Saul Bellow and the Nobel Prize

Abstract

It is no doubt symbolically very appropriate that, in the Bicentennial year, all of the seven Nobel Prizes awarded should go to Americans. Of course there is more to it than that; it is also a signal of a decisive shift, evident over this century, in the international balance of intellectual, cultural and literary power. In the early years of the century, English and Irish writers were notable in the list of awards for literature; not until 1930 did the Prize for Literature pass to an American. Since that time, the number of awards to English writers has markedly faded (and some of the more recent, to Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell, have indicated a generous view among the awarding committee of what literature is), while the number going to American writers (admittedly of somewhat varied quality) has markedly increased. The Prize is conventionally associated with writers not only of international reputation but also of international perspective, of a broad humanistic scale and scope; and both in the matter of reputation and moral capaciousness American writers have increasingly tended to become obvious candidates. But if, on occasion, the Prize has been strangely awarded, it would in fact be hard to fault the choice for 1976, Saul Bellow; difficult to find a contemporary writer who shows the same richness and variety, along with the same sharp modernity, of achievement.