Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: An often hilarious, always thought-provoking, fascinating book. While it may seem to be thick reading at times, it is well worth it--an entertaining and humanist novel.
Rating: 
Summary: bellow is the best
Review: another brilliant book from mr. bellow.
Rating:
Summary: A Book Capable of Changing You.
Review: Both as an example of fine writing and as a book that leaves you thinking deep thoughts, this novel is outstanding. One of my rules for determining the "importance" of any book, movie, or other entertainment piece is whether or not it is capable of inspiring change in its audience. This novel is.Bellow achieves the perfect balance of interior monologue and narrative in Sammler, in which we see the world through the eyes of the erudite elderly man, who, though constrained by his own reserved demeanor, sees the world with his eyes, his mind, and his heart. At a loss, often, to express himself, Sammler filters the world through his intellect. And yet, the truths he knows are intuitive, and he realizes that value in life is found through making and acknowledging the human connection and bond, and living up to the spiritual and moral truths of the "human contract." This is a book about how important it is to love, to connect with other frail, imperfect, crazy humans, how to come to terms with the messiness of life, and make peace with the contradictions between intellect and religion/spirituality. Living in New York on the charity of relatives, Sammler struggles, and succeeds in, maintaining his dignity in spite of the seemingly depraved surroundings of the city and in spite of his precarious financial and physical conditions. Observing the world around him, Sammler poses many questions about the values that drive us, noting poignantly that bragging about one's vices has become virtue, and that honor, "virtuous impulses," have somehow become shameful. Yet, the book also has an engaging plot, one that serves the message of the book, and Sammler's many family relationships are amusing and touching at once. Yet Sammler is not the hero of the novel, and we see the hero, (if one can call him that, since he spends the book unconscious) through Sammler's eyes. In doing so, we understand the human achievements that Sammler aspires to, and that he calls us to. This book is worth the work of reading for anyone who doesn't mind dense but beautiful writing, who will read the same paragraph several times to get all the nuggets out, and who enjoys philosophy, sociology, and "cultural" snapshots. I will note that this novel, right in line with Bellows other novels, is a bit mysogynistic in its portrayal of women (there is not a woman to respect in this novel, they are either dirty and smelly, cold and slutty, crazy, or lovable but totally clueless). My other complaint is that Bellow, in this novel more than others, is a bit intellectually pretentious, throwing in obscure historical/philosphical references that do not move the novel forward, but that are the intellectual equivalent of "muscle flexing." But neither of these shortcomings detracts from the overall impact of the book. I read it once a year or so to remind myself of important truths as I walk the path of life. Sammler forgives his flawed relatives their faults for all the good they do, and so I too can forgive Bellow his, and take all the good this novel offers.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for fans of dead white men...
Review: How did Saul Bellow get into my head? How does this man-whom I picture as some kind of Ur-white male, entombed in Great Books, plastered with awards and walled up in an ivy tower-speak so directly to my experience as a young woman in 2004? I guess is the same reason that Tolstoy gets to the heart of failing relationships more vividly than any chick-lit author, and Flaubert's descriptions of desire are so much more piercing than any "Sex and the City" episode. Sheer, freaking genius.
Don't let Bellow's "white-maleness" or the blizzard of high-culture references scare you off-this is an incredibly moving and powerful book. Sammler, a Holocaust survivor and exiled European intellectual, is watching his life run down in 1960s New York. So much has changed, and so much stays the same. As I was reading this book on the subway in 2004, Bellow could have been sitting next to me in the car, describing what was happening on the platforms rushing by. "Sammler" made me miss my stop more than once, needless to say. His America is "vast slums filled with bohemian adolescents, narcotized, beflowered and `whole.'" Yet all of Sammler's and his family's sufferings are somehow uplifting, illustrating the power of a mind over the external world.
Please read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for fans of dead white men...
Review: How did Saul Bellow get into my head? How does this man-whom I picture as some kind of Ur-white male, entombed in Great Books, plastered with awards and walled up in an ivy tower-speak so directly to my experience as a young woman in 2004? I guess is the same reason that Tolstoy gets to the heart of failing relationships more vividly than any chick-lit author, and Flaubert's descriptions of desire are so much more piercing than any "Sex and the City" episode. Sheer, freaking genius.
Don't let Bellow's "white-maleness" or the blizzard of high-culture references scare you off-this is an incredibly moving and powerful book. Sammler, a Holocaust survivor and exiled European intellectual, is watching his life run down in 1960s New York. So much has changed, and so much stays the same. As I was reading this book on the subway in 2004, Bellow could have been sitting next to me in the car, describing what was happening on the platforms rushing by. "Sammler" made me miss my stop more than once, needless to say. His America is "vast slums filled with bohemian adolescents, narcotized, beflowered and 'whole.'" Yet all of Sammler's and his family's sufferings are somehow uplifting, illustrating the power of a mind over the external world.
Please read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: I Was a Little Lost on Mr. Sammler's Planet
Review: I'm an avid reader, but I admit to being a little lost while reading Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet. Overall, I liked the book. I could feel the tension and chaos of the late 1960's in the story. But the story moved along at an excruciatingly tedious pace, laced with just enough bursts of clarity to keep me going until the end. The extremely long passages of exposition and long-winded monologues became difficult to manage after awhile. But I persevered because I knew that just beneath all of that lay a good story. Although the story is very dated in many areas, I was able to glean enough universal elements that made the book relevant for me in the year 2000. I'm sure the more scholarly readers out there would say that I missed the whole point and many important themes. But I say that each reader takes away from a book what is important to him or her--nothing more, nothing less--and what I gained from the book was worth plowing through it. I found Bellow's character description to be clear and crisp, if not overly defined. The quirks and personalities he gave to the more defined characters proved interesting throughout. However, I was a little distracted by Bellow's continual references to how the women characters smelled (usually bad in this book). This was my first experience with Bellow but not my last. Also, I thought the New York setting was a plus.
Rating:
Summary: Daunting but daedal writing-The Intense Saul Bellow
Review: Judging from the lengthy screeds many readers have levelled at other Bellow books such as Henderson the Rain King and Humboldt's Gift, I surmised (even though I, in fact, read and savored the book a year ago, and this should have been a foregone conclusion) that there are certainly worse gateways to Bellow's rarefied noodlings than Mr. Sammler's Planet. The pronouncements of a few of the readers of this worthy book might say something else. But they don't. This being, for the moment, the only Bellow book I've read, I will probably take to stockpiling Bellow paperbacks. I will admit that there are dry spells in a work otherwise sodden with splendid revelations of the labors and misfortunes of the characters; but these dry stretches seem to accent the many nimble plot thrusts and ingenious banter (especially between Artur Sammler and Dr. Govinda Lal, whose tome on possible colonization of the moon figures prominently in the novel.) Prolix reviews, like prolix novels, must stop meandering at some point and hit the nerve. Here we go: Bellow is a master of baroque modernism: The novel is as intricate as a Balinese mask, and yet few if any details of moment are lost; all remain fixed in mind, at least until the next spate of characters and scenarioes from, say, a Faulkner novel make inroads on memory. The humor is plentiful (The pipe bursting vignette I found especially pleasing). But the most intriguing asset to this novel's credit is the indomitable, inscrutable Artur Sammler, pliant and compassionate, with an everlasting faith in the tenets of old, yet flexible enough to grace wayward youth with something more important than reprimands, or even compassion: Unobtrusive Wisdom. A fantastic book; a true touchstone for both vocabulary and philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: The view from a survivor
Review: Mr. Sammler is a Polish Jew who escaped death at the hands of the Nazis at the cost of sight in one eye. He is a survivor. He now lives in New York City in the 1960's, supported by his nephew who is but a few years younger. Sammler, a intellectual with that gentlemanly old world manner, is now trying to come to terms with the culture he sees in NYC at the time, including how most of relatives have taken to it, the Holocaust and WWII in general. And, what the meaning of being a survivor is, both for himself and for the world he now finds himself in. But just as his physical vision, thanks to the Nazis, is but half and distorted, so is his sight and vision into his soul. (Anyway, that's my metaphorical take on the bad eye.) He is emotionally removed. As for Bellow's writing, it was great! This was my first Bellow book and I read it only because friends I highly respect so recommended him. I was flabbergasted that the writing was so good. Not at all heavy but yet trenchant in content and to the point. The scene where Sammler gives his talk is classic. His inability to understand the 60's culture and those in it, including his relations, yet having to deal with them, is often simultaneously riotous and deadly serious. It's easy to see why this book won the National Book Award. Note: Kosinski's _The Painted Bird_ has a complementary and sometimes similar subject matter. Imo, each books adds greater depth and meaning to the other.
Rating:
Summary: The view from a survivor
Review: Mr. Sammler is a Polish Jew who escaped death at the hands of the Nazis at the cost of sight in one eye. He is a survivor. He now lives in New York City in the 1960's, supported by his nephew who is but a few years younger. Sammler, a intellectual with that gentlemanly old world manner, is now trying to come to terms with the culture he sees in NYC at the time, including how most of relatives have taken to it, the Holocaust and WWII in general. And, what the meaning of being a survivor is, both for himself and for the world he now finds himself in. But just as his physical vision, thanks to the Nazis, is but half and distorted, so is his sight and vision into his soul. (Anyway, that's my metaphorical take on the bad eye.) He is emotionally removed. As for Bellow's writing, it was great! This was my first Bellow book and I read it only because friends I highly respect so recommended him. I was flabbergasted that the writing was so good. Not at all heavy but yet trenchant in content and to the point. The scene where Sammler gives his talk is classic. His inability to understand the 60's culture and those in it, including his relations, yet having to deal with them, is often simultaneously riotous and deadly serious. It's easy to see why this book won the National Book Award. Note: Kosinski's _The Painted Bird_ has a complementary and sometimes similar subject matter. Imo, each books adds greater depth and meaning to the other.
Rating:
Summary: In response to the inhabitant of Pierre, South Dakota
Review: Mr. South Dakota. I hope that you read most of you're books more in depth than you read this one. Not only is the information in this book relevent, it is an intense study of the times. Much of the information in this book is not only telling of the times, it is relevent to the current era as well.While it may be tedious for some to read, I believe it is a necesity.
|
