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Saul Bellow, the novelist, in a talk given in 1988 on his identity as an author, offered the following affirmation of his “first consciousness,” a sense of his subjectivity that is continuous, certain, and sufficient in its self-identity:
The “identity problem” has vexed and plagued the modern intellect. So what business have I, in view of the “new look” for individuals (in a word, for each and every one of us) sponsored by highly influential existentialist, deconstructionist, and nihilist designers, to speak of my personality and my personal history?
…for reasons I can't explain, my own first consciousness has had a long unbroken history. I wouldn't know how to defend my faithful attachment to it. All I can say is that it is a fact and I wonder why anyone should feel it necessary to put its reality in doubt. But our meddling mental world puts all such realities in doubt. (Saul Bellow, 2011; emphasis added)
Bellow goes on to address the significance of this manifest identity, as experienced by him in this “first consciousness,” its significance to his life as a writer, and to the cultural differences among American writers. Bellow was speaking within the context of debates in literary theory occurring at that time regarding