Moses Herzog, academic, failed husband, writes letters he never sends: to presidents, philosophers, the dead, God. Bellow's 1964 novel is a comic masterpiece about intellectual crisis, told through a consciousness that cannot stop thinking even when thinking solves nothing. The letters are both absurd and profound. Herzog's suffering is real; his inability to stop explaining himself is both his affliction and his salvation. The novel won the National Book Award and consolidated Bellow's position as the leading American novelist of his generation.