Saul Shallow?

It appears that Saul Bellow is receiving his due before passing on, Martin Amis, among others, have led a procession of adoration, promoting specifically Augie March as the best American novel of the second half of the 20th Century. Certainly AM is encyclopedic in scope, akin to Moby Dick, but the lukewarm generality of the protagonist is mirrored in the often shopping-list prose. It was during this latest critical parade that I remarked that every time I read Bellow I realize that I'd rather be spending my time with Faulkner.

I gave As I Lay Dying a jab on my last posting and would like to insist, that my meager complaint aside, who else has captured our space-specific sorrows so elegantly? Indeed, the Sun Also Rises, but such is an epitaph for an old world, lost in Mediterranean ritual and lapped up by former boxing champions bereft of respect or narrative. Who else can lyricize the setting sun passing through a copse of trees that signify the plummet of fortune, the failed charge into oblivion?