In 1989, both in paperback original, appeared Bellow's hundred-page-or-so novella A Theft, followed a few months later by The Bellarosa Connection, which came in at about the same length.
Add now "Something to Remember Me By," a 35-page story that lends its admittedly poignant title to the present volume of the three tales under one cover. The new piece is the remembrance--back in Chicago of 1933--of a 17-year-old boy's first encounter with a hooker, this wonderfully comic episode occurring against the somber backdrop of the lingering death of the boy's mother by cancer.
Though it may stretch credibility at a moment or two, the story brims over in the riches of Bellow's observing eye and his pulse- perfect renderings of life's textures in immigrant Chicago during a dreary Depression winter. Those are far luckiest who didn't buy the earlier two separate volumes, since here are all three for less than the price of one. Including a preface by Bellow on the merits and virtues of writing short.
