While I don’t know of any connection between SF/F, however slender, and Saul Bellow, I can’t help noting this interesting coincidence.
Yesterday, this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were announced; and Saul Bellow died.
Last night I pulled down my copy of Humboldt’s Gift, and on page 3 read this–the narrator, Citrine, is quoting Humboldt, the failed poet:
When reports were brought of the damaging remarks he made I often found that I agree with him “They gave Citrine a Pulitzer prize for his book on Wilson and Tumulty. The Pulitzer is for the birds — for the pullets. It’s just a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates. You become a walking Pulitzer ad, so even when you croak the first words of the obituary are ‘Pulitzer prizewinner passes.’”
Humboldt’s Gift won the Pulitzer.
And, inevitably, the obituary ledes, at least this one from CNN, read:
American Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Saul Bellow died Tuesday evening at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, his literary agent said. …
