructive poet Delmore Schwartz, as his model for the novel's title character, Von Humboldt Fleisher.

Saul Bellow used Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, anthroposophy, as a theme in the book, having attended a study group in Chicago.

Saul Bellow was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1969.

From December 1981 to March 1982, Saul Bellow was the Visiting Lansdowne Scholar at the University of Victoria, and held the title Writer-in-Residence.

Saul Bellow traveled widely throughout his life, mainly to Europe, which he sometimes visited twice a year.

Saul Bellow tagged along with Robert F Kennedy for a magazine profile he never wrote, and was close friends with the author Ralph Ellison.

Saul Bellow continued teaching well into his old age, enjoying its human interaction and exchange of ideas.

Saul Bellow taught at Yale University, University of Minnesota, New York University, Princeton University, University of Puerto Rico, University of Chicago, Bard College and Boston University, where he co-taught a class with James Wood.

Saul Bellow is buried at the Jewish cemetery Shir HeHarim of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Saul Bellow was the first writer to win three National Book Awards in all award categories.

Saul Bellow was married five times, with all but his last marriage ending in divorce.

Saul Bellow's wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra Tsachacbasov, Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea, and Janis Freedman.

In 2000, when he was 84, Saul Bellow had his fourth child and first daughter, with Freedman.

Saul Bellow's themes include the disorientation of contemporary society, and the ability of people to overcome their frailty and achieve greatness or awareness.

Saul Bellow saw many flaws in modern civilization, and its ability to foster madness, materialism and misleading knowledge.

Principal characters in Saul Bellow's fiction have heroic potential, and many times they stand in contrast to the negative forces of society.

Saul Bellow interspersed autobiographical elements into his fiction, and many of his principal characters were said to bear a resemblance to him.

Saul Bellow's sentences seem to weigh more than anyone else's.

Saul Bellow was a writer about conscience and consciousness, forever conflicted by the competing demands of the great cities, the individual's urge to survival against all odds and his equal need for love and some kind of penetrating understanding of what there was of significance beyond all the racket and racketeering.

My problem with the pre-Ravelstein Saul Bellow is that he all too often strains too hard to yoke together two somewhat contradictory aspects of his being and style.

Saul Bellow is represented in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery with six portraits, including a photograph by Irving Penn, a painting by Sarah Yuster, a bust by Sara Miller, and drawings by Edward Sorel and Arthur Herschel Lidov.

Saul Bellow's papers are held at the library of the University of Chicago.