Introduction & Overview of A Silver Dish by Saul Bellow

A Silver Dish Introduction

Saul Bellow's story "A Silver Dish" illustrates the skill of one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. The story spans a period from the middle of the Great Depression to the mid-1980s, showing the changes that time renders in both society and in one man's life. The main character, Woody Selbst, is one of Bellow's finest creations. A lonesome, successful businessman, Woody reminisces about the circumstances under which his father, a con man and thief, caused him to lose his scholarship to a seminary school, an act that redirected his entire life.

Bellow, the 1976 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, fills this long tale with acutely observed details and characters who are so unusual that they feel like they could only come from real life. Woven throughout the story are meditations about religion, death, and responsibility that one expects in Bellow's fiction. Long...
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