“What do women want?” asked Saul Bellow in Herzog (1964). “They eat green salad and drink human blood.” No wonder feminists accused the Nobel-winning novelist of sexism. Born in Canada in 1915, raised in Chicago where he lived until his death in 2005, Bellow’s legacy includes literary masterpieces such as The Adventures of Augie March, Humboldt’s Gift, and The Dean’s December. But in the last 10 years, think pieces and op-eds have largely dismissed him as a dusty relic of regressive thought. The Adventures of Saul Bellow, the latest installment of PBS’s “American Masters” documentary series, analyzes the life and work of this towering writer. The film includes interviews with Bellow’s sons and staunch supporters, among them the writer Martin Amis, as well as archival footage of his contemporaries Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie. Bellow’s fourth and fifth wives weigh in on his career, too. Answering the critics, Bellow neatly summarizes the point of writing novels: “I’m not a social-service agency.” —Jensen Davis