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david_rhee's review
4.0
Saul Bellow's The Victim is one of those rare books where every part of it feels just right. The backdrop (the harshly unforgiving Depression-era New York), the characters (the calloused flawed protagonist and the villain who never fails to crawl under your skin), the themes (fate, luck, blame-shifting, the ebb and flow of man's fortunes)...all of it simply comes together seamlessly.
I was most impressed by the way Bellow crafted the tension throughout the book. It was eerily constant and taut, never waning or intensifying too much. The grip on the reader feels like it is always just enough, without forcing storylines, stretching upswings, and it never drags in the least bit. Bellow handled anti-semitism in the same way. It never dominated, but it was always present wherever it felt relevant. There's a definite cinematic quality in the writing. Its imagery is engaging, especially the stifling crowded heat of New York and the encircling choke of guilt upon the conscience. I'd like to think almost anyone can enjoy this novel.
I was most impressed by the way Bellow crafted the tension throughout the book. It was eerily constant and taut, never waning or intensifying too much. The grip on the reader feels like it is always just enough, without forcing storylines, stretching upswings, and it never drags in the least bit. Bellow handled anti-semitism in the same way. It never dominated, but it was always present wherever it felt relevant. There's a definite cinematic quality in the writing. Its imagery is engaging, especially the stifling crowded heat of New York and the encircling choke of guilt upon the conscience. I'd like to think almost anyone can enjoy this novel.
duffypratt's review
2.0
Here's a book about New York City in the summer without air conditioning. Spice it up with a touch of guilt and paranoia, then add a liberal helping of anti-semitism, and it makes for a stew that is squalid, dull, and a bit oppressive. I kept waiting for something to happen, something to break the malaise. But it never did, or when it did, nothing followed as a result, if that makes any sense. Bellow's writing is very strong, but not strong enough really to carry off a book filled with vaguely unpleasant people not doing much of anything.
ericjaysonnenscheinwriter2392's review
I would like to read "The Adventures of Augie March", Bellow's first major work, but "The Victim" came into my hands, so I read it. I think it's instructive to read a major writer's early work, because it demonstrates the basic talent he had to work with, his basic approach to storytelling, and his natural deficits, which he improved upon to to achieve his later and more accomplished pieces.
In Bellow's case, his talent as a wordsmith, someone who knows how to write sentences to represent a character's psyche, is on more than occasional display in "The Victim." At times, the wording seems awkward and convoluted. One is tempted to blame the inexperience of the writer, until one recognizes that he is using prose to capture the way his protagonist's less sophisticated, less erudite mind processes thoughts both simple and complex.
At times, Bellow's attempt to create a scene out of words seems labored. He apparently wants to leave a sensory impression in the reader's mind using only words. It is a difficult and perhaps quixotic objective and his painstaking efforts can have prolix results. At such moments, Bellow seems like a novice screenwriter who is intent on telling the cameraman how to frame each shot. Yet at other times, Bellow uses language to do what only the greatest poets are capable of--to transform perceived moments into transcendent images by demonstrating with metaphor and symbol the invisible relationship of disparate objects. Bellow describes New York harbor, the movement of the ferry, a summer park after dark, the light and breeze wafting through an apartment window, and steam hovering (like a "cloud") over a stove with such virtuosity that one lingers over his depiction of these small details, in admiration at his fresh way of seeing familiar things, of turning the prosaic into poetry.
One notes in "The Victim" Bellow's storytelling strategy, of focusing on a marginal individual, who finds himself in a vulnerable and precarious spiritual state, and pushing this character to the brink of a complete breakdown. In "The Victim" the protagonist is Asa Leventhal, a burly sad sack of a man who has had to fight to claw his way into the middle class. While his wife is away, Leventhal is approached by an anti-Semitic man whom he used to meet at parties. This man, Albee, once set up an interview for Leventhal with his boss, a very abusive man Leventhal ended up getting into a fight with the abusive boss and Albee lost his job. Now, years later Leventhal is well employed and married and Albee comes calling to either get even with the man he blames for his downfall, or to exact a favor.
Meanwhile, Leventhal's wife is away, helping her widowed mother. In the few weeks during which Albee appears in Leventhal's life, he goes through all of the agony of the Jewish victim until finally the situation is resolved.
This story arc is familiar to anyone who has read a few of Bellow's works. At times, the plot challenges the reader's credulity. The situation seems completely contrived, as do the characters' actions and interactions. At other times, Bellow's project to build a bigger story out of the mundane lives of ostensibly ordinary characters can be annoying and frustrating. One is aware of being manipulated, that the plot is being extended through a series of improbabilities. By "improbabilities" I don't mean mere coincidences, but character choices and behaviors that do not correspond with one's understanding of typical psychology and human motivation.
Bellow might have made his characters' thoughts and actions more believable if he had merely explained their thinking, rather than putting so much attention on a tic, physical movement or sensation, or on trying to capture their conflicting sensations at a given moment. He is trying so hard to put us in the scene sensorially that he neglects to tell us why the characters are in that scene to start with. Perhaps this was the fashion of the day for novelists, to make words do what cameras can do better, but in the final analysis, a writer is not a camera. Nor should he be. A writer interprets as much as he creates.
However, there is probably a practical reason that Bellow tells us less than we need to know about what makes his characters "tick." Part of the impetus of the story lies in the mystery of these motivations. Why does Albee appear in Leventhal's life? And why doesn't Leventhal get rid of him from the outset? The reason has less to do with the integrity of the characters and their story than it does with Bellow's narrative strategy. He may have wished to create a mystery based on the characters' motivations and behavior and to sink this mystery deep into his reader's mind, so he would have to read to the end to solve it.
Unfortunately, the resolution in this particular novel, while not dismal, is not satisfying. I may be tipping my aesthetic hand but I want a book, regardless of its genre, to tell me something about the world that I might not have previously known or to tell me what I already know in refreshing terms. "The Victim" does neither.
Yet, as I wrote above, it is good to see that even the best writers, and Bellow deserves to be remembered as one of America's best, didn't start fully formed. They grew and got better. It is also good to see that even in those inchoate early works, while greatness was still knitting together and finding its way, a writer of Bellow's caliber had something to say and the talent to begin to say it.
In Bellow's case, his talent as a wordsmith, someone who knows how to write sentences to represent a character's psyche, is on more than occasional display in "The Victim." At times, the wording seems awkward and convoluted. One is tempted to blame the inexperience of the writer, until one recognizes that he is using prose to capture the way his protagonist's less sophisticated, less erudite mind processes thoughts both simple and complex.
At times, Bellow's attempt to create a scene out of words seems labored. He apparently wants to leave a sensory impression in the reader's mind using only words. It is a difficult and perhaps quixotic objective and his painstaking efforts can have prolix results. At such moments, Bellow seems like a novice screenwriter who is intent on telling the cameraman how to frame each shot. Yet at other times, Bellow uses language to do what only the greatest poets are capable of--to transform perceived moments into transcendent images by demonstrating with metaphor and symbol the invisible relationship of disparate objects. Bellow describes New York harbor, the movement of the ferry, a summer park after dark, the light and breeze wafting through an apartment window, and steam hovering (like a "cloud") over a stove with such virtuosity that one lingers over his depiction of these small details, in admiration at his fresh way of seeing familiar things, of turning the prosaic into poetry.
One notes in "The Victim" Bellow's storytelling strategy, of focusing on a marginal individual, who finds himself in a vulnerable and precarious spiritual state, and pushing this character to the brink of a complete breakdown. In "The Victim" the protagonist is Asa Leventhal, a burly sad sack of a man who has had to fight to claw his way into the middle class. While his wife is away, Leventhal is approached by an anti-Semitic man whom he used to meet at parties. This man, Albee, once set up an interview for Leventhal with his boss, a very abusive man Leventhal ended up getting into a fight with the abusive boss and Albee lost his job. Now, years later Leventhal is well employed and married and Albee comes calling to either get even with the man he blames for his downfall, or to exact a favor.
Meanwhile, Leventhal's wife is away, helping her widowed mother. In the few weeks during which Albee appears in Leventhal's life, he goes through all of the agony of the Jewish victim until finally the situation is resolved.
This story arc is familiar to anyone who has read a few of Bellow's works. At times, the plot challenges the reader's credulity. The situation seems completely contrived, as do the characters' actions and interactions. At other times, Bellow's project to build a bigger story out of the mundane lives of ostensibly ordinary characters can be annoying and frustrating. One is aware of being manipulated, that the plot is being extended through a series of improbabilities. By "improbabilities" I don't mean mere coincidences, but character choices and behaviors that do not correspond with one's understanding of typical psychology and human motivation.
Bellow might have made his characters' thoughts and actions more believable if he had merely explained their thinking, rather than putting so much attention on a tic, physical movement or sensation, or on trying to capture their conflicting sensations at a given moment. He is trying so hard to put us in the scene sensorially that he neglects to tell us why the characters are in that scene to start with. Perhaps this was the fashion of the day for novelists, to make words do what cameras can do better, but in the final analysis, a writer is not a camera. Nor should he be. A writer interprets as much as he creates.
However, there is probably a practical reason that Bellow tells us less than we need to know about what makes his characters "tick." Part of the impetus of the story lies in the mystery of these motivations. Why does Albee appear in Leventhal's life? And why doesn't Leventhal get rid of him from the outset? The reason has less to do with the integrity of the characters and their story than it does with Bellow's narrative strategy. He may have wished to create a mystery based on the characters' motivations and behavior and to sink this mystery deep into his reader's mind, so he would have to read to the end to solve it.
Unfortunately, the resolution in this particular novel, while not dismal, is not satisfying. I may be tipping my aesthetic hand but I want a book, regardless of its genre, to tell me something about the world that I might not have previously known or to tell me what I already know in refreshing terms. "The Victim" does neither.
Yet, as I wrote above, it is good to see that even the best writers, and Bellow deserves to be remembered as one of America's best, didn't start fully formed. They grew and got better. It is also good to see that even in those inchoate early works, while greatness was still knitting together and finding its way, a writer of Bellow's caliber had something to say and the talent to begin to say it.
bibliomaniac2021's review
dark
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
vsobaka05's review
1.0
I felt like I was missing something the whole time I was reading this book. I wanted to like it, but I just couldn't. This could also just be partially due to the fact that I've had to read a lot of this sort of literature recently, so it's all been running together in my mind.
blackoxford's review
4.0
The Ecology of Oppression
How many ways are there to be a schmuck? Bellow probably includes most of them in The Victim. Over-reaction, under-reaction, mis-directed reaction, delayed reaction - Asa Leventhal has them all. He can’t be called hapless because he is aware that action is necessary; but he never seems to pick the right alternative.
Leventhal is sure of himself when he should be cautious; impetuous when he should be fearful; fearful when he could act boldly in his own interests. Marriage, work, relationships are mysterious traps for Leventhal. So no matter how he acts, he has regrets. His self-doubt is monumental. He seems unable to learn from experience, and so repeats the same errors over and over.
To make matters worse, Leventhal is acutely sensitive to his immediate environment. He is sympathetic; he worries about others and how they feel; he takes their part even when it is to his disadvantage. So he is constantly confronted with the need for decision about how to adapt himself to circumstances. This sensitive introversion can verge on saintliness... or mental illness.
At times the internal and external dialogue approach the frustrating interchange of characters out of a Samuel Beckett play - senseless mutual incomprehension which the reader must endure along with the characters. Scruples, second thoughts, hesitations, reversals, things unsaid abound.
But, unlike Beckett, Bellow interjects wonderful lyricism into almost every scene. His descriptions of what Leventhal perceives can be exquisite: “The paper frills along the shelves of the cupboard crackled in the current of the fan. It ran on the cabinet, sooty, with insectlike swiftness and a thrumming of its soft rubber blades; it suggested a fly hovering below the tarnish and heat of the ceiling and beside the scaling, many-jointed, curved pipes on which Elena hung rags to dry.”
The contrast, therefore, between Leventhal’s observational delicacy and his operational effectiveness in life, as it were, is stark. “People met you once or twice and they hated you. What was the reason; what inspired it?” This is Bellovian irony. He knows well what inspires it: anti-Semitism. Leventhal meets the beast of anti-Semitism in the office, with his in-laws, in his remembered past. But he minimizes it; he lets it slide in order to maintain civilized relationships. He feels compelled to be a mensch even in the midst of simmering hostility. One must never be disagreeable if one is to survive.
The reason for Leventhal’s timidity is a very specific fear, a fear shared by other Jews in the story, the fear of creating a bad reputation among the goyim. Getting a name for being uncivil, for calling out those whose anti-Semitism is expressed so casually, would be counterproductive. It would simply confirm existing prejudices. It would also jeopardize the possibility of influence, both professional and personal. So it is necessary to tolerate the verbal barbs and nasty asides lest something more dire ensue. Says the wife of one of Leventhal’s acquaintances, “People are bound not to take things too much to heart, for their own protection. You've got to use influence on them.” And you can’t do that if you complain about irrational abuse.
So Bellow’s subtle issues throughout are about the morality of victimhood. Is it possible to escape from the overwhelming power of convention and prejudice? Are the oppressed complicit in their own oppression? How open can a person be in confronting the powers that dominate his life? These are issues of culture, and therefore literature, not for the popular press or the law courts. Which is why Bellow writes about them.
How many ways are there to be a schmuck? Bellow probably includes most of them in The Victim. Over-reaction, under-reaction, mis-directed reaction, delayed reaction - Asa Leventhal has them all. He can’t be called hapless because he is aware that action is necessary; but he never seems to pick the right alternative.
Leventhal is sure of himself when he should be cautious; impetuous when he should be fearful; fearful when he could act boldly in his own interests. Marriage, work, relationships are mysterious traps for Leventhal. So no matter how he acts, he has regrets. His self-doubt is monumental. He seems unable to learn from experience, and so repeats the same errors over and over.
To make matters worse, Leventhal is acutely sensitive to his immediate environment. He is sympathetic; he worries about others and how they feel; he takes their part even when it is to his disadvantage. So he is constantly confronted with the need for decision about how to adapt himself to circumstances. This sensitive introversion can verge on saintliness... or mental illness.
At times the internal and external dialogue approach the frustrating interchange of characters out of a Samuel Beckett play - senseless mutual incomprehension which the reader must endure along with the characters. Scruples, second thoughts, hesitations, reversals, things unsaid abound.
But, unlike Beckett, Bellow interjects wonderful lyricism into almost every scene. His descriptions of what Leventhal perceives can be exquisite: “The paper frills along the shelves of the cupboard crackled in the current of the fan. It ran on the cabinet, sooty, with insectlike swiftness and a thrumming of its soft rubber blades; it suggested a fly hovering below the tarnish and heat of the ceiling and beside the scaling, many-jointed, curved pipes on which Elena hung rags to dry.”
The contrast, therefore, between Leventhal’s observational delicacy and his operational effectiveness in life, as it were, is stark. “People met you once or twice and they hated you. What was the reason; what inspired it?” This is Bellovian irony. He knows well what inspires it: anti-Semitism. Leventhal meets the beast of anti-Semitism in the office, with his in-laws, in his remembered past. But he minimizes it; he lets it slide in order to maintain civilized relationships. He feels compelled to be a mensch even in the midst of simmering hostility. One must never be disagreeable if one is to survive.
The reason for Leventhal’s timidity is a very specific fear, a fear shared by other Jews in the story, the fear of creating a bad reputation among the goyim. Getting a name for being uncivil, for calling out those whose anti-Semitism is expressed so casually, would be counterproductive. It would simply confirm existing prejudices. It would also jeopardize the possibility of influence, both professional and personal. So it is necessary to tolerate the verbal barbs and nasty asides lest something more dire ensue. Says the wife of one of Leventhal’s acquaintances, “People are bound not to take things too much to heart, for their own protection. You've got to use influence on them.” And you can’t do that if you complain about irrational abuse.
So Bellow’s subtle issues throughout are about the morality of victimhood. Is it possible to escape from the overwhelming power of convention and prejudice? Are the oppressed complicit in their own oppression? How open can a person be in confronting the powers that dominate his life? These are issues of culture, and therefore literature, not for the popular press or the law courts. Which is why Bellow writes about them.
tricky's review against another edition
3.0
Leventhal is a man full of self doubt and always wondering if the other guy knows better. He meets, seemingly by chance an old colleague who blames Leventhal for a past incident.
I have not read any of Bellow's work before and found this book both frustrating and engaging.
I was never sure about Leventhal's character. Was he a victim or just riding the coat tails of life?
It's a novel that is wonderfully written with fantastic descriptions. It is thought provoking and infuriating.
I have not read any of Bellow's work before and found this book both frustrating and engaging.
I was never sure about Leventhal's character. Was he a victim or just riding the coat tails of life?
It's a novel that is wonderfully written with fantastic descriptions. It is thought provoking and infuriating.