Well, it’s late, but jeez, I can’t possibly go to bed without gently and reverently laying out a small personal testimony to the late and so very great Saul Bellow who died on Tuesday aged 89.

Nobel and Pulitzer prize winner, three times winner of the US National Book Award, Bellow was certainly well-known and regarded. But I think it’s the individuals all over the planet who read and were profoundly affected by this man’s writing who are the greatest testament to his genius. And I am definitely one of them.

He made me laugh and laugh, cry and then read the same paragraph over again just to cry more. Mostly laugh though. He made me pine for Chicago, though I’d never been there. He made me aware in lots of different ways of how men see women, and other men. But his way of getting at the deepest fears and paranoia and the most desperate loves of the human race and putting all of it into a single angst-ridden, hilarious Jewish utterance was just sublime. My favourite? Humboldt’s Gift, without a doubt.

Anyway. I am very sad today. I’ll leave you with just one link, the obit from the Chicago (of course) Sun Times. Saul Bellow, the world will be less of a place without you.