Professor Emeritus of History and Jewish Studies Gerald Sorin publishes ninth book, a biography to famed author Saul Bellow 

SUNY New Paltz Professor Emeritus Gerald Sorin is the author of a new biography titled, “Saul Bellow: ‘I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer'”, published by Indiana University Press, and Sorin’s ninth full-length book.

Bellow was a critically acclaimed novelist, short story writer and playwright and a Nobel Prize winner who explored the realities of being Jewish, living in the United States,” and writing fiction. Sorin’s biography explores Bellow’s identity as an “American Jewish Writer” – a characterization Bellow often resisted as too narrow – and makes an argument that it is fundamental to Bellow’s being and to the content and meaning of his fiction.  

Sorin offers a study of the author‘s career output, from early publications in the 1940s to 2000, when he wrote his last novel at the age of 84. He focuses on Bellow’s centering of the command in the Torah’s Book of Deuteronomy to “Choose life” as distinct from nihilistic withdrawal and the defense of meaninglessness prevalent in postwar American literature.   

Professor Emeritus Sorin also serves as Director of the Louis and Mildred Resnick Institute at SUNY New Paltz, which has offered an annual lecture series on Jewish society, culture and politics since 1989.  

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