For over forty years Saul Bellow has been writing fiction that denounces the destructive forces that have dominated the literature of this century - existential nihilism and historicist pessimism. In novel after novel - The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, and others - he has tried to restore the integrity of the private life, the value of human feeling, and the primacy of social contract and proclaimed each individual's perennial access to age-old truths.