Another notable character in the book is Rinaldo Cantabile, a wannabe Chicago gangster, who tries to bully Citrine into being friends.

Humboldt's Gift won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Bellow's first after three previous works were recommended for the award by various juries.

In the novel Humboldt says, and Citrine agrees, that the prize is "a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates".

[2] Some critics, including Malcolm Bradbury, see the novel as a commentary on the increasing commodification of culture in mid-century America.

Alvin Kernan, in his 1982 book The Imaginary Library, included a chapter on Humboldt's Gift, arguing that the novel is representative of the declining relevance of the Romantic conception of literature to contemporary life.