由《院长的十二月》新特点看诺贝尔文学奖后的索尔·贝娄创作

Dean’s December was Saul Bellow’s first Post-Nobel novel. While the book upon publication attracted widespread attention, there was for a while an overwhelming negativity about it among many literary critics. This, however, has changed in more recent times. In this essay we propose that, from the changes that the book manifests in terms of the authorial perception of gender, the portrayal of male protagonists and the use of style, Bellow presents a new image of himself who, through writing a new form of “poetic journalism, communicates his respect for the idea of “community based on love” as espoused by some female intellectuals, expresses a deep concern with social problems while celebrating the qualities of a kind of emotionally “balanced hero”, and debunks the social crisis in contemporary USA. The novel gives a clue about his attempt at continued innovation and his evolvement as a novelist. And it also tells a lot about his overall development in the last two decades as a writer while he continued to diversify his style and explore more profound thematic depths.