In this major interview, Bellow discusses his recent illness, recent assessments of life, his father Abraham, his Jewish upbringing, his vision of what it means to be human, American cities, contemporary history, early Chicago history, the Depression, his wives, woman in his novels, the transforming historical moment we are living in, the PC movement, the scientific/consumerist ethos, and the loss of the self.

In this interview Bellow initially discusses the question of why a materialistically satisfied people aren't happier, don't achieve permanence in relationships, yet long for love. He also discusses the "ice of self-interest" in the characters in MDH , and the modern literalness of sexual relations as an expression of lust and ambition. He extols the kinder world of the thirties, and criticizes the swallowing up of life by journalism and discourse. He concludes by briefly describing his teaching at the University of Chicago and his current reevaluation of his projects.

In this interview, Bellow talks about his first year (age seventeen) at the University of Chicago: his courses, books, friends, teachers, secondhand bookstores, his early writing, his grief for his mother, his cloudy yearnings to write, his favorite writers. Then he moves on to describe his return to the University of Chicago in 1963 as a member of the Committee on Social Thought. Discusses famous academics he knew, his teaching, his local haunts, and close friends (like Greene and Bloom) with whom he taught.

Laments that in America there is no literary world, and no liteary public. The traditions of literary culture and the institutions are lacking. Discusses the phenomenon of writers being invited to the White House, asked to mingle with movie stars, and unable to discuss literature with government leaders Believes modern industrial society dismisses art, the elements of distraction in American life and its avarice, and the fact that a good book might only find 100,000 readers, thanks often to failures in the university.

Discusses the sources of Bellow's ideas, epistemology and metaphysics, the Jewish Shul, Hebrew study, reading the New Testament, being hospitalized at age eight, funny papers, death and children, moving to Chicago, becoming a confirmed reader, getting fit, his father and brothers, early memories, being Jewish, the Depression, readin the great Russian and French authors, the literary scene in Chicago, the WPA, the Holocaust, Isaac Rosenfeld and Delmore Schwartz, the fairlure of Stalinism, the Merchant Marine Hiroshima, traveling in Europe after the war, writing AAM, his failure to take in and write about the Holocaust.

Discusses Bellow at 75, his rejection of Marx, Lenon and Freud, growing up Jewish, Montreal, Chicago, the mystery of human existence, visual acuity, the condition of American reality, the intellect in modern life, depending on books, assorted biographical information, and the development of his emotional life.

Discusses why writers must hold the line of Civilization against the threat of barbarism. Writers rather than churches, whether of not supreme values can be generated anew, the current ideological and moral interegnum, skepticism, imitation, the modern need to be interesting, the New York intellectual community, The Partisan Review, Colombia University in the late 1940s, avante garde magazines, the frenzy of the 1960s, pessimism and optimism as a racket, believing that the human speicies should continue, comedy, banality of evil, art, language, Freud, naturalism, self-destruction, John Barth, Hege, and religion.

In this interview, Bellow discusses his attitude toward biographers, his belief that biographies should be written after a writer is dead, the problem his readers have of conflating his characters with himself, the antagonism of his reviewers, the imaginative process, Stendahl, philosophy, revisions of various novels, his misrepresentation by reviews, his contempt for most editors, the intended effects of his books on his readers, his model intellectual novelist, Dostoevski, the diseases of consciousness, Lowell and Berryman, Philip Rahv, gender issues, the influence of "The Eternal Husband" on TV, the pickpocket episode in MSP, racism, HWHFIHM, psychoanalysis, Kitsch, avante gardism, the end of the novel, mass culture, his personal taste in books, the obligations of the writer, and the future of the novel.

Describes Bellow's physical appearance, his deep resentments about the American government and intellectuals, university education, the debasement of literature, mass culture, anxiety about who will read H, and superficial knowledge. Discusses also Bellow's dissapointments with his women readers, the amorphous state of people's souls, and the writer's task to speak to souls.

Discusses Bellow's belief that his books are less about himself than about life, success, writers as clergymen, clairvoyance, ideas in literature, disappointment with modern philosophy, the writer as truffle hound and public functionary, his beliefs and teachings, the rise of the intellectual level of the public, Joyce, the characters in H, and HG, family, his disappointment of MSP being misread, and Bellow's women.

Discusses Bellow's physical appearance, immigrant history, bold textures, scientific coldness, and early novels, up to AAM.

Discusses HWHFHM, the ineffectiveness of meliorism, his unground axes, bourgeoise critics, Whitman, the American surrender to pragmatism, postwar America, the failure of moral sensibility, his somber anger in DD, laughter, intellectual associates, his association with Gus Alex of organized crime, his family, the Magia, reading Nietzsche and Heidegger, the real life people in several of the stories, and the nature of reality in the civilized West, religious feelings, and the struggle between the street and the home.

Reports a conversation held between Christy and Bellow in his Boston University apartment when Bellow was 74. Contains random firsthand comments from Bellow not found elsewhere, including a duster of remarks about his being willing to speak up politically with courage and spirit.

Report of an interview with Bellow in Boston as he turns 74. Here Bellow discusses his view of himself; the passage of time; his reaction to critics as he ages; some childhood experiences demonstrating his "pleasure in imaginary states" which led to his career based on the imagination; his admiration of courageous people, particularly those who speak up and take risks; the mode appetite for shock that feeds on sensational scandals as a form social entertainment, a satisfaction for blood; his feeling that hasn't got to the bottom of things yet; his sometinc contradictory explanations; and his refutation of the charge that is a "cranky great man."

Describes Bellow at 60 in a London hotel rom, his views on celebrity and on American writers as great solitaries, HG, his early life in Chicago, his previous novels, humor, immigrant history, family life, marriage and divorces, work at the University of Chicago, his beliefs about the life of the spirit, science, the supernatural, and his appearance at the White House.

Discusses Bellow's address at the American Embassy Theater in London, his publications with Penguin, anecdotes in the literary world, art-fostering cities, English departments as Paris substitutes, literature and the cure of sould, the failure of sex advice, man as spectator, of his own humanity, and of the magnificence of human experience.

Discusses Bellow's detestation of Culture, his European and American views on writers, Bellow's ranking in the literary beauty contest, reviews his previous novels, his detractors, other writers, his association with the University of Chicago, assorted biographical tidbits, Isaac Rosenfeld, various intellectual aquaintances, his recurring themes, the phenomenon of the university writer, the lack of American literary institutions, and the lack of literary comradeship.

Discusses how long it took to write H, his fifteen drafts, the plot, the flashbacks, Madelaine as an intellectual, how to deal with success as a writer, his teaching, his favorite novelists, reading Russian writers in French, his struggles for historical perspective, modern crises, and the surplus of information and ideas.

In this interview Crosland mostly describes her meeting with Bellow and his domestic arrangements at his retreat in Vermont. Contains a few comments from Bellow on such subjects as reviewers, charges of misogyny, philosophical pessimism, specialization, autobiographical elements in the fiction, his cultural background, his attachment to his children, his help for disenfranchised writers, his belief in marriage, and the "ordeal of desire" men and women suffer from in the century because of their too literal expectations.

Discusses Bellow's appearance at the Writers' Club at Colombia university, his criticism of writers like Flaubert who cut themselves off from society, and the appaling falsehoods of the present moment.

Discusses humanism in the 20th century, surrealism, Andre Breton, European philosophical importations, the degradation of the Self, capitalism, the private life, the historical subject. The interview also touches such topics as Rousseau, Hemingway, Proust, modern crisis, Eastern Europe, information chaos in the U.S., human imagination, the idea of progress, Communism, the glorification of rebellion, neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, American courts, prisons and hospitals, love, death and pain, the city, and many other topics.

Describes Bellow's old-fashioned Chicago apartment, the recent publication of DD, his sojourn teaching at Bard, Bellow's dislike of his tudents, Bellow's command on Yiddish and French, his fight with Ellenberg, his neo-conservativism, views on WPA, work for the Encyclopedia Britannica, service with the Merchant Marines, H, DD, Jesse Jackson, his mother's death, and his views on pain.

Discusses internationalism in the novel, modern French literature, novelistic structure, methods of writing, his characters and teaching career, opinions on contemporary writers, the social and religious role of the writer, as well as modern criticism, the freedom of the artist, Paganini and Mozart, John Cheever, the worlds of editors and publishers.

Discusses the Nobel Prize, the best kind of praise, Chicago, Isaac Rosendfeld, the daily affects of wining the prize, the extra literary effects of the prize in America, the media effect, fear of losing his feeling for ordinary life, cultural promoters, other prize winners, the writer's audience in America imagining the ideal reader, the contemporary status of the novel, theories of history Rudolph Steiner, and his reading history from the Bible, to Plato, to R. D. Laing.

In conversation with historian Eric Goldman, Bellow discusses American politics and culture and the role of the individual in a complex society.

Discusses the so-called university novel, anti-intellectualism, the influence of the Depression on his work, writers of the 1930s, the literature of the absurd, his love of Dostoyevski, humankind's spiritual capactiies, his admiration of Ralph Ellison, his views on Salinger and Golding, and his belief in the powers of the imagination and the integrity of the heart.

Discusses the importance of place, Chicago and university culture, the media, Paris, intellectual conversation, bourgeoise philistinism as a subject for bohemian American writers, the life of the imagination, the edifiers of the 19th century literary tradition, America and writers, the celebrity circuit, the failure of the literature classroom and literary criticism, Chicago mafia, Chicago writers, Dostoyevsky, the Depression, anti-semitism, writing the literature of ideas, Darwinism, Capitalism, Herzog's dilemmas, T. S. Eliot, HG, moral law, and modern philosophy.

Describes Bellow at 49 years of age, at the Belasco Theater rehearsing of LA, as well as his teaching in Chicago, H and its healing properties, and the hatred of apocalypses and extremism.

Discusses his personal writing habits, the modern artist, Bellow's study of the University of Chicago, Bellow and the American Naturalists, Dreiser, the moderns, the Russians, D.H. Lawrence, the progression of his novels, the primitive prompter, lionization, comedy versus complaint, environment in the Bellow text, tranquility and contemplation, the Faustian artist, anti-intellectuals, the worthfulness of existence, the imprionment of the individual, Sartre, avoiding nihilism and being a stern modernist.

Discusses his early ambition to be a writer, the influence of the city, his experiences in New York, American writes as mavericks, the Communist Party, Joyce, Jewish American writers, the devaluation of the individual, Tolstoy, bohemianism versus intellectuality, revolt and crisis, mass media, the influence of the public, his invitation and to the White House.

Discusses the pernicious effects of professionalism, teaching in universities, the contemporary status of literature, the state of the physical sciences, the fallacy of the qualified reader, views on the failure of humankind, progress, his refusal to be pegged as an ethnic writer, the process of publishing HRK, H, and MSP, and his experiences with the media.

Discusses Bellow among Yale University's English majors, Robert Penn Warren's presence, reports the students' questions about the death of civilization, youth and social consciousness, MSP, his horror of mass media, his South Side Chicago apartment, his soprano recorder, Mercedes, his three sons, his desire to have lived earlier, his views on women and on Chicago neighborhoods, and his dislike of hot, bright places.

Discusses HG, the school of writers in Chicago, the depredations of the media, the WPA projects, literary life in New York, Paris in the 1930s, and the conditions for art in America, as well as the crisis of civilization informs his work.

Discusses Bellow's capacity for jokes and laughter, his acutely moral imagination, his previous works, being labeled a Jewish American writer, his characters, Chicago, the failures of the WASP establishment, Mozart, the demands of the soul, the academic community, his early sojourn in New York, Lionel Trilling, and his writing habits.

Details the contents of the novel, focusing on the theme of the human "pain schedule," universal human heartbreak, the tragic literalness human love is now approached with, and the entire issue of trying to become a "holistic" human being.

Discusses Bellow's office at the University of Chicago, opinions on why reviewers were negative about MSP, his belief that no one writes attentively, Mr. Sammler as a "good" man, liteary virtue, Dostoyevsky and the difficulty of producting good characters, affirmation and negation, the competition between the writer and the media, art and tradition, art and the purgation of the csonsciousness, what it means to be an American writer, discusses SD as belonging to the earlier group of novels, the delerium of writing AAM, Bellow's Jewish heroes, the Russian, Jewish, and Midwestern American mix in the novel, the amazing hybridity of people one meets in the 20th century, Jews as mythic creation, Bellow and Eastern religion,and his total immersion in Judaism at a certain period of his life.

Saul Bellow explains his appreciation of writers like Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and others; evaluates his change of style in writing as the result of his growth and maturity; and confirms the issue of victim as the essential of modern realism, with death as its related subject.

Discusses Bellow at 66 years of age, reviews his nine published works, and details Bellow's treatment of the nightmare alleys of the American Dream, the hybridity of America's large cities, early history, young life as a writer, the pull of playroom, poolroom, and local library, his feelings of non-belonging, his sense of his own existence as a miracle, the failures of science, the need for sharper and sharper stimulants, the Chicago political machine, the testing of American democracy and virtue.

The report of an interview with Bellow conducted in San Francisco in which Bellow describes the intimidation he felt as a young writer sensing his status as the son of Russian immigrants. Reports also on his literary use of the language of Chicago, his view of the demise of the Puritan and protestant dominance in America in the 1960's, his comparison of the feelings and ideas he expressed in his 1967 Paris Review interview on various subjects with his present views, his 1930's communist sympathies, his loss of faith and interest in edifying fiction, and his conception of the role of today's writers to "reclaim the dignity and centrality of private life against technologically magnified aggressively projected public life."

Details Bellow's thirteenth floor apartment above Lake Michicigan, his views on Chicago, politics, his sense of the malignancy and despair of Manhattan, his social research in Chicago, erudition, identification with Rousseau, his desire to write from the soul, and his enjoyment of Lake Michigan's storms.

Discusses Bellow's appearance in his office at the University of Chicago, sketches the history of his publications, his early life, and his feelings about the currect literary scene. Provides a comlete summary of the major events in Bellow's life and provides a brief critical commentary on his significance in American Letters.

Comments mostly on Bellow’s once more becoming a father in his old age, the general circumstances of geriatric fatherhood, and the statistics on how long the elderly fathers generally live to be a sustaining influence on their children. Contains some useful biographical information.

Discusses Bellow in an undergraduate classroom, his responses to questions about his critics, the contemporary world of ideas, thoughts on Whitman's language, Hemingway's style, Steinbeck's populism, Farrell's characters, technology, H, Romanticism, ecstatic states, the collective life, junk-users in the 19th and 20th centuries, people's mental designs, Herzog's intellectual agitation, the transcendent meanings of life, knowing the difference between good and evil, Romanticism and Nazism, realtiy instructors who don't really know the score, the difficulties of writing autobiography, breaking away from our type, the myth of self-creation, the issue of death and dying, fashionable writing, the illusion of information, and being labeled a Jewish American author.

In this interview, Bellow describes his near demise due to eating toxic fish in the Carribean, his experience in intensive care for five weeks, and the events of the full year it has taken him to recover. Also describes his special arrangement with Boston University, current literary critical fads, movies, Jack Nicholson, parts of his childhood, the Depression, his mother's death, his father's violence, the jury system and the Simpson Verdict, seeing the dead Trotsky in Mexico, his reviewers, labels like "conservative,'' a variety of writers, AAM, marriage, the current status of novelists, psychoanalysis, and charges of misogyny. Also discusses death, the existence of God, his attitude toward Truman Capote, views on Gore Vidal, Sigmund Freud, Marion Brando, Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Salmon Rushdie. Concludes that nobody in America takes writers seriously enough to 'kill them.

Discusses Boston, Chicago, New York, Bellow's decline-of-the-West funk, liberalism in America, the politcal correctness movement, black anti-semitism, Louis Farrakhan, the resentments engendered in the Civil Rights Movement, and fear of putting one's foot in racial policies.

Discusses how Bellow first decided to become a writer, Bellow's early state of enthusiasm, Chicago and the Depression, why Africa in HRK, the numerous revisions of H, H and Emerson, totalitarianism and affirmation, the significance of private lives, the audience for contemporary writers, critics and literary criticism, writing as discovery and writing as the throwing off of sickness.

The text of this interview is primarily first-person Bellow. In this lecture or essay, Bellow discusses the influence upon him of Nietzsche on the topic of self-invention, what he has learned from Playboy, the female debunking of the myth of love, the failure of the sexual revolution to meet the heart's need for constancy, the subject of adultery in Western fiction, and the artist's role of resistance to "denaturing forces."

Describes Bellow's Lake Michigan apartment, his attachment to Chicago, Paris in the 1920s and 30s, big city philistinism, contamination by pseudo-culture, American commercial democracy, the immigrant experience, angst, Heidegger and Nietzsche, the decline of Christianity, H, HRK, the matter of the soul, the march of ideas, DD, the development of the consciousness, Eros, sex, fanaticism, and terrorism, American denial of reality, old fashioned human attachments, emotional truth for modern man, burgeoise falsification of emotions, the Great Noise, decaing moral landscapes, and the boredom of intellectual life.

Discusses DD, the deaths of hundreds of millions in the 20th century, horror, totalitarianism, his refusal to admit the defeat of the humane tradition, the failure of Great Society programs, the professionalization of the human sciences, the failures of experts, the isolation effects of cities, lawlessness, the great noise, startled modern souls, the TV culture, American liberalism, organized terror, the greatness of human beings, the 1960s the loss of private inviolability, the necessity of the private sphere, scared spaces, and the failure of American writers to serve humanity.

In this conversation with Sanoff, Bellow discusses: what happens when old human matters like love, family relations, and murder are "toyed with as a mental game," Benn Crader as a true person in an era of fabricated people devoid of traditions, what happens when people have a material, medical, literal vision of one another, friendship, misogyny, psychobabble, and self-analysis via pop psychology and the media.

Discusses Bellow's favorite characters from his own novels, writing DM, TV, AAM as a break-through novel, SD as a corrective to AAM, H as his most profound self-analysis, views on "The Old System," the failures of super intellectuals in the 20th century, imposturship, romantic and nihilistic self-indulgence, MSP as an exercise in dealing with a world subject, his attachment to Humboldt, dealing with death, the process of liberation through art, the dehumanization of th 20th century, the visible and the invisible. Also details T. S. Eliot and looking for the king doms beyond, going against the current, the effects of the Nobel Prize, the metaphysical unconscious, epistemological guidance, Conrad, Tolstoy, Dickens, Marquez, Christina Stead, philistine literary intellectuals, human beings as true subject, immortal longings, spiritual life, and the twin monsters of politics and public relations.

Details Bellow's early academic career, anthropology, the WPA, becoming a writer, his parents, the ability of people to do what they need to do to survive intuitively, and to destroy themselves preparing to be a writer, false American radicalism, melancholia and depression, his writing rituals, orderliness as a writer, his excessive self-discipline, writing for the stage, romantic thought in the 20th century, Judaism versus Romanticism, Henderson as his prototypical self, the artist's life in America, and the failure of communication in the 20th century.

Discusses at length the unusual publication of AT. Also reports pieces of a telephone conversation with Bellow about his views on the editorial choices concerning fiction of the national magazines, as well as his agent's and his editor's views on the work Contains an extensive commentary about his intentions in AT.

Discusses Bellow's grasp of Chicago's slums and Chicago's affluence, the land marks in Chicago occupied by Bellow's characters, his belief that the literary world is ingrown and hardened, the failure of the New York literary culture, his personal elegance, his new wealth, his relationship with Richard Stern, the various public roles played by current American writers, Bellow’s reviewers, the old immigrant neighborhood, the financial district, his current writing project (three one-act plays), his refusal to believe that America is a fraud, and that all is blackness, bitterness, and hopelessness.