Saul Bellow, página 2 de 7

Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Dangling Man is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago's streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.

This is the definitive collection of short stories by Saul Bellow. Abundant, precise, various, rich and exuberant, the stories display the stylistic and emotional brilliance which characterises this master of prose. Some stories recount the events of a single day, some are contained in a wider frame; each story is a characteristic combination of observation and a celebration of humanity. This volume contains a preface by his wife, Janis Bellow, and are introduction by lames Wood. It is an essential collection.

Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of More Die of Heartbreak, has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described "plant visionary." While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from "bliss to breakdown." Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments. As Kenneth grapples with his own problems involving his unusual lady-friend Treckie, the two men try to figure out why gifted and intelligent people invariably find themselves "knee-deep in the garbage of a personal life."

For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around.

The story behind The Actual belongs to Harry Trellman, an aging, astute businessman who has never belonged anywhere: not in the Chicago orphanage where he was sent by his mother, not in high school (too brainy), not even on the streets, where his vaguely Asian features set him apart from the rest of the pack. As for human attachments, they are like everything else in his life, singular and irregular. But Harry has always been a keen observer - a trait not unnoticed by billionaire Sigmund Adletsky, who retains Harry as his adviser on human affairs. The two men discuss ordinary things, but the older man is also sharp enough to realize that, behind his stoic mask, Harry harbors some intense feelings for a certain woman. That woman - the object of some forty years'' passion - is Amy Wustrin, a twice-divorced interior designer who''s walked through her share of life''s ups and downs. Thanks to Sigmund, she walks unexpectedly into Harry''s life. And this time he''s not about to let her go.

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein's own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire. Ravelstein suggests in turn that Chick write a memoir or a life of him, and during the course of a celebratory trip to Paris the two share thoughts on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends, old and new, and vaudeville routines from the remote past.

Albert Corde, dean of a Chicago college, is unprepared for the violent response to his scathing articles on city corruption and his involvement in the trial of two black people charged with killing a white student. He finds himself accused of being a civic-minded fool and a racist. Journeying to Bucharest, where his mother-in-law lies dying, Corde compares the corruption and inhumanity of Communism with the rotting, domed cityscapes of Chicago. As December draws to a close and events - public and intimate - come to a head in both cities, Corde vents his fury at the mayhem and carnage of the modern world.

In the mid-1970s, Saul Bellow visited Israel and To Jerusalem and Back is his account of his time there. Immersing himself in its landscape and culture, he records the opinions, passions and dreams of Israelis of varying viewpoints - from Prime Minister Rabin, novelist Amos Oz and the editor of an Arab-language newspaper to a kibbutznik escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and the barber at Bellow's hotel. Through meditations steeped in history and literature he adds his own reflections on being Jewish in the twentieth century. Bellow's exploration of a beautiful and troubled city is a powerful testament to the unique spirit and challenges of Israel, its history and its future.

While his wife is away visiting her mother, Leventhal feels lost and alone. One evening, seeking relief from the New York heat wave, he is accosted in a park near his apartment by a seedy-looking drunk. Levelthal faintly recognizes the hostile man as someone he once met in the past. The man, however, claims Leventhal ruined his life. Can this be true? Did he cause harm to this man? Unable to shake the stranger loose or stop his own self-doubt, Leventhal soon descends into a state of paranoia and fear that threatens his sanity.

A sus cuarenta y siete años Moses Herzog, profesor universitario de cierto prestigio y acreditado espíritu crítico en materia intelectual, afronta algo que creía del todo imposible: un nuevo fracaso matrimonial. Dominado por la necesidad de explicarse, de expresarse, de justificarse, de ponerlo todo en perspectiva, de aclararse, de corregirse, devorado por el odio y una voraz ansia de venganza empieza a escribir a amigos, parientes y conocidos, a los mas renombrados inquisidores del alma humana, y en su desesperada busqueda de sentido incluso al mismisimo Dios, aun cuando sabe que sus palabras no son sino un desesperado intento de reconstruir el mundo, su mundo en ruinas. Si estoy como una cabra, que le voy a hacer, piensa Herzog, quien ve en esas misivas que jamas llegaran a su destino el inicio de un viaje hacia el interior de si mismo que jamas habia emprendido, de analisis de los multiples errores que ha cometido tanto con su propia familia como en su vida personal y profesional. Porque, al fin y al cabo, ¿como es posible que un hombre de su preclaro intelecto, de voluntad fuerte y talento para la polemica haya caido de nuevo en el fracaso mas extendido de la humanidad? ¿Acaso no sirve de nada la inteligencia?