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Malcolm Bradbury mentioned Saul Bellow as ‘the leading American novelist of the post-war generation’ in Saul Bellow (1982). Evaluating Bellow’s novels, Bradbury commented, ‘They are hero-centred to a degree unusual in modern fiction, the hero often gives his name to the novel. He is always a man and often a Jew, and often a writer or intellectual. . . . .’ These comments are fully justified if we consider the major novels of Bellow, such as Dangling Man, The Victim, Seize the Day, Herzog, Mr. Sammler’s Planet, and Humboldt’s Gift.
   The first two novels of Bellow, Dangling Man and The Victim, published in the mid-forties, display in Bradbury‘s words, ‘the intellectual and emotional foundations of all Bellow’s subsequent writing, and the cosmopolitan intellectual sources from which it springs.’ The background of Dangling Man is Bellow’s native city Chicago, but for The Victim, Bellow needed a wider and more cosmopolitan background and used New York.
   Dangling Man, written in diary form, depicts the tensions and struggles of Joseph, a graduate majoring in History from Wisconsin University. The diarist hero explains that in his state of demoralization, he needs to keep a journal and talk to himself. Joseph belongs to the post-war generation and discards the values and ideals of the older times. He keeps on talking to himself about his problems and in the process releases information about himself. He has left his job in the Inter-American Travel Bureau to respond to the call for induction in the Army. He has been dangling, waiting for the final call, which never comes. During his period of joblessness, he suffers acutely from solitude, staying ten hours a day in a single room. Joseph’s wife, Iva, supports him financially, but she seems to grudge his freedom. They are mis-mated, being very different temperamentally. Joseph writes in his diary: ‘We no longer confide in each other; in fact there are many things I would not mention to her.’ Joseph’s predicament is Prufrocklike, for he writes: ‘I am always afraid of running into an acquaintance who will express surprise at seeing me and ask questions.’ In his frustrations and disillusionment, Joseph has become a symbol of young Americans of the post-war generation.
   One of the intellectual traits of Joseph is reading books, particularly those of Diderot. But frustrations kill his passions and he writes: ‘I find myself unable to read. Books do not hold me.’ The process of delay and harassment for his induction makes him write: ‘There is nothing to do but wait, or dangle, and grow more and more dispirited. . . . I am deteriorating, storing bitterness and spite which eat like acids at my endowment of generosity and good will.’ Joseph wants to improve his relationship with his niece Etta, but his sincere attempt to teach her French is castigated by the haughty teen-aged girl. Joseph’s views are essentially idealistic, rather than materialistic. In his diary he writes: ‘I would rather die in the war than consume its benefits.’ Following the example of Socrates, he wants to be ‘a plain foot soldier, a hoplite’ instead of being an officer in the army. At times he is a poet who expresses his ideas in superb poetic diction: ‘The fear lies in us like a cloud. It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm and bate and wounding rain out of us.’
   Bellow’s second novel The Victim deals with the predicament of Asa Leventhal, a journalist, a lonely Jew, who suffers from a sense of insecurity. He feels that all Jews have been blacklisted. Despite his professional engagements, he responds to the need of his family. His brother Max lives far away in Texas, leaving his Catholic wife and minor son in charge of his mother-in-law in New York. Out of a sense of responsibility, Asa tries to help his sister-in-law Elena, during the grave illness of her son Mickey. Receiving frantic calls from her, Asa finds a specialist for Mickey and, disregarding Elena’s initial objections, arranges for Mickey’s hospitalization. However, Mickey’s conditions worsens and he dies. Asa suffers emotionally for his failure to save the life of Mickey. He experiences extreme sufferings when Elena’s mother interprets the tragic death as God‘s punishment for Elena’s dishonouring Catholicism by marrying a Jew.
   Bellow’s Nobel prize-winning novella Seize the Day deals with the predicament of an aspiring Hollywood star Tommy Wilhelm on a single day, the seized day. In his sufferings, both materialistic and spiritual, he has become a typical American of the post-war generation. Tommy is presented in his mid-forties as a professional as well as a personal failure. He has experienced a cultural baptism in Hollywood and has assumed a new attractive name, discarding his family title. His old father, a successful physician, cannot accept this name and feels ashamed of his unsuccessful son. Dr. Adler is fully Americanized, discarding his Jewish responsibilities to his only son. On the other hand, Tommy depends on his father for help and sympathy. Tommy’s frustrations prompt him to look for a surrogate father in Dr. Tamkin, with whom he invests his last resources in the lard business. But the price falls and Dr. Tamkin deserts him, ruining his life. In search of the fraud, Tommy visits different places and finally attends a funeral. He laments profusely at the sight of the unknown corpse. The corpse can be interpreted as the dead body of his romantic self which guided his aimless life so long. The novella ends on a note of optimism that Tommy would pursue his intellectual passions with a practical sense rather than with the romantic longing of the past.
   Mr. Sammler’s Planet is a symbolic novel, presenting the spiritual development of the protagonist in the post-war chaotic world. Bellow has presented another alienated intellectual in this novel. Mr. Sammler, a seventy-plus Polish Jew, is a minute observer of the chaos and decay of civilization. Though he is blind in one eye owing to Nazi brutality during the holocaust, he is a perfect observer. In his early life, he lived in the intellectual circle of London as a journalist for Polish papers and was a close acquaintance of H. G. Wells. He admired this British intellectual so greatly that he desired to write his memoir, but that remained a dream for him. In his lonely life, Sammler has become a voracious reader, reading all the leading authors of his time. He has become a symbol of human intellect. However, an incident at Columbia University has shocked him, He is invited there to give a talk on the intellectual scene of the 30’s in England. In this big gathering, he starts his lecture rather nervously. An angry listener disagrees with his assessment of the role of Orwell and disrupts the assembly, using humiliating words against him. Sammler is greatly shocked to find disintegration everywhere.
   The thesis of Sammler and Dr. Lal, the Indian Biophysicist, on the ‘Future of the Moon’ is another aspect of Mr. Sammler’s intellectual pursuit. Unlike other Bellovian heroes, Mr. Sammler is more intellectual and more composed. Post-war degradation has made Sammler’s planet a doomed one and New York—in which the novel is set—is simply a waste land. During his discussions with Dr. Lal, Sammler regrets the lack of order and insists on ‘order’ over ‘love’ to create his ideal planet.
   The novel that brought Bellow international recognition as a major American novelist is Herzog. Breaking away from the traditional novel structure, Bellow has achieved a new dimension in this novel. It deals with the predicament of Herzog, the intellectual protagonist, who has experienced a life of alienation, mental breakdown and romantic illusions. The intellectual quest of the protagonist is reflected in his attempt to write letters to a number of living and dead personalities including authors, politicians, scientists, relations and friends. Writing imaginary letters has become an obsession with him and he writes letters to them in order to derive a kind of strength to face life. The contents of those letters reveal his range of knowledge, perception and intellectual aspirations.
   Herzog is a college professor who has indulged in the quest of knowledge and sensuality. Herzog’s life-style has caused familial, emotional and intellectual problems for him. He has led a settled life with his first wife Daisy, a Jew like himself. His sensual longing drives him to an extra-marital affair with his student Madeleine. Herzog is so much drawn to her that her conversion to Catholicism does not make any difference to him. Divorcing Daisy, he marries Madeleine, leaves his teaching assignments, and plans to move to Chicago to live with her. Madeleine resumes her studies at school and not only makes him buy a new house for her, but also gets it decorated. Meanwhile, Herzog is shocked to notice Madeleine’s aloofness and change of attitude to him. He turns to his closest friend Gersbach to arrange for a reconciliation with her. But he is betrayed and eventually Madeleine divorces Herzog to marry Gersbach. Herzog’s dream of writing a book on the Romantics with the help of Madeleine is shattered.
   Bellow’s fictional masterpiece Humboldt’s Gift deals with the predicament of Humboldt, a great poetic genius, who later suffers defeats in life and becomes self-destructive and maniac. But in this novel, the central character is Charlie, a friend and literary protégé of Humboldt in his early career. Charlie’s genius is multidimensional: a historian, a biographer and a collaborator of Humboldt in devising outlines for movies. His life is beset with problems. He is connected with a violent underworld figure. Like Herzog, Charlie is having an affair with Renata and he has bought an expensive car to please her. While acting as a member of the jury, Charlie finds Renata in the court where she has appeared in connection with her divorce and develops a great passion for her.
   At the opening of the novel, Charlie is greatly fascinated by the poetry of Humboldt and he visits New York to meet the poet. They become great friends and Charlie helps Humboldt become a professor of poetry at Princeton. But Humboldt’s success lasts for only ten years and then he starts to sink. Charlie’s successful career starts after Humboldt’s decline. Charlie moves to Chicago and his play becomes a Broadway hit. As Charlie gets richer, Humboldt grudges his success and complains of being cheated. He has drawn six thousand dollars from Charlie’s account by cashing the check, offered earlier by Charlie. These circumstances embitter their relationship and later Charlie starts avoiding Humboldt despite his fatal illness.
   In the concluding part of the novel, Charlie has received a gift from Humboldt. It is an outline of a film which Charlie should develop. Humboldt believes that it will be a big hit, making him richer. In this novel Charlie is caught between two worlds: the inner world of spirituality and the external world of chaos. Like other intellectual heroes of Saul Bellow, he champions the spiritual world over the material world. Though he has neglected and avoided Humboldt in his early life, he later finds himself in many situations similar to those of Humboldt.
   These novels of Bellow attest to the fact that his heroes are essentially intellectual in their pursuits and aspirations in life.
   Professor Syed Anwarul Huq took early retirement from the University of Dhaka and is now head of the Department of English, Stamford University, Bangladesh

No one would read Far From the Madding Crowd for pleasure. It is too slow-paced, resonant, and downright boring. Who wouldn’t agree with Henry James’ statement, ‘the only things we believe in are the sheep and the dogs’? It is only recommendable to a shepherd as a first-class guide to caring for a flock; washing, shearing, and the economics behind shepherding are all covered. Somewhere in the background between bleats, a beautiful girl called Bathsheba (Bible readers should recall David and Uriah, I believe in the first or second of Samuel) picks from three choices – Sergeant Troy, dashing soldier, Boldwood, rich gentleman farmer with hidden obsessions, and Gabriel, sweet, patient, modest shepherd who proposes to her at the beginning of the book before the reader can get the names straight. The most moving, memorable part follows. No, it isn’t Bathsheba joyfully accepting Gabriel’s proposal (she turns him down scornfully). It is Gabriel seeing all he owns go over a cliff. (A literal cliff.) The sheep he’d bought in exchange for everything he owned, hoping they’d double in number the following year and make him wealthy enough to wed high-and-mighty Bathsheba, are all dead. Hardy’s description of the wounded sheep dying, the lake glittering like an eye and Gabriel crouching, struck with pity and grief, is poignant enough to be remembered after everything else is forgotten.
   Hardy describes the beautiful Dorsetshire scenery at exhausting length – which led to some superb shots in the movie. He writes as though he foresaw a film director taking it in hand, beginning every new scene by describing the whole setting panoramically and then focusing on smaller details such as autumn leaves glistening with dew like auburn hair strewn with diamonds before closing in on his characters and action. (Auburn hair studded with diamonds? He should have concentrated on poetry long before Jude the Obscure was burnt by a bishop ‘probably in his despair at not being able to burn me’ as Hardy bitterly put it). The 1980 movie, directed by Roman Polanski, had Dame Judy Dench playing Bathsheba, young, blond, and more real than sheep.
   With a head full of Judy Dench, I tried Tess of the D’Urbervilles that summer. It seemed oddly familiar, as if I’d heard the story before. This was hard to resolve, since everyone has some whim they’d rather keep hidden, but I confess: I watch The Bold and the Beautiful, created by William J. Bell a hundred years after Hardy created Tess. Tess is incredibly innocent, gullible, and well meaning, which is how the poor girls start on The Bold and the Beautiful. Pretty, talented, hardworking and won over when a famous fashion designer takes notice of her. The older, experienced man is touched by her fervent need to prove herself and make Daddy proud; he encourages her, tells her how wonderful she is, bringing out a little blush and a little love. Whether he rapes her or gives her a wonderful first night of passion depends on whether they’re firing the actor or not. Subsequent pregnancies are inevitable, as is a stillborn child that the mother secretly buries. Sound familiar? I am sure I watched consecutive episodes showing the hysterical mother in the middle of a desert with a tiny coffin and a few fake cacti. She left the ‘desert’ (three buckets of sand in the studio) and kept it secret.
   Well, Tess told Angel Clare (Hardy is not exactly subtle when naming his characters) about her rape and he doesn’t just run away, he runs off the continent, despite the fact that he too had had an affair. Tess, though hurt, has faith in him, works and waits for him, until finally Alec (her rapist) convinces her that Angel will not come back. Now in soap operas, usually there is an accident where someone is assumed dead, and the wife grieves a few episodes, weds again, after which her first husband returns from the dead with the most plausible explanation the writers can come up with. That is how women commit bigamy. So when Angel returns, Tess murders Alec (no sensational details) and they walk away to find fleeting happiness at a strange house with Atalanta carved on the headboard. As usual, Hardy has the subtlety of a sledgehammer – Atalanta losing the race to Hippomenes, doomed to punishment. Tess accepts her fate, when they are stopped at Stonehenge. She asks Angel to marry her sister, just like a soap opera character gently taking death, telling her husband to move on but never forget her. Other features Hardy’s novels and soaps have in common are the numerous chance happenings and the obliging nature of the weather. His passion is better expressed in poems such as ‘The Sacrilege,’ where he can deal with love, betrayal, death and damnation more easily, more directly. There is a vivid starkness he loses when expanding on such themes in prose. Perhaps it is the vignette nature of the poems; they incorporate a few intense scenes and images (‘sloe-black eyes’), while the novels try building complexities to explain how the intensity formed.

The Albanian writer Ismail Kadare was named the winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize on June 3.
   Kadare, born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Gjirokaster near the Greek border, is Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Since 1990, he has lived in voluntary exile in France, following his decision to seek asylum because, in his words, “Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible… The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship.
   From 1986, under the Communist regime, Kadare’s writings were smuggled out of Albania by his French publisher, Éditions Fayard. Translations of his novels have since been published in more than forty countries.
   The judging panel for the 2005 Man Booker International Prize included Professor John Carey (chair), writer and editor Alberto Manguel, and writer and academic, Azar Nafisi.
   Professor John Carey described Ismail Kadare as ‘a writer who maps a whole culture – its history, its passion, its folklore, its politics, its disasters. He is a universal writer in a tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer.’
   The Man Booker International Prize seeks to recognise a living author who has contributed significantly to world literature and to highlight the author’s continuing creativity and development on a global scale.
   Ismail Kadare will receive the prize of £60,000 and a trophy at the Award Ceremony on June 27 in Edinburgh. In accordance with the rules of the recently announced separate prize for translation, Kadare will choose a translator or translators to receive an additional prize of £15,000.