Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir

This sometimes emotionally distant, often clinically written, and unabashedly straightforward memoir from the eldest son of Saul Bellow reveals the "inner life" of a storming personality as Bellow comes to terms with the contradicting versions of the father he knew. Reading through many obituaries following his father's death, the young Bellow sees a man he doesn't quite recognize and sets out, through a retelling of family history and re-reading his father's letters, novels, plays, and stories, to recover the ""young Saul," the rebellious, irreverent, and ambitious man who raised [him]," who was also "emotionally accessible, often soft, and possessed the ability to laugh at the world and at himself." Bellow recounts the closeness he felt to his father during his childhood%E2%80%94"[m]y father [was] a kid who never grew up%E2%80%A6 and who understood my feelings"%E2%80%94and the ways life fell apart at age eight when his father and mother separated, then divorced. As Saul Bellow grows older, his ideas and attitudes harden, creating a near-impenetrable discord between father and son; looking back, however, the young Bellow realizes that this "cold war between my father and me" was simply a "struggle between two men%E2%80%A6 who loved one another and sought to keep their relationship alive." Writing this memoir, the young Bellow admits, has "brought [him] "closer to the %E2%80%98old Saul'%E2%80%A6 [he] once found alien and intimidating," and created a "delightful new connection" with his father. (Apr.)