Few admirers of Saul Bellow have not encountered, in one of its variations, his famous disclaimer. One version is: This whole Jewish writer business is sheer invention-by the media, by critics and by 'scholars.' It never even passes through my mind. I'm well aware of being Jewish and also of being an American and of being a writer. But I'm also a hockey fan, a fact which nobody ever mentions.' What is it that enables critics to acknowledge Bellow's discomfort with this label and then proceed to classify him with other JewishAmerican writers in spite of his obvious reluctance to be so defined? Bellow is prominently featured in a recent collection called JewishAmerican Stories.2 editor justifies the inclusion of Bellow's story, The Old System, on the grounds of its subject. It shows the familial tensions in two generations of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Although it richly details Orthodox rituals including a consultation with a learned rabbi, it is Jewish in deeper ways. Its underlying structure shares with all of Bellow's fiction three narrative strategies derived from the Yiddish storytellers. These definitive structures are: a characteristic narrative perspective, a characteristic mode of ordering the events, and a characteristic mode of closure. That is, Bellow uses a Jewish point of view, a Jewish plot, and a Jewish ending. These authorial techniques are what mark him as a Jewish writer whatever his subject. How this deep structure disqualifies all disclaimers becomes quite apparent in Bellow's latest novel, Humboldt's Gift. It is quite possible that Bellow's own sensitivity on the point led him to minimize the pronounced Jewishness of the character based upon Delmore Schwartz. Although Bellow recorded his appearance, his conversation, his behavior with incredible accuracy, he deliberately underplayed Delmore's self-chosen role of quintessential Jew. A contrast of Bellow's fictionalized memoir with Schwartz's biography makes clear how careful Bellow has been not to present Schwartz as a Jewish writer.