A sober evaluation of his work leaves no doubt that Saul Bellow is one of the important writers in American literature. As one of two living American Nobel Prize-winners in literature, he inherits the mantle of Hemingway and Faulkner, even though he himself has not become a culture hero. Nor has he, like Borges or Márquez, become a cult figure; when in 1979 the New York Times Book Review asked twenty leading intellectuals which books since 1945 would count among the hundred important books in Western civilization, Bellow was not mentioned. He is mentioned elsewhere, however, and with the highest praise possible. Who are "the great inventors of narrative detail and masters of narrative voice and perspective" according to Philip Roth? "James, Conrad, Dostoevski and Bellow."

Bellow has in fact always enjoyed the kind of reputation that is won by solid and accomplished work. He is a private...