[.ca] Great Books Of The 20th Century Adventures Of Augie March (ISBN 0140281606)

Impressive and yet- Saul and Augie, can't we get on with it?:
For what has been widely described as both a picaresque and coming-of-age novel, Augie March is neither a quick read nor an easy one. Okay, there's no rule that requires novels in these categories to be either. But still and all, one somehow feels uneasy, given the various changes in locale and steady aging of the protagonist, that Bellow (or Augie) so steadfastly refuses to get on with it already. Much of the novel is rendered in a convoluted narrative style-Augie's voice-that may be termed ornate. Or off-putting. Or ornately off-putting. Intended to echo, presumably, the Yiddish, German and Russian speech patterns Augie grows up hearing in Chicago during the twenties and thirties, this narrative device may in fact do that; but its syntactical wanderings soon begin to remind one, whatever their authenticity, of the criticism once leveled at Henry Luce's beloved Timestyle: "Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind." Lexicon also figures in the curious mix, as words are combined in unexpected ways-sometimes cleverly (and with a kind of mini-revelation effect: you mean you can say that?) but just as often, apparently, randomly--just for the heck of it. Augie likes to talk (write), and what comes out, comes out: "Many repeated pressures with the same effect as one strong blow, that was \oEinhorn's\c method, he said, and it was his special pride that he knew how to use the means contributed by the age to connive as ably as anyone else; when in a not so advanced time he'd have been mummy-handled in a hut or somebody might have had to help him be a beggar in front of a church, the next thing to a memento mori or, more awful, a reminder of what difficulties there were before you could even become dead." \o...\c "On the final day she watched the trunk wag down the front stairs, on the back of the mover, with an amazing, terrible look of presidency, and supervised everything, every last box, in this fashion, gruesomely and violently white so that her mouth's corner hairs were minutely apparent, but in rigid-backed aristocracy, full face to the important transfer to something better from this (now that she turned from it) disgracefully shabby flat of a deserted woman and her sons whom she had preserved while a temporary guest." \o...\c "Quiet, quiet, quiet afternoon in the back-room study, with an oil cloth on the library table, invisible cars snoring and trembling toward the park, the sun shining into the yard outside the window barred against housebreakers, billiard balls kissing and bounding on the felt and sponge rubber, and the undertaker's back door still and stiller, cats sitting on the paths in the Lutheran gardens over the alley that were swept and garnished and scarcely ever trod by the chin-tied Danish deaconesses who'd come out on the cradle-ribbed and always fresh-painted porches of their home." There is much to be enjoyed and admired in all this-but at a pace, of course, that can only be determinedly leisurely, as sentences and paragraphs (often enough the same thing) demand re-reading for full appreciation. And while one is doing the necessary appreciating, a small voice in some northwest anterior lobe of the reader's brainpan is becoming more insistent all the while: yes-yes, but where is this getting us? An interesting cast of characters is presented; the novel's locations are admirably painted in; the years move along, from the twenties through the Crash, the Depression and the war; and yet the principal development one cannot help but wait for-Augie's, as these are his adventures, after all-simply does not, well, develop. The hero is a listener, a passive-aggressive; he has considerable native intelligence and a hungry mind, but no real resolve to put either to work for his own benefit or that of others. Ideas, ideologies, approaches to life and love and various behavior patterns are introduced to Augie; he picks and chooses, learns and doesn't learn, sort of grows and doesn't grow. In the end, working in post-war Europe as a middle-level black marketeer, the hero is in fact little changed from the Chicago street urchin of two decades before. And little concerned by this fact. Which leads one to wonder: should anyone else be? Are we not vastly more concerned over the fate of Tom Jones, or Holden Caufield, or (closer to home here) Duddy Kravitz-or just about any other coming-of-age/picaresque hero you can think of ? Yes, we are. Augie March's dilemma-what exactly he wants to do with his life-has taken up a dense 557 pages and remained unresolved. This has been called "existential." Fine. No one says that life offers everyone a workable "resolution." But that may be why novels aren't written about everyone. Whatever name one assigns Augie's condition, in any case, the fact remains that all his adventuring leaves him in a state of self-inflicted inconclusiveness-and leaves us muttering okay, okay-get on with it!

Exhilarating:
Recently Martin Amis claimed this was the great American novel, and it's as good a candidate as I've read. Bellow's long descriptions of city characters cascade through the mind, and create an instantly memorable style. Writers will be awed.

Exhilarating:
Recently Martin Amis claimed this was the great American novel, and it's as good a candidate as I've read. Bellow's long descriptions of city characters cascade through the mind, and create an instantly memorable style. Writers will be awed.

He Tries!:
He is a good-hearted young man who tries to make a go of it, but, as Stella says, falls into the whims and desires of so many people he meets. He is taken along on a trip to smuggle people form Canada, goes along with his brother's whims and practically marries a woman chosen for him, goes to the shore with an employer, who wants to adopt him, runs off to Mexico with a strange woman and her eagle, ends up in Europe with yet another woman he doesn't say no to, and finds that marriage is less than he would have wanted. He doesn't seem to be able to take control of his own life. Undoubtedly there are many people like this, good hearted with a streak of innocence, but winding up with something less than success. And throughout the book one can see Bellow's disenchantment with rampant Capitalism, which is evident with the successful men in Augies experiences. I like Augie, and I sympathize with him. It's a good read . . get to know him, and learn about yourself.

Great writer, good book:
This was the first book that I read by one of this country's most respected writers. While some passages including the ending were poorly conceived and lacked the rest of book's drive, I greatly enjoyed most of it. Augie, the eternal recruit, is the main character of this novel. For the greater part of the book he has no well defined plan for life and surfs along on waves generated by others. This plot structure allows Bellow to observe and comment upon a wide stratum of human society with often striking results. On top of that he supplies the narrative with an enormous drive, which makes the first half of the book a highly compelling read. Strangely, both the drive and the so well constructed persona of Augie receive a bad blow by the reappearance of Thea and her eagle. To me the ensuing episode is really at odds with the all what made the preceding part so great. There is virtually no justification why the protagonist so suddenly goes head over heels for a person that had barely interested him before. Moreover, the whole eagle business is bizarre and boring and seemed a train wreck instead of the supersonic ride of the earlier chapters. After leaving Thea and her disappointing feathered friend south of the border the story again picks up some steam, but loses it's momentum around the aimless end. While I considered the glass more than half full, it was frustrating to witness the enormous contrast in quality between the best and lesser parts of this book. Based on the best parts, the young author deserved himself a spot among this country's best, while the eagle and the ending would have disappeared in the wastebasket of most of his fellow Nobelians. In all, an often superior novel with a couple of tough spots. Often a great read, but no Fielding or Dreiser.