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Herzog (Penguin Classics)

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Author: Saul Bellow
Creator: Philip Roth
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$15.00~~
Buy Used: $3.82
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New (36) Used (32) Collectible (6) from $3.82

Seller: Yankee_Clipper_Books_
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

71 reviews
Sales Rank: 22,371

Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 6.2 x 0.7

ISBN: 0142437298
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780142437292
ASIN: 0142437298

Publication Date: February 25, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

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Features:

•	ISBN13: 9780142437292
•	Condition: NEW
•	Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Also Available In:

•	Paperback - Herzog
•	Audio Download - Herzog (Unabridged)
•	Paperback - Herzog (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
•	Paperback - Herzog (Penguin Modern Classics)
•	Hardcover - Herzog
•	Hardcover - Herzog (Alison Press Books)
•	Paperback - Herzog
•	Paperback - Herzog
•	Hardcover - Herzog
•	Paperback - Herzog: 2Viking Critical Edition (The Viking critical library)
•	Audio Cassette - Herzog
•	Audio Cassette - Herzog (Library Edition)
•	Audio CD - Herzog (Library Edition)
•	Audio CD - Herzog
•	MP3 CD - Herzog
•	Paperback - Herzog
•	Mass Market Paperback - Herzog: A novel
•	Paperback - Herzog

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
A novel complex, compelling, absurd and realistic, Herzog became a classic almost as soon as it was published in 1964. In it Saul Bellow tells the tale of Moses E. Herzog, a tragically confused intellectual who suffers from the breakup of his second marriage, the general failure of his life and the specter of growing up Jewish in the middle part of the 20th century. He responds to his personal crisis by sending out a series of letters to all kinds of people. The letters in total constitute a thoughtful examination of his own life and that which has occurred around him. What emerges is not always pretty, but serves as gritty foundation for this absorbing novel.

Product Description
In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity of existence and longing for redemption.

Introduction by Philip Roth

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 1-5 of 71

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Tough, gritty, real: how to live in a world that tears you apart December 28, 2009
Negative Space (Los Angeles, CA USA)

Saul Bellow is definitely one of my favorite authors. Most specifically for his ability to blend his hard-scrabble working class upbringing with the life of the mind he ends up leading. In this book he is tackling the two problems: his own humiliating 2nd divorce and the thinker's reaction to holocaust and genocide of the mid-20th century.

Bellow's books are dense and read more like philosophical treatises than proper novels and this is no exception. His protagonists are overtly male which I think would make this book doubly difficult [potentially uninteresting?] for women readers.

Still, if you are curious about the state of the mind in mid-twentieth century (was Hegel right about history ending, just in the wrong century?), then this book will be rewarding.

5 out of 5 stars

Laugh, look, and reconsider December 23, 2009
caramelizeme (ca, usa)
It is a comedy. He is making fun of the whole academic circuit. Read his foreword to "Closing of the Amrican Mind"- another book worth reading-, he discusses how people misinterpret his book as a mental challenge. Then notice the coincidence with the 1-star reviews.

Herzog is a man who filters all his miseries, instabilities, and unanswerable paradoxes into his intellectual exercises. For a reader, it can be quite funny. At the same time, one can see a fresh perspective on how certain humans, particularly Americans, quiver in the face of fear; the unique manifestation of psychological torment and coming to grips with deep-seated pain. I think, if you follow closely Herzog's wanderings, you will see an aimlessness reflected in the human soul, guided, at times by nothing but a dread of the unknown, at other times by a thin hope. In the process, Bellow debunks the bulk of philosophy (throughout history) of any spiritual validity and wisdom. Philosophy, then, becomes a grunge taken on by ne'er-do-wells seeking salvation from a few words in time of emotional crisis, yet failing ingloriously to make any maturer headway. Yet, for Herzog, everything changes by the second half of the book. This is why you have to read the WHOLE book. All in all, you witness a man making a very tedious, but gradually renewing transformation.

Thank you, Saul Bellow.

1 out of 5 stars

It Stunk. And Yes, I Read Every Miserable Page. September 22, 2009
Derek Manchette
4 out of 8 found this review helpful

For an exercise in intellectual pretentiousness, it would be tough to beat Saul Bellow's writing of the literary monstrosity entitled HERZOG. What a stupendous waste of time and paper. The book is essentially unreadable. Though, like the mountain climber who just has to finish what he starts, I hung in until the, very welcomed, last word.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with the main character, at least as a work of fiction. Yes, Herzog is apparently so infatuated with himself that he thinks others may actually care about his 'observations' and 'insights' about the world and various people. And yes, Herzog is so lacking in maturity as to fail to recognize (until perhaps the very end) that maybe his own personality deficiencies might be the reason why his life has gone so far off track. In real life, I would not want to associate with such a person. But, for a work of fiction, such a character might actually have been an entertaining conduit to an interesting novel.

Instead, Bellow treats us, in HERZOG, to a book significantly less interesting than a scholarly dissertation on the history of Javanese shadow puppets. Perhaps Bellow realized that he would be awarded the Nobel Prize a dozen years after this book's publication and did not want to upstage the writings of the chemistry winner that same year. I cannot say.

Don't believe the hype. This is a book for those who like to think of themselves as smart and who want to demonstrate to others how brainy they are without actually saying so. But you, reader of this review, should instead be smart enough to not read an author just because authority figures tell us how great he was. You should read something else - anything else - instead.

4 out of 5 stars

Compassionate fool July 14, 2009
B. Larson (Minneapolis, MN USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Herzog is a compassionate fool, analyzing his life looking for the problem, when his self-analysis (self-absorption, really) IS the problem. Though Bellow portrays him as absurd, comical, foolish, and sometimes trivially hypocritical, the author never fails in his own compassion for Herzog.

This novel is brilliantly characterized, with lovely details that make my spine tingle. But it is a little too long - I think Bellow could have painted this portrait of Herzog in half the pages if he had really been inspired. Thus many folks will find it too long or pointless. It's a pity, because it's worth sticking with to the end.

5 out of 5 stars

Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow's classic novel "Herzog" is a complex novel of the mental life of a modern man June 9, 2009
C. M Mills (Knoxville Tennessee)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Herzog was published in 1964 and has never gone out of print. The novel by Canadian-Chicagoan Jewish author Saul Bellow has become a modern classic. I reread the novel in the Penguin edition which contains an insightful introduction to Bellow's novels by the famous novelist Phillp Roth. This introduction is a bonus to the reading of an excellent work of fiction.
The chief character is Moses Herzog. Herzog possesses a PH.D in English Literature and is noted for his work on Romanticism as a literary movement. He is recently divorced from his mercurial and sexy wife Madeline. She was his second spouse. He has two children by first wife Daisy and a girlfriend named Ramona. Ramona is a kind woman who owns a flower shop in New York.
The novel is set in New York City, the Berkshires of Massachusetts and Chicago were Moses grew to manhood during the Great Depression. Herzog grew up in an immigrant Jewish family mired in poverty and interfamilial conflicts. Throughout the nonlinear novel we see him musing upon people and family members from his past; old flames and remembrances of his World War II service. We also are invited in to his musings upon his failed marriages and difficulties with children.
Bellow reads slowly. He jumps from one situation and time frame with ease making the reader sit up and pay attention. This style is difficult as there are so many characters to follow. The novel is character rathern than plot driven. The novel is most famous for the letters Herzog writes to famous people such as Adlai Stevenson, Nietzche, Spinoza and even God! Herzog is a liberal academic who has a rough private life culminating in a car crash and an arrest for carrying a loaded gun. The novel ends hopefully as the middle aged Herzog returns to the loving arms of the fetching Ramona.
Bellow is a challenging novelist who deals with the hassles, heartaches and challenges of modern living. He is able to probe with insight into the mind of a brilliant man Moses Herzog. The book is autobiographical as are all of Bellow's major fictions. Herzog is one of his best novels.

Showing reviews 1-5 of 71

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