How To Get To Bellow Street

Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature. That would make him a great writer in the eyes of the world. Chicago alderman Toni Preckwinkle is not impressed. No Bellow Street shall be allowed in her ward.

Friends of the late author would like a street named after him, somewhere in the vicinity of the University of Chicago in the Hyde Park neighborhood that was Mr. Bellow's home. Ms. Preckwinkle believes that Mr. Bellow was a racist, and therefore she cannot have that man's name appearing on a street sign in Hyde Park.

Saul Bellow was unquestionably elitist, in keeping with the ethos of the University of Chicago. He firmly believed in the Great Books produced by western civilizations, and since no other cultures produced Great Books, it just proves the point. The famed author might be considered a right wing conservative when it comes to political correctness. Saul Bellow was no fan of multiculturalism, but considering the fact that only western civilizations produced Great Books, but we're going around in circles here.

In the city of neighborhoods, anyone could tell you that wealthy Jews lived in Hyde Park and Austen. The Irish had their enclaves on the north and south sides, the Germans were the core of Old Town, the Swedes were to be found in Andersonville. Taylor Street was for the Italians. The Black Belt was for the Africans. Everyone knew their place and no one was allowed to leave it.

That was Bellow's world, and it changed with the coming of civil rights and fair housing. His world crumbled as black faces appeared on streets that were once the stomping grounds of Eastern European Jews. The physical space that he called home also changed, for reasons that an economist at the University of Chicago could best explain. Mr. Bellow chose to find his own answers in his prose, putting on paper the fear and confusion of those who did not understand what was happening, and so could not find a way to deal with change.

Block-busting real estate practices, neighborhoods "going black" almost overnight, and Saul Bellow was as alarmed as the average man who sold to get out before the value of his home fell to nothing. Was Mr. Bellow a racist for expressing his fears in print? Or was he trying to come to grips with some invisible force that seemed to be wiping out his past?

Reportedly, Ms. Preckwinkle has not based her decision on her reading of Bellow's body of work. She is said to have heard remarks from the author that she believes are racist, and has made her decision based on that. Was it remarks he made about the Puerto Ricans who moved in to Humboldt Park, replacing the hard working and house proud Eastern Europeans and allowing the area to become run down and shabby? Surely she couldn't be thinking of anything Mr. Bellow might have said to his former roommate, Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man who found encouragement from a fellow author.

Was Saul Bellow a racist or a chronicler of what he saw around him, filtered through his elitist eyes? The issue is not so much black and white as it is complicated, just like Saul Bellow's writings.