Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow died today. He was my favorite author, and Humboldt’s Gift, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet are all high on my list of favorite books, with The Adventures of Augie March perched like an iguana-hunting eagle at the top.
There’s nothing I could say that others haven’t said better, so I’ll just close with the opening paragraph of Augie. It always leaves me with a lump in my throat, but especially so today:
“I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”
Saul Bellow was your favorite author? I disagree. Mr. Sammler’s Planet was not that good. Seriously. It’s a shame that he died, but come on, you prefer him over Hemingway or Richard Ford or Don DeLillo?
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
—Ernest Hemingway
Comment by Slippers — April 8, 2005 @ 9:09 am
Why Slippers! How unlike you to have a contradictory opinion! Ha ha just kidding.
a) Richard Ford is basically Saul Bellow Part 2. I loved Independence Day and The Sportswriter (is that the right order? You might have to flip it and reverse it), but I liked them even better when they were called Herzog and published 20 years earlier by Saul Bellow.
b) For a brief period early in college I was obsessed with Hemingway, and read every word he wrote. Yes, there’s a lot of beautiful writing, some great stories, but, I don’t know, I get it already.
Hemingway is basically: “This is my worldview. I am now going to apply it to thousands of ostensibly different situations, and describe it by alternating short and long sentences. The end.”
But Bellow goes like this: “I think this is my worldview, but there are so many different worldviews and maybe I haven’t got anything figured out after all. Let’s figure out my worldview together over the course of a few days in this seemingly ordinary character’s life. PS it may take four or five hundred pages.”
Frankly, Bellow goes over my head, and that’s part of why I like him. Hemingway can write really well in a very specific style, but thematically it’s pretty one-note, and not too difficult to understand.
c) DeLillo goes way over my head too, and he’s definitely up there with Bellow as one of my favorite authors, but he can be kind of uneven. I’ve loved every single Bellow book I’ve ever read, and I can’t say that about DeLillo. But The Names, Libra, Mao II, and White Noise are without a doubt some of my favorite books. And pretty much in that order, too.
PS I’m glad to see you using em dashes after so many years of unforgivable hyphen abuse
Comment by Aaron Feaver — April 8, 2005 @ 9:56 am
What the deuce are you blathering about? “Em Dashes”? “Hyphen Abuse”? I don’t know what these words mean. Anyway, as far as Hemingway being “not too difficult to understand”, call me crazy, but I tend to prefer to understand the books I read. It’s just one of my quirks.
Comment by Slippers — April 8, 2005 @ 6:08 pm
Well then, Quirky, I highly recommend this book. I found it very easy to understand.
Comment by Feaverish — April 8, 2005 @ 6:37 pm
reading? how bloody boring! you must be queers.
Comment by liam — April 11, 2005 @ 4:42 pm