COLLECTED STORIES (2008)

This is not a compendium of the Nobelist's shorter work, but a greatest-hits package compiled by a writer facing down his 10th decade. The protagonists -- often old and Jewish, often Chicago-born -- tend to have one eye on the grave and, therefore, the other on the past. These 13 pieces, published between 1951 and 1990, find them wondering about making amends and worrying about making peace. And we find Bellow the fluent aphorist noting, ''It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it.'' And Bellow the poet of heartbreak causing a character to think, ''At times I feel like a socket that remembers its tooth.'' A truer title would rework the first phrase of ''A Silver Dish'': What Do You Do About Death?

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• Review Collected Stories | Troy Patterson