Something to Remember Me By (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading)

In her introduction, guest editor and acclaimed writer Mary Gaitksill calls this story a "blunt and exquisite little beauty." Narrated by a "worldly old man with a sophisticated eye and a wise-ass sense of humor" Saul Bellow's "Something to Remember Me By" tells the story of a boy who, while trying to get home to his dying mother, is seduced and robbed by a prostitute in depression-era Chicago.About Recommended Reading:Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.About Saul Bellow:A fiction writer, essayist, playwright, lecturer, and memoirist, Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937 and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin before serving in the Marines during World War II. Later, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, Bellow served as a war correspondent for Newsday. Throughout his long and productive career, he contributed fiction to several magazines and quarterlies, including The New Yorker, Partisan Review, Playboy, and Esquire, as well as criticism to The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The New Leader, and others.Universally recognized as one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, Bellow has won more honors than almost any other American writer. Among these, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Humboldt's Gift and the B’nai B’rith Jewish Heritage Award for “excellence in Jewish literature.” He was the first American to win the International Literary Prize, and remains the only novelist in history to have received three National Book awards, for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet. In 1976, Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.” Saul Bellow died in 2005 at age 89.About the Guest Editor:Mary Gaitskill is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Veronica, as well as the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To, and Don’t Cry. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Last year she was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library where she was researching a novel.