SOURCE: Brown, John L. Review of Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow. World Literature Today 76, no. 2 (spring 2002): 149-50.

In the following mixed review, Brown outlines what he sees as strengths and weaknesses of the works in Collected Stories.

The collection [Collected Stories] contains thirteen stories originally published in various magazines (The New Yorker, Partisan Review) between 1951 and 1992. The volume title's reference to “stories” is somewhat misleading, since several selections such as “Him with His Foot in His Mouth” (1985) are more the length of nouvelles than of short stories. One critic comments ironically that “Bellow is such a brilliant writer that small helpings are insufficient.” The adjective collected is also misleading, since the volume at hand is the third compendium of Bellow stories, having been preceded by Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968) and Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984). Moreover, two of the texts in the...