Jewish Scholar Praises Awarding of 1970 National Book Review Award to Saul Bellow

A Reform rabbi who has lectured widely on literature praised today the awarding of the 1970 National Book Award for fiction yesterday to Saul Bellow for “Mr. Sammler’s Planet.” Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, professor of Jewish religious thought at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion here, described Bellow to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as “one of the most profound and thoughtful Jewish thinkers I know even one of the meet significant Jewish religious thinkers of our time.” Bellow, continued Rabbi Borowitz, has “extended the Jewish view of God and man into the contemporary human situation” in an approach that is “fundamentally religious and deeply human.” Comparing Bellow’s three NBA-winning novels over the past 17 years, Rabbi Borowitz said “The Adventure of Augie March” (1954), while not Jewish in theme, demonstrated Bellow’s “humanism”; “Herzog” (1964) spotlighted the “personal and inner side” of an individual’s “collapse,” and the newest novel “extended that vision of that collapse to the social scene: What do we do about our civilization?” Rabbi Borowitz conceded that Bellow did not have “terribly much to say” in “Mr. Sammler,” but observed that “he managed to find a vision (of a) certain kind of human being.”

Bellow, 55, was born in Quebec but has lived in the United States since 1924 and has taught at several American universities. His other novels include “Dangling Man,” “The Victim,” “Seize the Day,” “Henderson the Rain King” and “The Upper Depths.” His play “The Last Analysis” was presented on Broadway a few seasons back. He edited “Great Jewish Short Stories” in 1963 Rabbi Borowitz, in addition to teaching at HUC-HB, is the editor of Shima, a “frans-denominational independent journal of Jewish social ethics,” and a lecturer at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA. He will speak on Saul Bellow at the Y next Tuesday. The lecture, he noted, had been planned a year ago. “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” was a unanimous winner in the NBA fiction category. The five judges said the story about an elderly Pole in “the chaos and dangers of New York’s upper West Side,” displayed “superb” characterization and “a strain of speculation, both daring and serene, on the future of life.”