Richly Detailed, and Thick with Imagery
Bellow's writing style is absolutely bursting with energy and life. Just check out these iconic passages from Seize the Day, where Bellow bends himself to the task of capturing Broadway's atmosphere on a busy weekday morning:
Patiently, in the window of the fruit store, a man with a scoop spread crushed ice between his rows of vegetables. There were also Persian melons, lilacs, tulips with radiant black at the middle. The many street noises came back after a little while from the caves of the sky. (5.1)
And again:
From the carnival of the street—pushcarts, accordion and fiddle, shoeshine, begging, the dust going round like a woman on stilts—they entered the narrow crowded theatre of the brokerage office. (5.3)
Can't you just hear and smell it? Taste it? (Okay, maybe that's a little too far.)
Sit back for a second and think about the incredible image Bellow creates when he writes that the street noises echo back from "the caves of the sky." We usually think of our voices as fading into the air when we're out in the big wide world—one voice on its own is so small compared to the great big sky. But here, the huge, collective sound of New York City going about its day is so large and powerful that it echoes between the tall buildings and skyscrapers that rise up like stalagmites in a cave. Well played, Saul Bellow—well played.