The story is told entirely from Herzog's point of view. Of the hero's pervasive consciousness, Irving Howe wrote: "We are made captive in the world of Herzog... the consciousness of the character forms the enclosing medium of the novel." In typical Bellow style, the descriptions of characters' emotions and physical features are rich in wit and energy. Herzog's relationships are the central theme of the novel, not just with women and friends, but also society and himself. Herzog's own thoughts and thought processes are laid bare in the letters he writes. As the novel progresses, the letters (represented in italics) become fewer and fewer. This seems to mirror the healing of the narrator's mind, as his attention turns from his inner struggles and the intellectual ideas that fascinate him towards the real world outside and the real options offered by his current situation – not having to be a scholar, the possibility of starting afresh with Ramona, and so on. The character of Herzog in many ways echoes a fictionalized Saul Bellow. Both Herzog and Bellow grew up in Canada, the sons of bootleggers who had emigrated from Russia (St. Petersburg). Both are Jewish, lived in Chicago for significant periods of time, and were divorced twice (at the time of writing; Bellow would go on to divorce four of his five wives). Herzog is nearly the same age that Bellow was when he wrote the novel. The character of Valentine Gersbach is based on Jack Ludwig, a long-time friend of Bellow who had an affair with Bellow's second wife, Sondra. Similarly, Ramona is based on Rosette Lamont, a professor of French whom Bellow dated after divorcing his second wife Sasha Tschacbasov. Both Lamont and Ludwig reviewed "Herzog" without mentioning the autobiographical elements, the latter favorably describing it as "a major breakthrough". Asked about these similarities, Bellow said "I don't know that that sort of thing is really relevant. I mean, it's a curiosity about reality which is "impure", let's put it that way. Let's both be bigger than that."