Behauptet der Kölner Verlag zumindest im Rahmen der Ankündigung seiner neu übersetzten Saul-Bellow-Reihe:

Jetzt beweist der Mann auch noch literarischen Geschmack: Der 44. US-Präsident Barack Obama hat sich bei einem Wahlkampfauftritt in Philadelphia zu zwei Lieblingsautoren bekannt, die sein Denken maßgeblich geprägt hätten: Philip Roth und Saul Bellow. Nun, da der aufregendste Politiker der Gegenwart frisch inauguriert ist, wird dessen erklärter Lieblingsautor Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005) dem deutschen Publikum neu vorgestellt. (kiwi-verlag.de)

Eine gute Gelegenheit, an Saul Bellows berühmtes Zitat aus Herzog (1964) zu erinnern, das erst kürzlich wieder Verwendung als Motto, nämlich für Ian McEwans Saturday, Verwendung fand:

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for unnumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You – you yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest. or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.