Saul Bellow Annotated Bibliography

A generalized discussion of Bellow's failures as a playwright in LA followed by a discussion of his subsequent revisions and use of the form as an exploration and conveyance for introspection. Provides a careful analysis of the problems in plot, characterization, and stage technique in the play. One of the few lengthy treatments of the play as text.

Reviews briefly Bellow's history of involvement with the theatre and his writings both for it and about it. Discusses several dramatic pieces including The Wrecker and The Last Analysis. Discusses the textual evolution of LA and the character of Bummidge. Concludes with Bellow's responses concerning his broadway career.

Bigsby, C. W. E. "The New Surrealism." Confrontation and Commitment: A Study of Contemporary American Drama 1959–66. C. W. E. Bigsby. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 1968. 93–99.

Bigsby discusses the thematic content of LA in the context of a discussion of experimentalism and surrealism on the drama of the period.

Brustein, Robert. "Saul Bellow on the Drag Strip." Rev. of The Last Analysis. New Republic 24 Oct. 1964: 25–26. Rpt. in Seasons of Discontent: Dramatic Opinions 1959–1965. Robert Brustein. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965. 172–75.

Brustein complains of sprawling structure and lack of integrated theme and form. The farce is too serious and dark for theater farce. Provides good plot summary of the play. Sees the piece as anarchic to the theater itself. Sees that Bellow has potential as a playwright and condemns those of lesser talent who may have permanently exiled him from attempting theater again.

Contains a review of Oh What a Lovely War and Bellow's LA. Complains that farce is the wrong mode for the serious business the play concerns itself with. Bummidge never becomes real. He remains a "figure of verbiage." There is little logic in his process. The play remains unfulfilled. Also condemns the producer for his lack of style.

Clurman, Harold. "Theatre." Rev. of Under the Weather. Nation 14 Nov. 1966) 523–24. Rpt. in The Naked Image: Observations on the Modern Theatre. Harold Clurman. New York: Macmillan, 1966. 45–47.

Categorizes Bellow's plays as one act farces. Provides a detailed account of the content and structure of UW. Claims that the final result of the play is to stimulate curiosity rather than gratify. Sees the play as more likely to succeed as a commercial venture than as an artistic one.

Discusses Bellow's play The Wrecker, (1954). One of the few references to this play in the literature. Complains of its brevity, its lack of farcical savagery, and its lack of focus. Gives a succinct plot and character summary. Claims that the optimistic ending lacks conviction and that the audience balks at farce containing redemption themes. Describes the chief character, Bummidge, as "a pygmy" compared to the heroes of the novels.

Colakis, Marianthe. "Saul Bellow's The Last Analysis and Sophocles" Oedipus at Colonus." Text and Presentation: The Journal of the Comparative Drama Conference 15 (1994): 25–29.

Details the history of LA's failure on Broadway, and the record of its detractors and defenders. Argues that in LA Bellow had in mind Oedipus at Colonus. Sees Bummidge as a Sophoclean character searching for deeper values than those held around him. Provides a very detailed comparison of both plays.

Corrigan, Robert W. "Engagement/Disengagement in the Contemporary Theatre." The Theatre in Search of a Fix. Robert W. Corrigan. New York: Delacorte, 1973. 282–84.

Calls Bellow a great comic artist like Chekov. Deals with Bummidge in LA as a modern-day Hamlet. He concentrates on the spoof, farce and burlesque in the play.

A brief statement of the content of LA that refuses even to discuss it as drama. Essentially a dismissal of the play.

Gilman, Richard. "Bellow on Broadway." Rev. of Under the Weather. Common and Uncommon Masks: Writings on Theatre 1961–1970. Richard Gilman. New York: Random, 1971. 242–44.

Hewes, Henry. "A Muse of Fire." Rev. of The Last Analysis. Saturday Review 17 Oct. 1964: 29.

A brief derogatory review of LA that condemns it for its lack of focus and "depressingly domestic discord."

Malin, Irving. "Bummy's Analysis." Saul Bellow: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Earl Rovit. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, N J: Prentice, 1975. 115–21.

Discusses Bummidge as one more of Bellow's "autodidacts." Provides an intensive and theoretical analysis of the play and its central protagonist. Concludes that the final effect of the play is mixed and that "we dangle between different worlds—ours and his, Bellow's and ours." Calls it a powerful, shrewd and funny play.

Comments on LA as a disaster and complains that UW is another example of Bellow's "getting an education in public" and earning as he gets one. Critiques the female characters in the play disparagingly, but does give a fairly thorough plot summary. Concludes that Bellow never persuaded him that the participants were "worth a second thought."

Opdahi, Keith M. "The Mental Comedies of Saul Bellow." From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Jewish–American Stage and Screen. Ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1983. 183–96.

This is probably the definitive article thus far on Bellow as playwright. Describes thoroughly the Jewish influence in the Bellow plays.

Condemns the production of LA and then condemns the play saying that "it committed suicide before its assassination." Bellow fails to dramatize his ideas. "The play's soliloquies and dialogue are not in coherence with its ostensibly farcical action." The play is full of "thick, clotted, unrealized ambitions."

Philips, Louis. "The Novelist as Playwright: Baldwin, McCullers, and Bellow." Modern American Drama: Essays in Criticism. Ed. William E. Taylor. Deland, FL: Everett/Edwards, 1968. 145–62.

Reviews the critics' comments on Bellow as playwright. Provides a character analysis of Bummidge in LA and a short production account. Deals primarily with Bellow's literary ideas in the play. Concludes that Bellow as satirist is defeated by his own earnestness.

Accuses Bellow of failing to recognize some of the almost childish truths of the theater—a play cannot ever meander like passages in a novel. Sees Bellow as one of the long line of American novelists who give the theater one try and give up. Claims that one can never really sympathize with Bummidge because he is never really in trouble.

Schloff, Aaron McK. Sun Sets on 'Miami Stories': American Jewish Theater Presents Three Forgettable One-Act Plays." Jewish Week 207.48 (1995): 43.

Reviews a current performance of Bellow's "The Wen" at the American Jewish Theater. Describes the plot and characters and the other two plays being performed with "The Wen." One is based on Malamud's "The Magic Barrel," and the other is Lawrence Klavan's "If Walls Could Talk."

A brief dismissal of the play that disparages Bellow's assessment of women in UW.

Briefly reviews Bellow's "The Wen" currently being performed at the American Jewish Theater under the title "Miami Stories." Calls the three plays schmalz rather than zest, and accuses them of being sophomoric. However, does find Bellow's play the evening's winner.

Smith, Dolly. "Move Over, Menander: Bellow Has Gone from New Comedy to the Sublime." Saul Bellow Journal 7.1 (1988): 3–14.

Describes a clash within Saul Bellow between tradition and desire with the result that in LA Bellow posits a new comic theory of sublime. Argues that in addition to Menanders' formula for comedy, which involves the renewal of life, Bellow's comedy adds the dimension of the sublime as well. Provides an analysis of the play from this perspective and articulates six major elements of Sublime Comedy, using examples from plays mentioned in other Bellow texts, such as HG. Concludes that altered audience expectation because of this new formula accounted more for the play's failure than any inherent problems.

Describes LA as a wildly untidy play with a flood of antic-imagination, mad rhetoric, comic fantasy, and improbabe but serious farce. Commends Bellow for his daring and freshness, his sensibility and his viewpoint that is both earthbound and airborne. Notes the plays flaws as undifferentiated voices, dense language, illogical plotting, and demented bravura leaps from one scene to another. Describes the plot, applauds the undercurrent of feeling and the rhetorical fireworks. It is the product of a mind capable of disturbing his audience, and who is at once sportive and serious.

Weales, Gerald. "Saul Bellow and Some Others." The Jumping Off Place: American Drama in the 1960's. Gerald Weales. New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969. 195–223.

Provides a detailed account of Bellow's interest in the theater and a production history of LA. Describes it as one of the "most fascinating and funniest plays to turn up in the 1960's." Gives a detailed and intelligent critical analysis of the play.