Herzog

By: Saul Bellow

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.

Like the protagonists of most of Bellow's novels - Dangling Man, The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, etc. - Herzog is a man seeking balance, trying to regain a foothold on his life. Thrown out of his ex-wife's house, he retreats to his abandoned home in Ludeyville, a remote village in the Berkshire mountains to which Herzog had previously moved his wife and friends. Here amid the dust and vermin of the disused house, Herzog begins scribbling letters to family, friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies, dead philosophers, ex- Presidents - anyone with whom he feels compelled to set the record straight. The letters, we learn, are never sent. They are a means to cure himself of the immense psychic strain of his failed second marriage, a method by which he can recognize truths that will free him to love others and to learn to abide with the knowledge of death. In order to do so he must confront the fact that he has been a bad husband, a loving but poor father, an ungrateful child, a distant brother, an egoist to friends, and an apathetic citizen.

Herzog is primarily a novel of redemption. For all of its innovative techniques and brilliant comedy, it tells one of the oldest of stories. Like The Divine Comedy or the dark night of the soul of St. John of the Cross, it progresses from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment. Today it is still considered one of the greatest literary expressions of postwar America.

©1992 Saul Bellow (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A masterpiece." (New York Times Book Review)

"Herzog has the range, depth, intensity, verbal brilliance, and imaginative fullness - the mind and heart - which we may expect only of a novel that is unmistakably destined to last." (Newsweek)

Jewish angst at its finest!

Poor Herzog! Brilliant, obsessed, twice divorced, broke, bruised by everything from real estate to child custody. How could I like him so much and hope for a happy ending to a book so full of the complexity of life? But I did. Perhaps it was the overwhelming passion he feels toward everything, both good and bad, past and present, that kept me with Moses Herzog throughout the book. Very little overwhelming passion exists in the world....
Malcolm hillgartner's narration catches the manic intensity of Herzog's rants (sections a visual reader might choose to skip) without being annoying. The narration also amplified the touching aspects of the story and its protagonist.
I feel I have explored the personality of Herzog more deeply than I have most actual people I know. And this exploration has shown me much to like, admire and sympathize with. An intense book that I am glad I read.

Wonderful

At the start we see Herzog padding around his otherwise deserted house in the Berkshires, living with mice and brambles, and writing letters feverishly to friends, celebrities, family dead and alive, and thinkers from the past. He has dialogues with dead philosophers telling them the points on which he disagrees.He has spent his modest inheritance on what was meant to be his and his wife's home. Alone and divorced now, he lives almost ferally, sleeping in a hammock and eating berries from the yard. Meanwhile, Madeline, his former life, has left for graduate school, has their child, and is involved with his best friend, Valerie Gersbach, in Chicago. From this initial scene, the story meanders forward and backward, voiced in Herzog's thoughts as his inner life, his observations, and the content of his expansive letters, ,a mix of brilliance, egotism, humor, and self-justification becomes the surface of the novel. We live his inner experience as he deals with the multiple betrayals, and harsh characters, comic but brutal, in his life. His inwardness is made external via his hypergraphia, conversations, and musings. The type of person who lands on his feet and whose luck never entirely runs out, he has had romances with impressive and accomplished women. The novel was reviewed widely when released and considered semi-autobiographical. This certainly is an idea fest--and depiction of a subtle, brilliant, evasive, and comic personality. It is worth reading just for the language and writing, the unusual and distinct characters, and the depiction of Herzog's entertainingly articulate inner monologue.

Foreign languages are hard, but…

If you don’t speak a foreign language, find a coach who does. Lots of “winging it” in this book, which is a pity because these languages are such an important part of the character’s world.

Just Can't Connect with Bellow

Given his reputation, and the high esteem in which he his held by writers whom I hold in high esteem, I always feel like I should like Bellow more than I do. Herzog is a good book, but (for me) not a great one.

I'm tempted to blame my ho-hum reaction on the fact his characters often seem less like real people and more like puppets for the author, through which he can espouse some point or another. But if I'm honest that same argument could be made with even more accuracy at authors I love like Pynchon and DeLillo. Maybe it's just that what he has to say isn't all that interesting.

It could be that I find language is unmoving. There are occasional phrases that seem clever, but there's no musicality.

Whatever it is, Bellow just leaves me a bit bored.

Amazing Novel

You cannot go wrong with Saul Bellow’s chef d'oeuvre. I have no more to say. Nothing. Not a single word.