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turned to Chicago. In 1940 he and his wife traveled to Mexico
with the hopes of meeting his boyhood hero, Leon Trotsky,
only to discover that Trotsky had been killed the day before
they arrived. Bellow’s early attempts at writing novels proved
frustrating. He abandoned an early novel set in Mexico and
threw away the manuscript for The Very Dark Trees, a novel
about a Southern white man turning black, after the publisher
for the book canceled its publication for the duration
of the war.
Bellow wrote his first published novel, the semi-autobiographical
Dangling Man (1944), while waiting to enter the
army. During this period Bellow’s first marriage began to collapse
while he waited to be conscripted (he finally joined the
merchant marines toward the end of the war) and worked at
various jobs, including three years (1943–46) on the editorial
staff of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In Dangling Man, the
Kafka-inspired protagonist, Joseph, a young Jewish wouldbe
writer, waits to be drafted as he experiences Romantic isolation,
studies classic writers, has an affair, and suffers from
death anxieties and emotional turmoil. In this way Bellow
set the pattern for many of his major works, works focused
on semi-autobiographical, introspective, intellectual, Jewish
protagonists searching for meaning in a savage, irrational
universe.
Bellow followed Dangling Man with The Victim (1947)
and with The Adventures of Augie March (1953), which Salman
Rushdie referred to as the best candidate there was for the
Great American Novel. Bellow then published Seize the Day
(1956), a study of loneliness, failure, and the onset of middle
age, and Henderson the Rain King (1959), an excursion into
the fantastic about a wealthy American’s search for ultimate
reality among primitive African tribesmen. Bellow’s most
widely acclaimed work was Herzog (1964), an international
best seller that gained Bellow fame and numerous awards. Its
protagonist, Moses Herzog, is a ruminating, near-mad Jewish
professor who writes letters to everyone, including dead relatives,
Jung, Nietzsche, and God. Herzog struggles comically
but futilely to relate with humanistic values to a dehumanized
modern world; like all Bellow’s protagonists, he is doomed to
live out the contradiction between an inner world of romantic
aspiration and an outer one of less than romantic fact.
Bellow was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing
his first play, The Last Analysis, in 1964; a volume of short
stories, Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler’s
Planet (1970); Humboldt’s Gift (1975), after which he was
awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for 1976; To Jerusalem
and Back (1976); The Dean’s December (1982); a short story
collection, Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984); More Die
of Heartbreak (1987); a collection of three novellas, Something
to Remember Me By (1991); an essay collection, It All Adds Up
(1994); The Actual (1997); and Ravelstein (2000). He also edited
Great Jewish Short Stories (1963). Bellow led a largely itinerant
life, moving from university to university as he moved from
marriage to marriage; however, he did remain married to his
final wife Janis for the last 16 years of his life, and was a profes-
belmont, august
sor for the Committee on Social Thought at the University of
Chicago from 1962 to 1993. He also maintained close friendships
with a large number of Jewish friends from Tuley High
School in Chicago and with such eminent writers as Ralph
Ellison, John Berryman, Allan Bloom, John Cheever, Philip
*Roth, and the Jewish poet Delmore *Schwartz, the model for
Von Humboldt Fleisher of Humboldt’s Gift. Widely considered
one of mid-century America’s leading novelists, Bellow died
leaving behind a powerful canon of literature.
Bibliography: J. Atlas, Bellow: A Biography (2000); J.J. Clayton,
Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man (1968); I. Malin (ed.), Saul Bellow
and the Critics (1967); idem, Saul Bellow’s Fiction (1969); K.M. Opdahl,
The Novels of Saul Bellow: An Introduction (1967); E. Rovit (ed.), Saul
Bellow: A Collection of Critical Essays (1975).
[Craig Svonkin (2nd ed.)]
BELMONT, AUGUST (1816–1890), U.S. banker, diplomat,
and politician. Belmont was born in Alzey (Hesse), but
claimed descent from the distinguished *Belmonte family of
Portugal. His enemies later circulated the story that his original
name was Schoenberg. He began his career as an apprentice
in the Frankfurt banking house of *Rothschild and was
soon transferred to the Naples office, where he conducted
the Rothschilds’ financial negotiations, including those with
the Vatican. After an assignment to Havana, Cuba, in 1837,
Belmont served the Rothschild interests in New York. Later
he opened his own banking house, August Belmont & Co.,
which continued to represent the Rothschilds in the United
States until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1844 he was
appointed honorary Austrian consul general in New York, but
resigned in 1850 in protest against the Vienna regime’s brutal
treatment of the Hungarian rebels, particularly their leader,
Louis Kossuth. Belmont represented the United States at The
Hague as chargé d’affaires (1853–55), and as minister (1855–58).
At the conclusion of his foreign service, Belmont returned to
New York and became active in political life. He supported
the Union during the Civil War and raised and equipped the
first German-born regiment in New York. He enlisted the support
of European bankers and merchants for the Union cause
during visits to Europe in 1861 and 1863. As Democratic National
Committee chairman from 1860 until his retirement
from politics in 1872, he exercised great influence in his party
and American society. He became the founder of the U.S.
Racing Club. One of America's best-known racetracks bears
his name. Belmont severed his Jewish ties and married the
daughter of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. One son, PERRY
(1850–1947), became a lawyer, diplomat, congressman, and an
author on United States history and politics. The other, AU-
GUST (1853–1924), succeeded his father as head of the bank,
and played an important role in financing public transportation
in the United States.
Bibliography: R.J.H. Gottheil, The Belmont-Belmonte Family
(1917), 173–5; I. Katz, August Belmont… (1968).
[Joachim O. Ronall]
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