The novelist Saul Bellow has died — one of the giants of American literature in the 20th century. I won’t claim intimate familiarity with his books. I did read and enjoy Seize the Day in college, and I’ve always appreciated Bellow’s un-p.c. outlook. The NYT obituary chides him for once asking “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” Notably, it is a question that neither the NYT nor anybody as far as I know ever has answered adequately. Bellow also was a longtime friend of Allan Bloom, and he wrote the foreword to The Closing of the American Mind — an important gesture that no doubt helped call attention to one of the most significant books of the 1980s.

Adam Bellow, his son, is a part of the NR circle — our former literary editor. He is also the editor of my most recent book. My thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.