I couldn’t tell them what I thought was really wrong with me: namely that I suffered from an illusion, perhaps a marvelous illusion, or perhaps only a lazy one, that by a kind of inspired levitation I could rise and dart straight to the truth. Straight to the truth. For I was too haughty to bother with Marxism, Freudianism, Modernism, the avante-garde, or any of these things that Humboldt, as a culture-Jew, took so much stock in.

— Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift