SOURCE: LaHood, Marvin J. Review of The Actual, by Saul Bellow. World Literature Today 72, no. 1 (winter 1998): 132.

In the following review, LaHood offers a laudatory assessment of The Actual.

Saul Bellow can write. He has a Nobel Prize (1976) to show for it. He is also the only novelist to win three National Book Awards—for The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Add to these laurels a Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift (1975) and the National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American letters (1990), and he is probably America's most decorated author. Would such a revered and honored author risk all on a novella? The answer is yes.

The Actual is hardly a risk, however. It is pure Bellow. It is the brilliant first-person narrative of Harry Trellman, a Chicago intellectual, who has been in love with Amy Wustrin, his high-school sweetheart, for forty years, but...