Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories

By Saul Bellow

Book Overview

"What Henry James did for the geographically disoriented, Bellow does for the culturally traumatized in the six stories gathered in this collection. Truly, Bellow is one of God's spies." - Los Angeles Times A Penguin Classic In six darkly comic tales, Saul Bellow presents the human experience in all its preposterousness, poignancy, and pathos. In the title story, a professor well-known for his wit struggles to animate his memoirs as he teeters on the brink of despair; in "the old System," a distinguished biochemist tries to find room in his life for love; and in "A Father to Be," a man is startled to find himself seated next to his future adult son on a New York subway. The other stories, too, reflect Bellow's special ability to depict men and women confronting, in highly idiosyncratic ways, the enigmas and oddities of existence. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140189459
• ISBN13: 9780140189452
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

'The Old System' is one of Bellow's masterpieces

Of the six stories in this collection only one moves deeply and is truly memorable, " The Old System". I consider this to be one of Bellow's finest works and a true masterpiece. It is also I think his most deeply Jewish work , and one which he shows an understanding of American worlds and times in his own powerful distinctive idiomatically rich and specially perceptive way. Above all he creates the picture of a family of its relations and life, tells the story of an estranged brother and sister and their death- bed reconciliation with deep deep feeling.

Disconnection and Despair.

This is a thin book with six stories. If these stories can be said to have a common thread, it is the people who fail to ever make a real connection. The characters in the stories are aimless, seized by momentary ideas which fill the need for purpose and troubled by other people. All of the stories were well written, but two for me really stood out. The first was "Leaving the Yellow House". This tells the story of a woman who has never succeeded at anything except that she managed to come to own this house. Faced with increasing infirmity, she can no longer care for herself but cannot bring herself to turn her back on her one success. The second stand-out was "The Gonzaga Manuscripts", a story about a feckless young man (Feiler) who tries to recover a set of lost poems from 1950s Spain. He wants to find purpose in poetry, but his researches keep bringing him back to politics. These stories are truthfully not among the best work of Bellow. However, you need to bear in mind that given how wonderful his writing generally is, they are still more than worth the time to read.