[.ca] Penguin Classics Ravelstein (ISBN 0141001763)

From Amazon.com:
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Saul Bellow confined himself to shorter fictions. Not that this old master ever dabbled in minimalism: novellas such as The Actual and The Bellarosa Connection are bursting at the seams with wit, plot, and the intellectual equivalent of high fiber. Still, Bellow's readers wondered if he would ever pull another full-sized novel from his hat. With Ravelstein, the author has done just that--and he proves that even in his ninth decade, he can pin a character to the page more vividly, and more permanently, than just about anybody on the planet. Character is very much the issue in Ravelstein, whose eponymous subject is a thinly disguised version of Bellow's boon companion, the late Allan Bloom. Like Bloom, Abe Ravelstein has spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, fighting a rearguard action against the creeping boobism and vulgarity of American life. What's more, he's written a surprise bestseller (a ringer, of course, for The Closing of the American Mind), which has made him into a millionaire. And finally, he's dying--has died of AIDS, in fact, six years before the opening of the novel. What we're reading, then, is a faux memoir by his best friend and anointed Boswell, a Bellovian body-double named Chick: Ravelstein was willing to lay it all out for me. Now why did he bother to tell me such things, this large Jewish man from Dayton, Ohio? Because it very urgently needed to be said. He was HIV-positive, he was dying of complications from it. Weakened, he became the host of an endless list of infections. Still, he insisted on telling me over and over again what love was--the neediness, the awareness of incompleteness, the longing for wholeness, and how the pains of Eros were joined to the most ecstatic pleasures. Ravelstein is a little thin in the plot department--or more accurately, it has an anti-plot, which consists of Chick's inability to write his memoir. But seldom has a case of writer's block been so supremely productive. The narrator dredges up anecdote after anecdote about his subject, assembling a composite portrait: "In approaching a man like Ravelstein, a piecemeal method is perhaps best." We see this very worldly philosopher teaching, kvetching, eating, drinking, and dying, the last in melancholic increments. His death, and Chick's own brush with what Henry James called "the distinguished thing," give much of the novel a kind of black-crepe coloration. But fortunately, Bellow shares Ravelstein's "Nietzschean view, favorable to comedy and bandstands," and there can't be many eulogies as funny as this one. As always, the author is lavish with physical detail, bringing not only his star but a large gallery of minor players to rude and resounding life ("Rahkmiel was a non-benevolent Santa Claus, a dangerous person, ruddy, with a red-eyed scowl and a face in which the anger muscles were highly developed"). His sympathies are also stretched in some interesting directions by his homosexual protagonist. Bellow hasn't, to be sure, transformed himself into an affirmative-action novelist. But his famously capacious view of human nature has been enriched by this additional wrinkle: "In art you become familiar with due process. You can't simply write people off or send them to hell." A world-class portrait, a piercing intimation of mortality, Ravelstein is truly that other distinguished thing: a great novel. --James Marcus

not a good place to start:
Two stars because Bellow can do much better. Ravelstein is a rather confused book. Bellow's personal tribute does not quite carry over from his real-life friendship with Bloom. In the book, Ravelstein/Bloom is an intensely dislikeable character: a crank, a snob, and a bully. Bellow is overawed by what he perceives to be Ravelstein's intellect. It is perhaps a sign of Bellow's genius that even though it is clearly Bellow's desire to elevate Ravelstein to some kind of dark saint status, the mediocrity both of Ravelstein's soul and his mind shines through, as if accidentally, over and over. Bellow wants to write about friendship that becomes as profound as romantic love. The best analogy to the result is perhaps, weirdly, the Sorrows of Young Werther -- without the author-consciousness injecting some kind of reality into the proceedings. The end of the book is quite a failure: long, confusing dream sequences as Bellow's alter ego suffers his own medical failure. One might labor to understand the symbolism here, but what is the point? Bellow's strength is not symbolism, and it never has been; he is best with the flawed noblility of the intelligentsia, but he is strangely unable to take seriously Ravelstein's profound failures as a human. I have experienced the power of a magnetic teacher, and the fields one can leave behind in the lives of others; mine was a positive experience. Bloom was clearly one of these kinds of teachers. But Bellow's inability to truly see through and *into* these kinds of dynamical friendships is a strange failure for such a great writer.

Not to my taste...:
This is the third book by Saul Bellow that I have read, starting with Henderson the Rain King, Humbolt's Gift, and now Ravelstein and I have to say that I feel like I am going downhill fast. I have also noticed too many similarities between the main characters in all of these books to make me think each one is strikingly original. I don't understand why Bellow is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. There are moments of poetic brilliance, no doubt about it, but not enough to sustain a whole work. Ravelstein meanders around a thin plot and jumps between locations and times much to rapidly for me to follow. This book seems to be more of a short history of each character with more details than needed rather than a traditional story. After reading other reviews I now understand this is a biography of sorts, unfortunately I didn't know that when I started reading it. All in all I think this will be the last Bellow book that I read. It wasn't all bad but it sure wasn't genius as some people claim.

Not Bellow's Best:
Near the end of this novel the narrator, Chick, life-long friend of Ravelstein (presumably Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago), describes a serious episode of heart failure. These pages are remarkably well-done, but like much of this novel, it's hard to find much on Ravelstein in these pages. Mr. Bellow somewhere in effect admits that his medical problems may be a bit of a departure from the main story line. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the story is a rambling set of recollections; it is difficult to discard anything, and just about everything is fair game in this novel that manages, despite its inclusiveness, to give short shirft to its central character, Ravelstein. When we do meet him, we find precious little exceptional. His materialism is right out of the GQ "central casting" department. We're assured he studied the classics, but when is beyond me, given his propensity to shop. If you want to know about Professor Bloom, you would do much better going directly to the source, particularly his translation of Plato's Republic. You won't learn much about Bloom's apparent weakness for tailored, crisply laundered (wrapped, not on hangers, Bellow assures us) shirts, but you'll get much closer than Ravelstein can bring you to understanding his exceptional mind.

Biography of a foul human being:
This thinly disguised biography of Allan Bloom attempts to be sympathetic, but cannot disguise the fact that "Ravelstein" is a superficial, self-destructive homosexual, concerned with clothes, dinners, cars, bad ideas, and little else. This walking horror trained many of today's leaders, accounting for the mess this country is in. I had a copy of "The Closing of the American Mind" many years ago, but rapidly gave it away. Thank you, Saul Bellow, for showing us what this monster was really like.

A friend or an issue:
Well Saul Bellow writes an interesting set of descriptions but as a novel it isn't that great. The interesting part is the description of Allan Bloom (Ravelstein) and Saul Bellow (Chick)--their personalities, friends, wives partners, domestic life, and world views. The most interesting part is the emphasis on the relationship between Jewish identity and aleination from 20th century society. This part is particularly thought provoking. Do their views represent a particular concern of Chick and Ravelstein, or a larger concern of Jewish intellectuals or Jews in general? It made me think. Another interesting part is the revealing of Saul Bellow's own vulnerable personality. Although as I write this it seems Bellow's description, especially with respect to his next to last wife, could be self-serving. There is no real explanation other than charisma or pure friendship for Chick's regard for Ravelstein. Other than his obvious charisma, Ravelstein has so many rough edges, he doesn't come across as someone that Bellow would particularly like and respect. Perhaps that is the point--charisma! An insufficient explanation for why the book was written is Chick's (Bellow's) promise to Ravelstein to write a "memoir". In general, this writing may have been better in some other format--perhaps one or more essays.