It is … [the] seemingly paradoxical currents in Bellow's work, the dignity of life and the comic accident that we exist at all, that are so exhilarating. Like the true comedian, the one who shows the truths of life, Bellow discards the easy laugh in favor of the deeper, cosmic laughter which responds to the human condition….

The ghetto feeling, the feeling of being set apart and yet making a kind of virtue of this separateness, is strong in Bellow's work. His characters are often outside the mainstream of society and go through internal conflicts about whether this is a condition that is imposed or chosen. In a sense, this ghetto image is a metaphor of alienation not only for the Jew but for modern man. (p. 194)

In speaking about his novel Herzog Bellow has said that "any Bildungsroman—and Herzog is, to use that heavy German term, a...