Customer Reviews

Him With His Foot In His Mouth and Other Stories (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

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Every story in this collection illustrates the range of style and depth of Saul Bellows writing. Every story is outstanding, from the title story (shades of Mosebys memoirs)to the lengthy 'What Kind of Day Did You Have' to Zetland.
The stories all concern the place of the intellectual and art in a society where intelligence is measured by wealth. In a country where the basic needs for living are met, 'phoney' needs are created;status symbols, pseudo intellectualism to create conversation at partys, where people spend all the time they have to pursue great art, philosophy and literature on seeking wealth; selling their souls for a career in some dead beat occupation or image of themselves that no one really believes in but themselves.
Bellow, the great intellectual himself, never loses the reader. His work makes you thirst to read the endless names and book titles he reels off. His style can change so vividly, from the modern (middle class?) style of say 'What Kind of Day..' to the Algrenesque (proletarian?) style of 'Zetland'
If you've never read Saul Bellow, ease in with this fabulous collection.Bellow was awarded the Nobel prize because he was great, not because there was nobody else to give it to as sometimes you're led to think!

Bellow is a master because he picks himself apart and then with great discomfort gazes at the fragments that do not fit together and never will.

This is a beautiful reading experience, not without the usual display that Bellows is so masterful in communicating, through gentle suggestion. Banal horrors which a person incorporates into his being and his identity in the methodical manner of a person savoring a meal of shoes come out and glare from the characters like an unmistakable body-odor. If you like this book, then start reading Martin Amis, by all means.