[In The Dean's December] we have the bare bones of Bellow: the novel as essay, stripped of the whimsey and decoration of character and fanciful prose. Bellow at his worst. This book has the disquieting effect of encountering an old friend—a good friend—who has undergone some startling decline.

But the symptoms and patterns have been there from the mechanical beginnings in Dangling Man and The Victim. They have persisted, notably in the metaphysical obsession with the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner that virtually took over the latter part of what was supposed to be a portrait of poet Delmore Schwartz in Humboldt's Gift.

The truth of the matter is that Bellow's passion for cerebration has weighed down and sometimes canceled out his interest in fiction. No novelist except Thomas Mann has been able to carry such heavy excess baggage without being crushed by it. Bellow's enduring achievements...