{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrattleboro-words-trail-podcast.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fsaul-bellows-good-place-ZR5jZLh1","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Saul Bellow's Good Place","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/c1b256c8-044b-4592-a910-ccde0e33890a/0072df61-05e8-4890-a7fb-9f26a9b5b72d/bellow-02-photo-3350-landscape-medium-gallery-2x.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"Saul Bellow, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, lived and wrote several months of each year in the Brattleboro area for the last 20 plus years of his life. This episode captures the essence of the man and his work through his own words, writings and that of his official biographer, Professor Emeritus Zachary Leader of Roehampton University in London, as well as one of his good friends in Brattleboro, Larry Simons (these last two in exclusive interviews with the Brattleboro Words Trail). A bonus episode to follow features Bellow's longtime editor Beena Kamlani reading her delightful essay about her work with this unparalleled writer. Bellow won a trio of National Book Awards for fiction, a record still unsurpassed, for the Adventures of Augie March in 1954, Herzog in 1965, and Mr. Sandler's Planet in 1971. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his 1976 novel Humboldt's Gift and, in 1976, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for his full body of work. His life story fills two volumes. In this episode, his biographer (Leader) sums up his stature and relationship to Vermont and reads from Bellow's essay 'Vermont: A Good Place.\" Bellow's Brattleboro friend Larry Simons talks about their friendship, his work, his last years and how Bellow attended the inaugural Brattleboro Literary Festival in October of 2002 (which has grown to become a celebrated annual event). In spring of 2005, Saul Bellow died at his Boston home, but he loved Vermont so much that Brattleboro became his final resting place at the Shir He-Harim Jewish graveyard at Morningside Cemetery. Chiseled into his headstone are the spines of books and the single word epitaph: Writer.\n"}