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david_rhee 's review for:
Humboldt's Gift
by Saul Bellow
Long awaited satisfaction. A sighing relief. After Augie March, the Saul Bellow reader must endure some slow-paced puzzlers and just plain duds. Humboldt's Gift gives that familiar feel reminding us of Bellow's best. The jaunty swing of a Chicago kid growing up. The obscure references that keep coming. It's Augie March again but an aged and matured version of it. Augie's course through life is more frolicsome and youthful. Charles Citrine's walk is soaked and littered with thoughts of death, with scars and gashes suffered from the gnarled nails of greedy hands, and with the weight of old age. Perhaps Humboldt's Gift is to be enjoyed by the more experienced reader, one who has ridden the upswings and the falls himself. The comparison between Augie and Humboldt is like one between Frank Sinatra's voice in the Columbia years and that of the Reprise years. The former is admired for its pure ring and is considered more musically aesthetic. The latter has a prominent rasp picked up from years of age and fight. It's not as clean a voice but it is appreciated by a listener who understands pain, maybe because he believes he has found an expression of the way he himself hurts.
A dominating theme in Humboldt is the materialistic American culture and its treatment of literary figures and works. For one who might be used to seeing literary culture overlooked or disdained, it is strange to see litigious predators swiftly circling promising products of writing talent. The opposition which is advanced is formidable. Citrine falls before it by resisting it and losing. Humboldt is maddened and possessed by it as if by a contagion.
One can't help wonder if Humboldt is autobiographical. I'm not talking event-wise, of course it was, as the book is a roman à clef of Bellow's friendship with Delmore Schwartz. I'm thinking more of Bellow's own reflections on aging and death. Bellow was only 60 when Humboldt was released and he would go on to live 30 more years. But in Humboldt, there was a feeling of a triumphant return to what Bellow does well to ensure his place, a place already firmly secured. A parting shot, or even better, a parting gift to us. If you ask me, he absolutely nailed it.
A dominating theme in Humboldt is the materialistic American culture and its treatment of literary figures and works. For one who might be used to seeing literary culture overlooked or disdained, it is strange to see litigious predators swiftly circling promising products of writing talent. The opposition which is advanced is formidable. Citrine falls before it by resisting it and losing. Humboldt is maddened and possessed by it as if by a contagion.
One can't help wonder if Humboldt is autobiographical. I'm not talking event-wise, of course it was, as the book is a roman à clef of Bellow's friendship with Delmore Schwartz. I'm thinking more of Bellow's own reflections on aging and death. Bellow was only 60 when Humboldt was released and he would go on to live 30 more years. But in Humboldt, there was a feeling of a triumphant return to what Bellow does well to ensure his place, a place already firmly secured. A parting shot, or even better, a parting gift to us. If you ask me, he absolutely nailed it.