just with women and friends, but also society and himself. Herzog's own thoughts and thought processes are laid bare in the letters he writes. As the novel progresses, the letters become fewer and fewer. This seems to mirror the healing of the narrator's mind, as his attention turns from his inner struggles and the intellectual ideas that fascinate him towards the real world outside and the real options offered by his current situation – not having to be a scholar, the possibility of starting afresh with Ramona, and so on. Autobiographical elements The character of Herzog in many ways echoes a fictionalized Saul Bellow. Both Herzog and Bellow grew up in Canada, the sons of bootleggers who had emigrated from Russia (St. Petersburg). Both are Jewish, lived in Chicago for significant periods of time, and were divorced twice (ultimately Bellow would marry five times, divorcing four of his wives). Herzog is nearly the same age that Bellow was when he wrote the novel. 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. Similarly, Ramona is based on Rosette Lamont, a professor of French whom Bellow dated after divorcing his second wife Sasha Tschacbasov. Both Lamont and Ludwig reviewed Herzog without mentioning the autobiographical elements, the latter favorably describing it as "a major breakthrough". 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." References Burt, Daniel S. The Novel 100. Checkmark Books, 2004. External links Summary of Herzog on saulbellow.org Sparknotes study guide on Herzog Esmail Yazdanpour's Bakhtinian Reading of Herzog An Iranian Herzog: A Study of Dariush Mehrjui’s Screen Adaptation of Saul Bellow’s Herzog 1964 American novels National Book Award for Fiction winning works Novels by Saul Bellow Novels set in Massachusetts Berkshires Viking Press books First-person narrative novels Third-person narrative novels Novels with multiple narrators