Since Herzog Saul Bellow has been developing his own quite unique kind of novel. Like Virginia Woolf (though he wouldn't thank me for the comparison) he has gradually discovered a form of fiction in which plot counts for extremely little, but which is open enough to include almost everything. Of course Bellow's minimal plots are very different from Virginia Woolf's: instead of house-parties and village fêtes there are divorces, court cases, deaths. The setting is urban—usually Chicago, which is seen as the archetypal modern city—and the cast includes hoodlums, media men, academics and politicians. The "almost everything" also differs from Virginia Woolf's, for it includes all the horrors of slums and big cities, the rapes and muggings and killings, the greed for fame and money, and the monstrosities that go on over the whole world. Bellow wants to get Bokassa and his jewels as well...