James Atlas Life Quotations

He describes himself as a mild depressive, and he goes through just terrible suffering, much of it self-generated. And yet he's also an extremely buoyant person who finds a great deal in life to entertain and instruct and amuse him. He has a kind of vivacity about him. He's very funny, and he's very obsessed with certain themes.

He himself has said you can follow the patterns and real events in his life by reading his books, which doesn't mean you can figure out his life by reading his books. Simply that the events in his life are the starting points for the books that he writes. But that's just the beginning.

In writing this book I'm writing about my own life, a generation removed, ... But in the larger sense ... it was my discovery of Bellow's work, his voice that became for me the inspiration for this book. I was always fascinated by his life and wanted to know more about it.

In writing this book I'm writing about my own life, a generation removed. But in the larger sense ... it was my discovery of Bellow's work, his voice that became for me the inspiration for this book. I was always fascinated by his life and wanted to know more about it.

If I could answer a critic, people like James Shapiro in the New York Times say that I extrapolate the life too directly and explicitly from the work,