Friends, family to honor life, legacy of author, teacher Saul Bellow

Colleagues, friends and family members of the late Nobel prize-winning writer and former University faculty member Saul Bellow will celebrate his life at a University memorial service at 4 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 27, at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. The event is open to the public.

Speakers scheduled for the event include Mayor Richard Daley; Bellow’s son, Greg; James Wood, senior editor of The New Republic; Richard Stern, the Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus in English Language & Literature; attorney and editor Walter Pozen, and author Eugene Kennedy.

In addition to the memorial speeches, University Organist Thomas Weisflog and artists from the Lyric Opera Center will perform. Rabbi William Hamilton will preside over the services.

Bellow, who formerly was the Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and English Language & Literature, died Tuesday, April 5, at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 89.

One of the most influential American novelists of the 20th century, Bellow centered his fictional universe in Chicago.He authored more than a dozen critically acclaimed novels and works of nonfiction, including Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift, Mr. Sammler’s Planet and The Adventures of Augie March.

One of the most honored American writers of his era, Bellow won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, a Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards and a Presidential medal.

Bellow taught at Chicago from 1962 to 1993 in the Committee on Social Thought, and he attended the College in the 1930s.