Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak

Gloria Cronin (Brigham Young University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Sean Seeger (University of Essex), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

More Die of Heartbreak (1987) recaptures much of the old Bellow energy and comedy, but falls short of the intellectual scope of Herzog or Humboldt's Gift. It illuminates in great detail the tragicomic manner in which modern heterosexual relationships have failed. It is a Prufrockian lament about failed men and absent mermaids which is full of misogynous love-lore, comic characters, botched loves, fatal forays into the danger zones of sex and romance, farcical retreats, and serio-crackpot sexual philosophizing. It is the misogynous self-ironic report of two men exchanging stories of battle wounds received from women they believe to have failed their masculine romantic expectations. The center of consciousness in the novel, Kenneth Trachtenberg, is a self-appointed guardian for his Uncle Benn Crader, an eccentric plant morphologist, whom he perceives to be one of the rare,...

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512 words

Citation: Cronin, Gloria. "More Die of Heartbreak". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13831, accessed 14 December 2025.]

Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

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