Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow’s characters often grapple with the meaning of life while navigating their own messy, ordinary lives. Moses E. Herzog, the protagonist of the bestselling 1964 novel “Herzog,” is an academic on the brink of unravelling. In the midst of a second divorce, he writes a series of letters without the intention of sending them, ultimately drawing the conclusion in a rare moment of clarity that life’s best moments aren’t always by design. Beauty has a way of sneaking in even while we may be feeling distraught or in despair, and often when we’re not looking for it. Those quiet, unexpected moments may not solve our problems, but they do provide some much-needed perspective, comfort, and hope, reminding us that life still has pleasant surprises waiting for us.
