Ravelstein

Rating:
Summary: The loss of a friend.
Review: Wouldn't we all love to have a friend as intelligent and sensitive as Ravelstein? Through Bellow's Chick, I realized how much I miss Bloom's wit and wisdom.

It seemed an odd juxtaposition -- Ravelstein's death followed by Chick's near death. But look at the differences: Despite enormous suffering, which Ravelstein seemed mostly indifferent towards, Ravelstein continued to philosophize. Not so Chick. Chick's thoughts and concerns take on a certain banal quality, including a farcical vision of his ex-wife trying to freeze him out of life as much as she did in the marriage. Ravelstein's ever churning mind keeps forcing him back into life after each medical setback. Chick isn't even conscious of wanting to live; it's his body and his wife's love that keep him alive. Throughout the novel, Ravelstein and Rosamund comment about how hard Chick is on himself. He seems to be telling us that death is indiscriminate; it saves the banal (Bellow is never banal)and takes the genius. Even while reflecting upon his near-dying, Chick/Bellow spares himself not a bit.

Every review I've read about Bellow for years now dumps on him for his portrayals of women. I suspect that the men who read Bellow recognize his women characters. And the women who read him don't want to. He gives enormous credit to Rosie when he writes that she has a better understanding of love than either he or Ravelstein. Chick's love is companionship evolved from lust, Ravelstein's is the intense desire to fill the void of the broken soul. But Rosamund knows that love is bigger than both because it is unconditional, no-matter-what, without reason or bounds.

Rating:
Summary: Good sketch of a very interesting person
Review: When I first read "Ravelstein", as a short story in The New Yorker, I couldn't wait for more, having found the thoughts and ideas of Ravelstein, the professor and part central character of the novel, insightful and very original. In fact they are not often Ravelstein's; they are borrowed from classical Greek philosophy, but the way in which he expresses and uses them to reveal the spiritual perils that comtemporary western civilization faces is revealing.

The problem with the book is that there are only so many ideas that Ravelstein (based on the late philosopher Alan Bloom) has to offer, or that Chick (Saul Bellow himself, of course) remembers. So that nearly the entire latter half of the book hardly deals with Ravelstein; it focuses on Bellow's personal troubles, which at first have to do with his latest exwife, then with his health.

In fact, while the first part of the book is written in a nice, easy going way that goes from quotation to episode to funny sketch (those of Rakhmiel Kogon (supposedly the real-life sociologist Edward Shills) would stand up to the best caricatures of I. B. Singer, whose work Bellow has translated), the last often feels like a series of journal entries and tributes to Bellow's present wife (which in the book is Rosamund). Though the tributes read like something transcribed from a polite everyday conversation, some of the journal entries involve very good travel writing (about the Caribbean).

The tributes to Rosamund are baffling. If the book is an elegy to his old friend, why does Bellow frequently throw in praise for his current wife? Is he in some way pointing to Ravelstein's high regard for 'real' love by noting the love his wife feels for him? Or is he just filling in more pseudo-autobiographical detail for a book that feels quite short?

But the sketch at the end of the book reminds you that for all its faults, Bellow's book renders a very convincing and entertaining potrait of a complex and very deep character, rounding him out without being too detailed.

Rating:
Summary: not a good place to start
Review: Two stars because Bellow can do much better.

Ravelstein is a rather confused book. Bellow's personal tribute does not quite carry over from his real-life friendship with Bloom. In the book, Ravelstein/Bloom is an intensely dislikeable character: a crank, a snob, and a bully. Bellow is overawed by what he perceives to be Ravelstein's intellect. It is perhaps a sign of Bellow's genius that even though it is clearly Bellow's desire to elevate Ravelstein to some kind of dark saint status, the mediocrity both of Ravelstein's soul and his mind shines through, as if accidentally, over and over.

Bellow wants to write about friendship that becomes as profound as romantic love. The best analogy to the result is perhaps, weirdly, the Sorrows of Young Werther -- without the author-consciousness injecting some kind of reality into the proceedings.

The end of the book is quite a failure: long, confusing dream sequences as Bellow's alter ego suffers his own medical failure. One might labor to understand the symbolism here, but what is the point? Bellow's strength is not symbolism, and it never has been; he is best with the flawed noblility of the intelligentsia, but he is strangely unable to take seriously Ravelstein's profound failures as a human.

I have experienced the power of a magnetic teacher, and the fields one can leave behind in the lives of others; mine was a positive experience. Bloom was clearly one of these kinds of teachers. But Bellow's inability to truly see through and *into* these kinds of dynamical friendships is a strange failure for such a great writer.

Rating:
Summary: Another Bellow masterpiece
Review: Once again, Bellow hits a home run with his main character - Ravelstein, based on the real life philosopher and U of Chicago professor Allen Bloom. The book, like most of Bellow's other novels is a philosophical treatise and pseudo-biography disguised as a novel. The Bellow-like narrator, named Chick, old friend and colleague, has been annointed by Ravelstein to be his biographer. The writing is strong, the characters, even minor ones fully realized.

The story operates in flashbacks and anecdotes as Ravelstein has died six years earlier of AIDS. We come to gradually know Ravelstein as Chick struggles to write the biography, define Ravelstein's character, and his contributions. We learn that of his lament for the loss of liberal arts appreciation in America, his reliance on the principles of Plato and the Greek classics, and his preference for all things French. We see his love of antiques, silk shirts and sheets, as well as the Chicago Bulls basketball team, and we meet the admiring friends and students that he surrounds himself with, some also based on real life figures. We also see him struggle with illness - first with Guillain-Barre syndrome, later with HIV and AIDS.

While much of the book is dominated by the Ravelstein character, a brilliant political thinker and philosopher, it is as much a book about Chick, who is no slouch himself, also a gifted teacher and scholar, although at times overshadowed by the loud, opinionated, ever charming Ravelstein. There is an obvious symbiotic cast to the relationship, which both are aware of, and which informs the developing biography. The last fifty pages focus mainly on Chick as he contracts a rare disease and has to fight for his life a la Ravelstein. And Ravelstein is not entirely gone. He comes back to Chick in visions and imaginary conversations.

Yet Chick has something that Ravelstein seems not to have found: true love and a happy marriage. For above all, he admits to Chick that love and longing top the list of life's priorities, and although in an ambiguous (to Ravelstein's friends, that is) homosexual relationship, he claims that love has eluded him.

There is another important thread that runs through the story, in fact a continuing Bellow theme. Ravelstein and Chick both American Jews, grapple with the effects of the holocaust and near extermination of the Jewish people on surviving generations, and what a Jew's role in the world ought to be.

This is the warning that Ravelstein gives to Chick when he befriends a former Nazi sympathizer turned historian and lover of mythology: "The Jews had better understand their status with respect to myth. Why should they have any truck with myth? It was myth that demonized them...".

At the beginning of the new century, Bellow's literature continues to stand above the pack as an advocate of the search for truth and pursuing humanity's highest moral values.

Rating:
Summary: Fine obituary to a friend
Review: Ravelstein, or rather Bloom, is finely eulogized by Saul Bellow in this short novel. As a corporate cubicle prisoner, I myself wish I could live the literary life--the best I can hope for is to read about such people and to read all the literature I possibly can. Alan Bloom's life seems--as it was depicted in a excerpts of "Ravelstein" published in The New Yorker--seems similar to the life of Robert Hughes also eulogized in "The New Yorker". Both were gay intellectuals whose telephone rang day and night with international calls seeking a bit of well-informed analysis.

Of course, having just read "Ravelstein" I have jumped into "The Closing of the American" mind. But I am puzzled by Saul Bellow's introduction. He says that Moses Herzog, of the novel "Herzog" tries to learn about life by reading the great books. But Saul Bellow says you learn about life by living it--not by reading about it. But isn't the theme of Bloom's essays that such readin gives us a continuum of societies fables and tales and a moral foundation with which we can understand life's issues and the personalities that we meet. Seems the two ideas don't mesh.

I think the Saul Bellow must be trying to sooth his damaged heart by writing about his bitter marriage to the character Elva's real life equal, Bellow's mathematician wife. It is good that his friend Ravelstein (Bloom) is there to help Chick (Bellow) understand what a really cruel woman she is. Chick seems able to discern such matters. Martial discord and the pain thereof also is the major theme of "Herzog". In a way it is good that Bellow has had such tormenting affairs, otherwise we would not have received such wonderful literature.

Rating:
Summary: Biography of a foul human being
Review: This thinly disguised biography of Allan Bloom attempts to be sympathetic, but cannot disguise the fact that "Ravelstein" is a superficial, self-destructive homosexual, concerned with clothes,
dinners, cars, bad ideas, and little else. This walking horror
trained many of today's leaders, accounting for the mess this country is in. I had a copy of "The Closing of the American Mind" many years ago, but rapidly gave it away. Thank you, Saul Bellow,
for showing us what this monster was really like.

Rating:
Summary: Not to my taste...
Review: This is the third book by Saul Bellow that I have read, starting with Henderson the Rain King, Humbolt's Gift, and now Ravelstein and I have to say that I feel like I am going downhill fast. I have also noticed too many similarities between the main characters in all of these books to make me think each one is strikingly original.
I don't understand why Bellow is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. There are moments of poetic brilliance, no doubt about it, but not enough to sustain a whole work. Ravelstein meanders around a thin plot and jumps between locations and times much to rapidly for me to follow. This book seems to be more of a short history of each character with more details than needed rather than a traditional story. After reading other reviews I now understand this is a biography of sorts, unfortunately I didn't know that when I started reading it. All in all I think this will be the last Bellow book that I read. It wasn't all bad but it sure wasn't genius as some people claim.

Rating:
Summary: Of Chick and Ravelstein
Review: Ravelstein is about a lopsided Platonic love affair between Chick and Abe Ravelstein that is more than friendship with mutual ethnic backgrounds, interests, tastes, etc. The heart of the matter is that Chick is very attached to Ravelstien from which his thoughts rarely stray, whether it is to his wife, girlfriend or anybody else. Ravelstein is the confident, egotistical, know-it-all - a bon vivant savant -- and, perhaps, a good character study of Alan Bloom. Despite Ravelstein's flaws, which are many, Chick sees something admirable in him: a zest for life, brilliance, a well formed and informed Platonic mind, the qualities of a magnanimous personality, etc. But the down side of it is that Ravelstein always leads and Chick is left only to follow, admire, absorb, and be something of a spongy handmaiden to his personality, insights and philosophy. Sad. Though Chick may benefit at times, he is the weaker personality and he knows it. As the name Chick implies, he is more the woman in the relationship. Ravelstein is placed on an high pedestal and is admired by Chick like some male Greek god who has descended to earth.

In many ways Ravelstien is also a deformity of nature and modern society: one foot three times as large as the other, gay, a leader of a cult of student disciples who have given up their families, a man with ancient esoteric knowledge and principles, etc. He is a man uncomfortable with his times but he makes the best of it by writing a book that is a searing critique and indictment of liberal education in America and, ironically, the book becomes a best seller. Chick, the second fiddle, is given the task to write about Ravelstein's life, once it is known that Ravelstein is dying of AIDS. Again, Chick who likes footnotes, becomes exactly that in comparison to the larger than life but dying Ravelstein. Chick doesn't mind for he realizes that he is good at some things and he sees it as an honour to try and capture, in words, the character of this great man.

Ravelstein is a great book which addresses many themes. Love and death are central to it. The sad part of it is that Chick, the poet, is by Ravelstein's admission, a lesser human being than a philosopher -- just as women are lesser than men. Not that Chick can't crudely be loved by him, but there is a pecking order after all. The poet is always below the philosopher. For me this principle always gets in the way of true human love with Ravelstein. There is a condition placed on human love that is foreign to it. It seems that Ravelstein is always curious about human love and it may be that his Eros is always directed to the great ideas and texts. This is where he feels whole. Regular human beings are another story. So much for ancient gods who lived in the 20th century.

Rating:
Summary: The Modern Age
Review: " You have to be learned to capture modernity in its full complexity and to assess its human cost," says the narrator, Chick early on in this latest masterpiece from the Nobel laureate.
Readers familiar with Saul Bellow will know that this is precisely what he has been doing for decades now.
The novel starts off as a precurser to a biography and ends up becoming that biography. The biography of Abe Ravelstein. Famous for his ideas. A millionaire because of his ideas, because of his thoughts. Which centre on love and death. And the notion of truth. That biography - of necessity to be gossipy and idiosyncratic- which could only be written by his friend and intellectual student, Chick.
As always Bellow does not shirk from confronting the big issues, the big questions.
Here love is seen as the quest for the Platonic ideal: we are all separated in two and then spend generation after generation seeking our missing half. The complication in the modern age is that the forces of everyday life conspire against this ("But you can't keep your innocence in this age" and my personal favourite, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?"). Ravelstein's damning summation of Chick's first marriage hits home: "But you falsified the image of your ex-wife. You'll say that it was for the sake of marriage but what kind of morality is that?"
Bellow shows though through the portrayal of Chick's relationship with his second wife that love can succeed amongst this post-modern madness ("Rosamund kept me from dying...") and that such love is "possibly the highest blessing of mankind".
But it is the two central characters facing up to their own mortality which seals the novel as a modern classic. "Nothing is more bourgeois than the fear of death..." is the cry but the realisation is that nothing is more natural than this. Ravelstein seeks the biography which could only be written by Chick as his shot at a kind of immortality, standing alongside the work he had written.
" You must not be swallowed up by the history of your time", charges Ravelstein.
Fair enough. But what Mr Bellow has actually done again is to write the history of his own time. And I stress the word 'again'.

Rating:
Summary: What's the point?
Review: Eh... This is the first book of Saul Bellow's that I have read. I can say this - it got me interested in reading Plato.

Mostly this story centers on Ravelstein, a political philosopher, and his friend 'Chick', whom he has asked to write his biography. Throughout the book we learn the type of person Ravelstein is, which is not the most likable, and then near the end of the book it switches focus entirely and we are given an account of Chick's near-brush with death. Why? Am I missing something?

I found this book to be anticlimactic. One thing that irked me is this: There are people in this world who focus on their identity with one group, be it race, religion, or class, and never leave that fact. It is always in their speech. They keep coming back to it. You can't get them away from it. Such is the case with this book, the fact here being one of Jewishness.

There are flashes of great writing in 'Ravelstein', but not enough to overcome the irritations.