Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow

In this episode Matt and Sam discuss Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's roman à clef about the Straussian political philosopher Allan Bloom, who achieved late-in-life wealth and fame after publishing his controversial bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. Along the way they consider the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, eros and the intellectual life, love and friendship, Bellow and Bloom's shared Jewishness, and much, much more.

Sources and Further Reading:

Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (Penguin, 2000)

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1987)

Giants and Dwarfs (Simon & Schuster, 1990)

Love and Friendship (Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship," from The Complete Works (trans. Donald Frame)

D.T. Max, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow," New York Times Magazine, April 16, 2000

Christopher Hitchens, "The Egg-Head's Egger-On," London Review of Books, April 27, 2000

Patrick Deneen, "Who Closed the American Mind? Allan Bloom, Edmund Burke, & Multiculturalism," The Imaginative Conservative, May 29, 2013

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