Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Just last Friday I was talking with KRAC Captain Tom Knab about Saul Bellow. Tom likes, "Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didnt prove there was no America; I like, "I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles." We agreed that "The Adventures of Augie March" is one of those books that thrills you as you read it.
It is funny that the two of us came to Bellow at such different times in our lives; in many ways I wish I were just now starting that shelf. Instead I read "Augie March" at the end of my junior year in high school, a birthday present from Kate Connolly. In the manner in which I read things then, I followed up with the rest of his stuff. It was just the right time to read the shorter works of Bellow-- I was a teenage existentialist, after all, so "Dangling Man" and "The Victim" and "Seize the Day" were right up my alley. Augie was too-- there is never a wrong time for the picaresque, after all. "Herzog" left me cold, though, and "Mr. Sammler's Planet" was an annoyance that I tried to like, but couldn't. The book of Bellow's that I have returned to again and again over the years, however, has been none of those-- I am a fan of "Henderson the Rain King", maybe his most atypical book. "I want, I want," says the voice Henderson hears, and I understood that voice then just as I do now.
When I heard the announcement of his death last night on the radio (say what you will about NPR, I like that the death of a guy like Bellow is big news to them) I started thinking about the group of post war American writers that he belongs to. Is he the one that should have been the Nobel Laureate? I'd have a drink with Norman Mailer any time, and if you like, I'll make the case for him, but it probably shouldn't be Mailer. Actually, I'd go with Philip Roth. In 1976, though, when it was time for Sweden to honor a Jewish American writer, Mailer's politics (and his antics, I think) had put him out of the running, and Roth was writing stuff like "The Breast" and "The Great American Novel". Don't get me wrong-- I like "The Great American Novel", but if you have ever gone to baseball game with a European, you know that some things just don't translate. Bellow was always more European-- his first two books were what Camus would have written if Camus lived in Chicago (and was imitating Camus). Still, prizes or no, I have been moved by Saul Bellow's writing for as long as writing has moved me-- there is a corner of his work that colored how I go about my life, and in an odd way I find myself more moved thinking about the ways that his writing affected me more than the death of the Pope moved me. The Pope, after all, was a distant figure, perhaps polarizing, perhaps inspirational on the political stage. At about the time I was setting out to start my story, to define myself as Augie March does, I had "Augie March". The Pope never wrote anything to me like that.
It is funny that the two of us came to Bellow at such different times in our lives; in many ways I wish I were just now starting that shelf. Instead I read "Augie March" at the end of my junior year in high school, a birthday present from Kate Connolly. In the manner in which I read things then, I followed up with the rest of his stuff. It was just the right time to read the shorter works of Bellow-- I was a teenage existentialist, after all, so "Dangling Man" and "The Victim" and "Seize the Day" were right up my alley. Augie was too-- there is never a wrong time for the picaresque, after all. "Herzog" left me cold, though, and "Mr. Sammler's Planet" was an annoyance that I tried to like, but couldn't. The book of Bellow's that I have returned to again and again over the years, however, has been none of those-- I am a fan of "Henderson the Rain King", maybe his most atypical book. "I want, I want," says the voice Henderson hears, and I understood that voice then just as I do now.
When I heard the announcement of his death last night on the radio (say what you will about NPR, I like that the death of a guy like Bellow is big news to them) I started thinking about the group of post war American writers that he belongs to. Is he the one that should have been the Nobel Laureate? I'd have a drink with Norman Mailer any time, and if you like, I'll make the case for him, but it probably shouldn't be Mailer. Actually, I'd go with Philip Roth. In 1976, though, when it was time for Sweden to honor a Jewish American writer, Mailer's politics (and his antics, I think) had put him out of the running, and Roth was writing stuff like "The Breast" and "The Great American Novel". Don't get me wrong-- I like "The Great American Novel", but if you have ever gone to baseball game with a European, you know that some things just don't translate. Bellow was always more European-- his first two books were what Camus would have written if Camus lived in Chicago (and was imitating Camus). Still, prizes or no, I have been moved by Saul Bellow's writing for as long as writing has moved me-- there is a corner of his work that colored how I go about my life, and in an odd way I find myself more moved thinking about the ways that his writing affected me more than the death of the Pope moved me. The Pope, after all, was a distant figure, perhaps polarizing, perhaps inspirational on the political stage. At about the time I was setting out to start my story, to define myself as Augie March does, I had "Augie March". The Pope never wrote anything to me like that.
// posted by Bill @ 9:48 AM 
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