“For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You—you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.”

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About Saul Bellow

Canadian and American writer

Saul Bellow was a Canadian and American writer whose work made him one of the central figures in 20th century fiction. He lived from 1915 to 2005 and was recognized with major literary honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and in 1990 he received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. His reputation rests on fiction that probes modern life, identity, and the pressures placed on individuals by society and thought.

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Books by Saul Bellow

Herzog

1996

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Humboldt's Gift

1976

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Ravelstein

2015

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Seize the Day

2003

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The victim

1996

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