Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jamesvw 's review for:
Henderson the Rain King
by Saul Bellow
I need to stop reading Saul Bellow.
In fact, 2/3rds through this book, I was announcing that I was swearing off all mid 20th century male writers. But I'll walk that back some and just come to the point where I announce that I have now tried Bellows three times and there is something that absolutely turns me off. I had thought that since I had read two minor works (cue Squid and the Whale joke), The Bellarosa Connection and Mr. Sammler's Planet, I should try one selected as part of the cannon. Yet Henderson the Rain King just further cemented my distaste for his plot lines. I can admire the man's prose at certain points, but it is his characters and flow that just turns me off.
There is a certain narcissism that oozes from his protagonists. I find this a problem with Roth and Updike too (see why I was in a rage yesterday?) In reading Henderson, I just find myself overwhelmed by the use of “I” as a way of telling a story. Apart from the main character who is fleshed out and where the reader is stuffed into his mind, there is very little of three-dimension in this book. The landscape feels flat, the other characters seem paper thin, the African culture, stereotypical or not is bland and even the eventual spiritual growth (from a pig to a lion! Or other such force fed ideas) seems like it will wash away shortly after the book ends. Increasingly, I look to fiction as an exploration of interaction, whereas Bellows seems much more caught up in inner turmoil and self-centered reflection. It also is often disturbingly misogynistic – or at the very least devoid of any sort of compelling female perspective. Women – and in this book, different cultures as well – are props, jokes or unimportant.
My other issue with this book is with its humor, which hardly makes up for the irritating drip of the I pronoun. The book reminds of Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in its description of a wealthy scion’s escape from expectations and descent into madness. Vonnegut used it for a societal critique, while Bellows used the tale as almost a celebration of what it is to be a man, searching for manliness, with a gloss of goofiness to blunt the edges of his masculinity theme. It doesn't help that Conrad in all his inelegance did it so much better - though Bellows does try to replace "the horror" with Henderson's "I want".
The quote that really ties up the nauseating quality of Henderson and his paper world is from page 197 - "I did treat everything in the world as though it was a medicine." It is a moment of clarity in an otherwise uncritical, opaque book. I feel used by the end, the reader as an antibiotic, sharing in all the minute miseries of a white privileged man. Frankly, I'd rather share in the life of someone else.
In fact, 2/3rds through this book, I was announcing that I was swearing off all mid 20th century male writers. But I'll walk that back some and just come to the point where I announce that I have now tried Bellows three times and there is something that absolutely turns me off. I had thought that since I had read two minor works (cue Squid and the Whale joke), The Bellarosa Connection and Mr. Sammler's Planet, I should try one selected as part of the cannon. Yet Henderson the Rain King just further cemented my distaste for his plot lines. I can admire the man's prose at certain points, but it is his characters and flow that just turns me off.
There is a certain narcissism that oozes from his protagonists. I find this a problem with Roth and Updike too (see why I was in a rage yesterday?) In reading Henderson, I just find myself overwhelmed by the use of “I” as a way of telling a story. Apart from the main character who is fleshed out and where the reader is stuffed into his mind, there is very little of three-dimension in this book. The landscape feels flat, the other characters seem paper thin, the African culture, stereotypical or not is bland and even the eventual spiritual growth (from a pig to a lion! Or other such force fed ideas) seems like it will wash away shortly after the book ends. Increasingly, I look to fiction as an exploration of interaction, whereas Bellows seems much more caught up in inner turmoil and self-centered reflection. It also is often disturbingly misogynistic – or at the very least devoid of any sort of compelling female perspective. Women – and in this book, different cultures as well – are props, jokes or unimportant.
My other issue with this book is with its humor, which hardly makes up for the irritating drip of the I pronoun. The book reminds of Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in its description of a wealthy scion’s escape from expectations and descent into madness. Vonnegut used it for a societal critique, while Bellows used the tale as almost a celebration of what it is to be a man, searching for manliness, with a gloss of goofiness to blunt the edges of his masculinity theme. It doesn't help that Conrad in all his inelegance did it so much better - though Bellows does try to replace "the horror" with Henderson's "I want".
The quote that really ties up the nauseating quality of Henderson and his paper world is from page 197 - "I did treat everything in the world as though it was a medicine." It is a moment of clarity in an otherwise uncritical, opaque book. I feel used by the end, the reader as an antibiotic, sharing in all the minute miseries of a white privileged man. Frankly, I'd rather share in the life of someone else.