Herzog (1964) is a novel by Saul Bellow. The protagonist, Moses E. Herzog, is a college professsor who has abandoned his academic career. Herzog had previously been teaching at the University of Chicago, but has retired to a country house in western Massachusetts. He now spends most of his time writing letters, which he doesn’t send, to friends, relatives, writers, and dead philosophers.

Herzog’s compulsion to write letters began the previous year, just before his divorce from his second wife, Madeleine. He had been teaching a course called “The Roots of Romanticism” at a New York night school. He had become more erratic in his behavior, stopping in the middle of his lectures to jot down fragmented thoughts on scraps of paper.

His teaching had become progresively more absent-minded, until he had come to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

He has been married twice. Daisy was his first wife, Madeleine was his second wife. He has a son, Marco, from the first marriage, and a daughter, June, from the second marriage.

He has been having an affair with an ex-student, the sensual and charming Ramona Donsell. Ramona is a businesswoman who owns a flower shop in New York.

When Herzog was married, his wife Madeleine had persuaded him to leave his teaching job at Chicago, and to buy the country house in Massachusetts. He and Madeleine had become friends with Valentine and Phoebe Gersbach. Valentine is a radio announcer and poet. Madeleine decided to finish her graduate studies in Slavonic languages in Chicago, and persuaded Herzog to return to Chicago, and to find a job there for Valentine as a radio announcer. Madeleine and Valentine subsequently became lovers.

Herzog remembers his childhood. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a bootlegger. But most of all, Herzog thinks about Madeleine. He remembers her short-lived conversion to Catholicism; and he recalls their unstable life together in Massachusetts.

He decides to visit Chicago, where Madeleine and Valentine now live together. Herzog visits his stepmother, and takes an old pistol belonging to his dead father, the same pistol with which Father Herzog once threatened to shoot his son. Herzog drives in a rented car to Madeleine’s house, intending to murder her and Valentine. But as soon as he sees them through a window, he changes his mind.

The next day, he takes his daughter June to the local aquarium, but is involved in a minor traffic accident. The police discover his pistol, and arrest him for carrying an unlicensed weapon. When Madeleine is summoned to the police station, she attempts to weaken his position. But Herzog’s brother, Will, a real-estate agent, manages to secure bail. Will also insists that he see a doctor, and tries to persuade him to enter a psychiatric hospital.

Herzog overcomes his obsession with Madeleine and her lover Valentine. He returns to his dilapidated house in Ludeyville, Massachusetts, where he hires Mrs. Tuttle, the wife of a local garage proprietor, to clean the house. He listens to the sound of Mrs. Tuttle at work, and at the end of the novel, he suddenly feels relaxed and at peace. He no longer feels the urge to write letters to anyone.

A theme of the novel is the importance of achieving personal integrity, and of discovering an authentic selfhood. Herzog spends much of the novel trying to free himself from his obsession with his ex-wife. He writes letters, which he never sends, to public figures and dead philosophers, such as Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adlai Stevenson, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The letters are a way of relieving the intellectual and social pressures thrust upon him. Herzog can only achieve personal integrity by transcending his obsession with his ex-wife Madeleine and her lover Valentine Gersbach. Herzog is able to accomplish this at the end of the novel.

Herzog is also able to transcend his intellectual need to explain everything in the world. As an intellectual, he has concerned himself more with abstract ideas than with trying to resolve his own personal problems. As an academic professor, he has a need to search for an explanation for everything.

Herzog rejects Hegel’s philosophy that the meaning of life is derived from history. Instead, he agrees with Tolstoy that freedom is entirely personal, and that to be free is to be released from historical limitation.

As a scholar, Herzog is interested in Romanticism; but he separates Romanticism from what he calls “potato love.” Romanticism seeks to preserve the poetic “inspired condition” which strives for beauty, nobility, intensity, and integrity. In contrast, what Herzog describes as “potato love” is an unshapen, uninspired, universal love.

Herzog rejects “potato love," because it represents a kind of dreary blandness and banality. “Potato love” (as exemplified in the philosophy of Rousseau) may also represent a banal, meaningless form of free love. Herzog instead decides to believe in a philosophy of moral responsibility.

The name Moses Herzog is found in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, where there is a minor character named Moses Herzog. In Bellow’s novel, Herzog’s middle name is Elkanah, which means “possessed by God.”

Herzog is described by Bellow as a “moralist.” An example of this is that Herzog feels guilty that he does not spend more time with his children. Another example of this is that the novel describes Herzog’s journey from the position of being obsessed with his ex-wife and blaming her for his suffering, to the new position of accepting personal responsibility.

The novel in many ways portrays Herzog as a victim. As a child, he grew up in poverty. As an adult, he faces people who want to manipulate him. He has been betrayed by his ex-wife Madeleine, and by his former friend Valentine Gersbach. He has been betrayed by his psychiatrist, Dr. Edvig, who has become Madeleine’s psychiatrist. He has been betrayed by his lawyer, Sandor Himmelstein, who has become Madeleine’s lawyer.

The novel shows how Herzog is able to transcend his suffering, and how he is able to escape from a victim mentality.

A weakness of the novel is its portrayal of the central female character, Madeleine. Madeleine is portrayed as scheming and calculating, while Herzog is described as meek and suffering. Madeleine and her lover Gersbach have spread the rumor that Herzog’s sanity has collapsed. She has warned him, through Gersbach, that he will be arrested by the police if he comes near her home in Chicago. She is aggressive and outspoken, and Herzog realizes that there is “a flavor of subjugation in his love for Madeleine.”

Madeleine is beautiful, brilliant, ambitious, and restless. She is also cold, paranoid, and neurotic. Through most of the novel, Herzog is painfully struggling to overcome his passion for her. But she is presented only from her ex-husband’s point of view; Bellow give us only Herzog’s view of her.

A strength of the novel is its wealth of humor and its use of comic irony. Herzog is described as “that suffering joker.” He knows that life means having to endure suffering. Life has played a joke on him. His sense of humor enables him to transcend his suffering.