With all their brilliant wiliness of predicament and brainy language shocked into originality, they are magisterially the opposite. They tell us, in the clarified tight compass Bellow has not been so at home in since ''Seize the Day,'' what drives Bellow. What drives Bellow. The inquiry is seductive because Bellow is Bellow, one of three living American Nobel laureates the only one, curiously, whose natural language is English , a writer for whom great fame has become a sort of obscuring nimbus, intruding on the cleanly literary.
When ''The Dean's December'' was published in , it was not so much reviewed as scrutinized like sacred entrails: Had this idiosyncratically independent writer turned ''conservative''?
Had he soured on Augiesque America? Was his hero, Albert Corde, a lightly masked Saul Bellow? In short, it seemed impossible to rid Bellow's novel of Bellow's presence, to free it as fiction. In consequence of which, one is obliged to put a riddle: If you found ''Him with His Foot In His Mouth and Other Stories '' at the foot of your bed one morning, with the title page torn away and the author's name concealed, would you know it, after all, to be Bellow? There are always anti-readers, resenters or recanters of the poetry side of life, mean distrusters of the force and turbulence of the free imagination, who are ready to demote fiction to the one-on-one flatness of photojournalism.
Omitting, then, extraterritorial interests not subject to the tractable laws of fiction - omitting gossip - would you recognize Bellow's muscle, his swift and glorious eye? Yes, absolutely; a thousand times yes. It is Bellow's Chicago, Bellow's portraiture - these faces, these heads! That he himself may acknowledge a handful of biographical sources - '' germs,'' textured shells - does not excite.
The life on the page resists the dust of flesh, and is indifferent to external origins. Victor Wulpy is who he is as Bellow's invention; and certainly Zetland is. These inventions take us not to Bellow as man, eminence, and friend of eminences why should I care whom Bellow knows? And it is this clamor, this sound of a thrashing soul - comic because metaphysical, metaphysical because aware of itself as a farcical combatant on a busy planet - that is unequivocally distinguishable as the pure Bellovian note.
It is a voice demonized by the right or possibly the right questions. The characters it engenders are dazed by what may be called the principle of plenitude. Often they appear to take startled credit for the wild ingenuity of the world's abundance, as if they had themselves brought it into being.
It isn't that they fiddle with the old freshman philosophy-course conundrum, why is there everything instead of nothing? They ask rather: What is this everything composed of? What is it preoccupied with? The E-mail message field is required. Please enter the message. Please verify that you are not a robot. Would you also like to submit a review for this item? You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: 1 2 3 4 5.
Preview this item Preview this item. Novels, : What kind of a day did you have? Read more Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Save Cancel. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item In America, Fonstein desperately attempts to meet Billy to thank him in person, but Billy has no interest in receiving him.
The Actual This is story about a grave. An ultra-wealthy woman named Amy's husband is buried in her family's plot. Her still living nonagenarian father never liked his son-in-law and wants the plot back. The narrator of the story, Harry, was friends with Amy and her husband. Harry had a crush on Amy as a young man.
Through a chance encounter they meet again as Amy is managing the reburial of her husband. Ravelstein [read this one! Ravelstein asks his friend Chick to write his story after he dies. He agrees. The story covers their friendship, Chick's many marriages and Ravelstein's life and homosexuality. There are connecting and stylistic themes that connect these stories. The Jewish experience in America and during the Holocaust are common themes.
Intellectuals and wealthy characters are well represented. Divorce and LOTS of divorces are recurring themes.
Love, romance, death, unhappiness, aging and reflections are at the heart of the stories. Philosophical musings are interwoven throughout with most characters believing in a nihilistic view of existence. This is an indulgent romp from a giant of literature who has the talent and the security to write stories that suit his fancy. Fans of "Augie March" and "Herzog" will find the aging writer's reflections short on intensity and intrigue. I fall into this category.
The stories are Proustian memories that end abruptly. The one story I truly enjoyed was the last, "Ravelstein".
In Ravelstein , his last book, Bellow created one of his most indelible characters. Abe Ravelstein is a professor of political philosophy and an intellectual celebrity whose taste for worldly pleasures—designer suits, Cuban cigars, and exquisite young men—is as expansive as his erudition.
Falling ill and facing death, he asks his friend Chick to write his biography, which emerges in fits and starts but ultimately grasps the essence of this extraordinary man.
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