Title: Herzog Author: Saul Bellow Publisher: The Viking Press, New York Published: 1964 Binding: Hardcover Language: English Edition: 1st edition Number of Pages: 341 Catalogs: Literature, Fiction Description: Original mottled blue-black cloth binding with blind embossing on cover and silver text on spine. Dust-jacket in blue, black, and white, announces it as the National Book Award Winner, 1965. Price of $5.75 is intact on flap. Copyright page credits H. Wolff Book Manufacturing Co., followed by M B G. Back of jacket features review quotations rather than the author's photograph. Rear flap features a short author biography with previous novels, and the Viking Press logo followed by its address. Jacket design by Mel Williamson. Possibly a later printing of the first edition. Contains a gift inscription in ink from the book's purchaser to his grandfather on flyleaf, and the buyer's name in ink on the title page. This is Saul Bellow's sixth novel, published following Henderson the Rain King. It is a novel with autobiographical elements composed, in part, of letters from the protagonist Moses E. Herzog. The novel follows five days in the life of cultural history professor Moses E. Herzog who, at age 47, is having a midlife crisis and burnout following the divorce from his second wife. He has two children, one by each wife, and is in a relationship with a vibrant woman, Ramona, but is getting cold feet. Herzog spends much of his time both on intense, and often hilarious, intellectual reflection and mentally writing letters he never sends. These letters are aimed at friends, family members, and famous figures, including historical recipients who are dead or whom he never knew. Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows, 1915-2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He 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. Hardcover, very good condition. 341 pages, octavo.
