The title story of Saul Bellow's superb collection of stories is a portrait of the artist as an offensive man. Shawmut, a musicologist by profession, characterizes himself fairly as an utterer of “bad witticisms that well up from the depths of his nature,” as good a definition of much of the inspiration of contemporary fiction as one would wish. “A surrealist in spite of himself,” a random shooter from the mouth, Shawmut blames himself more than others. (“‘Oh, Dr. Shawmut, in that cap you look like an archeologist.’ Before I can stop myself, I answer, ‘And you look like something I just dug up.’”) The story, told in the form of a letter to the victim of the witticism, is an act of expiation. Shawmut is wise enough to know that the witticism is vile. But the temptation remains irresistible. Even his friendships seem to be defined by the temptation. His gimpy friend Edward Walish (shades of Valentine Gersbach, the villain in Herzog) reflects his own darker nature: “a wise guy in an up-to-date post-modern existentialist sly manner.”

The wisecracking artist is endemic to contemporary fiction. In God Knows, Joseph Heller, for example, discovers that God is not an earnest social democrat, but (imagine the chutzpah!) the original comic Jewish novelist.