Autobiographical Elements
The character of Herzog in many ways echoes a fictionalized Saul Bellow. Similarities between Herzog and Bellow include:
- Both grew up in Canada.
- Both are Jewish.
- Both have parents who had emigrated from Russia (St. Petersburg).
- Both lived in Chicago for significant periods of time.
- Both were divorced twice (at the time of writing; Bellow would go on to divorce four of his five wives.)
- Both were sons of bootlegger fathers.
- They are the same age.
- The character of Valentine Gersbach is based on Jack Ludwig, a long-time friend of Bellow who had an affair with Bellow's second wife, Sondra..
Asked about these similarities, Bellow said "I don't know that that sort of thing is really relevant. I mean, it's a curiosity about reality which is impure, let's put it that way. Let's both be bigger than that."
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“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)