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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
adventurous
reflective
tense
Wasn't sure what to expect going into this, but it was a captivating listen. The twists and turns of this man's adventures are a wild ride. Plus, the person who narrates the audiobook had a lovely voice
dark
This book is definitely not what I expected. The main character is one of my least favorite kind of people. He’s conceited, rash, misogynistic, and disrespectful to just about everyone. Most of the book is slow moving and boring so it took me ages to finish this book, but I was determined to do so. At least it wasn’t so bad that I wanted to give up entirely. There are a few times when I was enchanted by a phrase that was used in an especially poetic way, but mostly I struggled to focus on what was happening as I was reading. It felt like it was written by someone who had never been to Africa (not that I have) and was basing everything on things they read in an encyclopedia. Also, rich, white man goes to “savage” tribe and befriends kings and is given a position of power? Sounds like white supremacy to me. The whole idea of this book just rubbed the wrong way.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In my favorite Bullwinkle cartoon that greatest of Moosylvanian mooses joins the Peace Corps. As he struggles to engage the African villagers in learning to build wells they are working on a secret project of their own. We eventually find they are building a rocket to blast Bullwinkle into space. I thought about that a lot as I read Henderson the Rain King. Jay Ward, the creator of the cartoon series, was skeptical of America's world's savior post-war aspirations and delighted in skewering the very idea of American supremacy. I grew up watching Bullwinkle reruns and perhaps as a result when I first read this book, in the 80s I think, I loved it. Since then my worldview has changed some, and my tastes as a reader have changed wildly. There is still a lot to revere in this book, but it did not live up to my memories.
Briefly, Eugene Henderson is a bumbling rich fool, a graduate of Princeton largely because of his wealth (it certainly is not due to his intellectual facility.) He was the least distinguished of three children of an accomplished physician, and the only one to survive to adulthood. He thereby becomes the head of the family, much to his father's chagrin. Henderson is a large man in every way and he throws around his gigantic personality, his enormous wealth, and his monumental physical size as bullies do. He is cruel, clueless, destructive and inconstant, and boy does he dislike women (as it is clear in every book Bellow did) and golly gee is he racist and does he ever fetishize blackness? Henderson's roots are very different than Bellow's, but in many ways I suspect Henderson is quite like Bellow. I suspect that because there is no satirical remove when Bellow talks about Henderson's relationships to women or to the African characters (even when he is discussing the size of black women's asses.) If I am right about this, and we are seeing Bellow in the Henderson character, it must be said that it appears Bellow was a right prick. Eventually, Henderson gets it into his head that he needs to find himself so he leaves his wife and many children and jets off to Africa with loads of money and vanity but no preparation or clear purpose. There he finds out who he is his after his arrogance causes calamity and he meets a tribal king named Dahfu who is educated, brilliant, and also despotic and insane in a lot of the same ways Henderson is despotic and insane. Suffice to say his impressions of what he has done and learned in Africa through experience and lengthy discussions with Dahfu on the meaning of life (mostly these are metaphysical discussions) may differ from the reader's impressions.
Henderson is a loudmouth, and his are the eyes we see this through. As a result, there is nothing in the way of pretty or elegant language here. There is a lot of bluster and misinformation. That though paints the picture of this character, and what a character! Yes, this is satire so there is a lot of exaggeration, but Henderson at his heart feels pretty real. Being vile does not mean one is not entertaining and edifying. Henderson is both. Bellow certainly knows how to write.
I really try not to judge literature by my own political and social beliefs or by social norms that did not exist when books were written. I think Bellow accomplished what he wished to accomplish and did so brilliantly, but I had a really hard time enjoying this after the action moved to Africa. Apparently, when I read this 40 years ago I was more intellectual in my reading, or maybe I just brought less life experience to the task. This is 5-star craft, but I can't go higher than a 3 when I factor in my enjoyment and the absence of the timelessness I hope to find in books considered modern classics.
Briefly, Eugene Henderson is a bumbling rich fool, a graduate of Princeton largely because of his wealth (it certainly is not due to his intellectual facility.) He was the least distinguished of three children of an accomplished physician, and the only one to survive to adulthood. He thereby becomes the head of the family, much to his father's chagrin. Henderson is a large man in every way and he throws around his gigantic personality, his enormous wealth, and his monumental physical size as bullies do. He is cruel, clueless, destructive and inconstant, and boy does he dislike women (as it is clear in every book Bellow did) and golly gee is he racist and does he ever fetishize blackness? Henderson's roots are very different than Bellow's, but in many ways I suspect Henderson is quite like Bellow. I suspect that because there is no satirical remove when Bellow talks about Henderson's relationships to women or to the African characters (even when he is discussing the size of black women's asses.) If I am right about this, and we are seeing Bellow in the Henderson character, it must be said that it appears Bellow was a right prick. Eventually, Henderson gets it into his head that he needs to find himself so he leaves his wife and many children and jets off to Africa with loads of money and vanity but no preparation or clear purpose. There he finds out who he is his after his arrogance causes calamity and he meets a tribal king named Dahfu who is educated, brilliant, and also despotic and insane in a lot of the same ways Henderson is despotic and insane. Suffice to say his impressions of what he has done and learned in Africa through experience and lengthy discussions with Dahfu on the meaning of life (mostly these are metaphysical discussions) may differ from the reader's impressions.
Henderson is a loudmouth, and his are the eyes we see this through. As a result, there is nothing in the way of pretty or elegant language here. There is a lot of bluster and misinformation. That though paints the picture of this character, and what a character! Yes, this is satire so there is a lot of exaggeration, but Henderson at his heart feels pretty real. Being vile does not mean one is not entertaining and edifying. Henderson is both. Bellow certainly knows how to write.
I really try not to judge literature by my own political and social beliefs or by social norms that did not exist when books were written. I think Bellow accomplished what he wished to accomplish and did so brilliantly, but I had a really hard time enjoying this after the action moved to Africa. Apparently, when I read this 40 years ago I was more intellectual in my reading, or maybe I just brought less life experience to the task. This is 5-star craft, but I can't go higher than a 3 when I factor in my enjoyment and the absence of the timelessness I hope to find in books considered modern classics.
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
lighthearted
tense
medium-paced
There were some parts that were taxing to read, especially as our main character’s ramblings and sidetracks became infuriating. Ultimately, by the end I came to love those random bursts of thought, and a sweet ending came from it all.
A story about a man named Eugene who's ten times more interesting than the Eugene in Look Homeward Angel. I thought all Eugenes were damned, but Saul Bellow has thrown me down like a big white Englishman.
The first part of this book is laugh out loud funny. Henderson blusters and digresses and spins yarns about his ex-wife, his current wife, his tenants, his children, his business ventures, and most of all, the constant refrain of his Id whose chants of "I want, I want, I want!" impel him ever forward. What does he want? It's a mystery to him. Money? Women? Success? And once he has all that, what more can that inner voice want? To be always at the center of a tornado of action, to thrust himself into situations, to interfere in the affairs of others—only to be helpful, of course! Henderson is larger than life, and so many improbable things have happened to him, and his way of describing them is so original, it's a real pleasure to listen to all the different ways he loses patience, blows up, exclaims, declaims, and hurls himself into the fray. Having had no success at quieting that inner voice, he journeys to Africa (although clearly not a real place in Africa, but a symbol of the unknown, the subconscious, the non-Western, the Other) to find himself. This treatment of Africa and Africans is hard to take in this day and age. He doesn't even say *where* in Africa he is, which is always a red flag. Perhaps that's not a strange attitude for 1959, but it merits mentioning. After that, the novel goes metaphysical, and to me, increasingly less interesting. The character is still compelling, larger than life, by turns bumbling, overconfident, ashamed, but there's only so much noodling around in metaphysics I can take. In the last pages, though, he leaves us one last gem of a story within the story, and it's worth reading to the end for.
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes