Bellow’s Gift: a reading of Saul Bellow and Anthroposophy

With Andrew Hill. Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. At about the same time, he read Owen Barfield and discovered Anthroposophy. In Humboldt’s Gift, which won the Pulitzer Prize, this celebrated American novelist, famous for his glittering prose, fictionalised his struggles to study Steiner’s work in the midst of a frenetic lifestyle moving between Chicago and New York. The result is an entertaining account that weaves satire of American life into a rich vein of comedy, while celebrating the moments when a contemporary soul has glimpses of eternity. The talk will be based around readings from Humboldt’s Gift in a conversational format. This talk will also be Zoomed.