Herzog by Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. His novel, Herzog, was the 1965 winner of the National Book Awards.  The protagonist in this story is Moses Herzog; a middle-aged failed academic whose career, so brilliant in the beginning has now ended. He has written one celebrated scholarly book, but is having immense trouble producing another. He has been through two failed marriages and fathered two children. He agonizes over his condition with good reason because mentally and emotionally, he is having a nervous breakdown. He has conversations with dead philosophers telling them the points on which he disagrees. Herzog does love his children and tries to be with them, but mostly he is an absentee father. He obsessively writes letters that he never sends, while he contemplates his past two marriages, his academic career and his infidelities. An intense, outstanding novel written with precision and vivid characterizations.