SOURCE: Frohock, W. M. “Saul Bellow and His Penitent Picaro.” Southwest Review 53, no. 1 (winter 1968): 36-44.

In the following essay, Frohock challenges the traditional idea of The Adventures of Augie March as a picaresque novel, perceiving Augie March to be more of a penitent than a picaro lead character.

In one way, Saul Bellow's novels are very much alike: the stories focus on the special predicament of a single individual, the importance of the other characters is relatively small in comparison, and such glimpses as one gets from them of a surrounding society or of the world at large are relatively incidental. The hero's essential discomfort comes from the trouble he has in coping with life itself, the overwhelming job of just living: the central figure in Dangling Man (1944) is unhappily suspended while he waits for the draft to come and get him; The Victim (1947) has a man tortured...