This is a superb biography ... [Leader] has managed to write a sympathetic, judicious, 700-page second volume here, which one can recommend on its own merits. I even came to admire Bellow more at the end than the beginning. How on earth did Leader do it? ... I found myself reading for the reappearances of [Bellow's sons] Gregory Bellow, Adam Bellow and Daniel Bellow, who are richly realized as characters and emerge as thoughtful commenters on their father’s life ... Equally vibrant are the characterizations of the adult women who intersected with Bellow ... Leader finds Bellow out in his letters, unpublished manuscripts and published books, and pulls gems into the light. The surprise and treat of this book is how much Bellow stayed a master, sentence by sentence, every time he picked up a pen.
This second volume is just as definitive and revelatory [as the first volume] ... Leader is the ideal biographer for Bellow, who was a perfectionist in his work but led a complicated personal life, evenhandedly negotiating his way through the contradictory accounts of the writer's amazing journey ... This is biography at its best and will appeal widely.
Leader is, after Mark Harris, Ruth Miller and James Atlas, the fourth to attempt a book-length biography of Bellow. It is likely to be the definitive one. Though Leader lacked access to his subject himself, he has interviewed almost everyone still alive who knew him ... Leader’s own text could not be called hagiography; he does not attempt to excuse Bellow’s racially insensitive attacks on multiculturalism ... However, he endows Bellow with a cultural gravity and flawed grandeur that make him seem, in the final years, like a Jewish Lear ... He is more concerned with tracing how elements of Bellow’s life show up in the fiction than in rummaging the fiction for clues to the life. Ultimately, the books are what justify the years that Leader has spent parsing details of how the man spent his time. Though they exhibit some of their author’s flaws, the books will be read as long as readers continue to care about the art of fiction.
Mr. Leader devotes a lot of space to reinvestigating these cases [of real-life corruption recounted in Bellow's The Dean's December]—too much, really, for their significance in Bellow’s story. One can understand his temptation, however: These are moments of high drama that require real detective work, while most of the story that Leader has to tell is outwardly undramatic. For while Bellow’s family and romantic lives were full of conflict, his public and professional existence, in the years covered by this book, was largely made of up teaching and writing, punctuated by lectures and visiting professorships. One reason the book is so long is that it contains too many sentences along the lines of 'after visiting Milan on a side trip, they flew to Nice, where Bellow rented a car and drove through pouring rain to Aix-en-Provence' ... After reading Mr. Leader’s comprehensive account of an all-too-human life, one is grateful to be able to return to Bellow’s books, where he remains faultlessly alive.
There are well over 800 close-typed pages in the drama of his subject’s defiant second act; it is a tribute both to the life and to The Life that so few of these pages seem superfluous ... There have been other attempts to capture Bellow’s overflowing lust for life... but this will stand as the definitive account.
... stupendous ... Leader chronicles the art-life relationship with a high-definition precision and amplitude. His sedimentary method lends both volumes a richly satisfying density of texture, like impacted strata of multicoloured rock. He maps the whole fractured geology of Bellow’s mind and, at the bedrock layer, finds a curious hankering not for fuss but peace ... As this truly magnificent biography reveals, Bellow 'recovered greenness' time and again. But did others have to wither as he flowered?
Even granting its biographical fecundity, Leader’s deep-dive literary criticism interrupts and weighs down his otherwise fast-paced narrative. Meticulous and larded with quotes, it is less compelling than the first-hand testimony of those who lived with, loved and sometimes hated Bellow ... [Bellow's surviving wives' and childrens'] emotional recollections render Volume II — even more so than Volume I — 'painfully intimate,' in Philip Roth’s words... revelatory...
... as minutely researched and clear-eyed as Leader’s first [volume on Bellow] ... But then Leader has shown, often disconcertingly, how the fiction was made out of the life. Not just wives, but friends, colleagues and friends-of-friends would catch themselves in the pages of the latest Bellow novel and not often be flattered ... Leader is wholly steeped in Bellow’s oeuvre and able to find all the fictional equivalents of the real people who filled his life. Leader does not attempt much critical analysis, but he does include plenty of apt quotation – just as great a skill. You keep stumbling from some ignoble episode on to some of Bellow’s sentences, with their fearless phrase-making and hilarious metaphors. And then, maybe, you forget your dismay.
Leader carefully and precisely accounts for the women who come in and out of Bellow's life ... Leader diplomatically and carefully illustrates the problems in the writing of (and reaction to) James Atlas's single-volume biography Bellow ... If a criticism can be made of the style Leader employs throughout this book, it could be that he doesn't look at influences and ideas as ingredients that make for great novels. Leader knows the work better than perhaps anybody save for Bellow himself, but the knowledge of the work is mainly for data and structure, not necessarily for literary style. The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965-2005 works best in smaller scenes of humility and tradition ... Those deeply familiar with Bellow's novels and stories will appreciate Leader's astute criticism and understand why the decidedly minor nonfiction and theater work is not as deeply examined. Leader provides more than enough material to give his reader a head start into a deep study of some important, challenging, controversial, brilliant, distinctly American literature.
Leader ably charts Bellow’s continuing evolution as a writer, which will cheer his fans: Bellow matched talent, after all, with an impressive work ethic. Less cheering are his relationships with children, lovers, and spouses, all of which involved considerable drama and, even on his deathbed, shouting and recriminations. His cantankerousness punctuates almost every page ... Always hard at work and always in battle mode, Bellow emerges as a brilliant writer who never minded being disliked—and offered many reasons to do so. Though sometimes overly detailed, this is a top-notch exploration of one of the most important midcentury writers.
This masterful account of the second half of Bellow’s life from Leader...is impressive in both content and accessibility ... Although generous to Bellow, Leader shows the highly flawed person existing alongside the great writer. The book depicts a man caught up in mid-century notions of masculinity, displaying a volatile temper, expecting women to wait on him, and flaunting his dominance ... Yet Leader has a talent for finding the redeeming details that humanize Bellow ... Leader succeeds because his book never bogs down: despite its almost 800 pages, Leader knows when to move on, producing a compulsively readable biography.
