Ravelstein

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant--and anything but generic
Review: Calling Ravelstein an "AIDS novel," and finding it a faulty example of the genre, is about as useful as calling Moby Dick a fish tale. True works of art, of which Bellow's book is an undeniable example, don't exist to fulfill anybody's generic expectations. Yes, it's a shame that Bellow (or his narrator, anyway) chalked up the hero's death to his "reckless sex habits"--a stupid statement. But this loving, witty, melancholic portrait is anything but anti-gay agitprop. Come on!

Rating:
Summary: Facing eternity with Bloom and Bellow
Review: I picked up "Ravelstein" more as a fan of Allan Bloom than of Saul Bellow, though I'm a great admirer and reader of both. Ever since I read Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," (and Bellow's preface therein) my life has somehow not been the same, perhaps a bit off. I found myself wishing I had read it in my freshman year, not my senior year, when it was too late to tear into certain professors. I was a bit of an ingenue until I read this book, you could say.

In any case, Allan Bloom is, of course, the man behind the paper-thin mask of Abe Ravelstein himself. He created quite a stir in the late eighties with his controversial, brilliant, and lucrative book, and Bellow, Bloom's dear friend, draws attention to this phenomenon in the novel, ex post facto. "Ravelstein" is a small volume of snapshots from Bellow's memory of Bloom, and bears some resemblance to the other biographies or eulogies that Bellow mentions: Boswell and Macaulay on Samuel Johnson, Eckermann on Goethe, etc. I am still trying to absorb the meaning of the book, having read it, as Bellow read Macaulay, in a "purple fever."

The book is excellent on its own merits - sad and beautiful - but will of course be especially rewarding to those very familiar with the ideas that preoccupied Allan Bloom and his great teacher Leo Strauss (referred to in the text as the famous "Davarr") during the last half-century. One gets an insider's view of the private life of a man as compared to his published thoughts and sentiments. Though Ravelstein is a bit of a terror at first glance - everything is done in high volume from Marlboro cigarettes to Rossini operas - one begins to see the continuity between his (Bloom's) work on "Love and Friendship" and his own vibrant life. I was curious if the conversations between Ravelstein and his lover Nikki (which we don't overhear) would bear any resemblance to the ones between Falstaff and Prince Hal in Henry IV.

Ravelstein-Bloom's detractors will find no fresh fodder to claw at here, though the candor to be found is sometimes astonishingly personal. Those best suited for this book will seek out characters that mix a gift for telling the lowest, bawdiest jokes with a longing for the highest, most beautiful things in life and literature.

Rating:
Summary: Yep--it's another AIDS Novel, and not a good one
Review: Saul Bellow's latest novel, _Ravelstein_, is an example of a literary subgenre that Gay and Lesbian writers have practiced since the mid-'80s: the "AIDS Novel," in which a central character (or an entire gallery of characters) slowly succumbs to the effects of a failing immune system. The "AIDS Novel" has several nearly identical siblings: the AIDS Memoir, the AIDS Drama, AIDS poetry, the AIDS Movie, the AIDS Movie-of-the-Week -- you get the idea.

It's a shock to see that Saul Bellow, a prominent spokesman for cultural conservatism, would work in a literary form previously limited to writers connected to the cultural left. In this respect the novel breaks a major conservative taboo: it aspires to be a sympathetic portrait of an openly Gay man, whose sexual life, though not exactly exposed, is not exactly concealed, either.

Unfortunately, save for a few brief venial moments, the central character of _Ravelstein_ never quite comes to life. Bellow punctuates his novel with mawkish passages of hagiography, tributes to Abe Ravelstein's teaching prowess, and testimonials of an enduring friendship. It's a lot of talk about Ravelstein, with a strange silence in the place where a subject should be.

Bellow's AIDS Novel also falls prey to a specific, political, anti-Gay agenda, as he laments "poor Ravelstein, destroyed by his reckless sex habits." Pat Buchanan said as much about people with AIDS almost a decade ago, and the judgement rolls effortlessly off nearly every middle-class tongue. Yet dozens of authors -- Edmund White, Jamaica Kincaid, Christopher Coe, Sarah Schulman, Paul Monette, to name just a few -- have avoided these thoughtless cliches, giving us rich, insightful stories on similar themes. It's a pity that one of America's finest novelists couldn't do the same.

That said, _Ravelstein_ has acquired a transient distinction largely independent of merit: every critic who has reviewed it has noted that the central character is a thinly disguised portrait of conservative guru Allan Bloom. This is not a new game for Bellow; many of his novels feature characters and situations drawn from real life. But Bellow's best novels can stand on their own, without constant reference to external circumstances. _Ravelstein_ can't.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Vintage Bellow!
Review: Being a die-hard Bellow fanatic who has done without a newnovel from the great master for many years, I could barely contain myglee when "Ravelstein" was finally released. He does NOTdisappoint. Bellow chronicles the life of Abe Ravelstein, a new, rather charismatic figure on the literary scene (thanks to goading by his friend Chickie) and his response to his new-found wealth. (The scene where he casually drops $6000 on a Parisian suit and almost immediately spills soup on it is particularly witty.) This is also a moving, ultimately tragic meditation on aging, friendship, death and secrets. Mid-way through "Ravelstein", Bellow launches into a beautiful lament on the nature of love that should go on and on forever... This is an absolutely excellent book that I gladly devoured in one, overnight read-a-thon.

Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: I approached this book in fear. Fear that Saul Bellow had lost his touch and tossed this together from a synopsis he wrote on the back of a ticket stub after seeing Rent.

Life under the microscope, in the shadow of a dead or dying AIDS victim has become the playground of hacks the last couple years. Abused and overdone by people who have no right approaching the subject.

Thankfully, Bellow does it well, and creates a life worth reading about. A journey worth taking. A book which will continue to whisper to you long after it's collected that first coat of dust on your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Ravelstein Unraveled
Review: Saul Bellow's fictional account of the life of educator Allan Bloom, author of the critical bombshell, "The Closing of the American Mind," is a discursive, non-sequential account of one of the most interesting minds of the last half of the twentieth century. Bellow's Ravelstein is revealed through conversations with Chick, his appointed biographer, and through Chick's musings and conversations with his wife. While Ravelstein is portrayed in bursts of Technicolor (as one might expect after reading Bloom), the reader should be warned: this novel is mostly a modest black-and-white; more a letter than a memoir.

A good part of Bellow's appeal has always lay in his ability to top himself, to spin out his thought until something new and remarkable appears, and this ability, while unabated, is nevertheless disappointing in the context of the life of Ravelstein. One has the feeling throughout that Bellow is easing off or holding back--or perhaps simply tired. While we are given elaborate lists of the luxurious paraphernalia of Ravelstein's lifestyle, the most we actually learn of the man is that he had a passion for classical works, good food, and any sort of intellectual excitement. His reported opinions, while bombastic and entertaining, have the tinny echo of sound bites in this novel in which not much actually happens.

The narrator's own story within the novel reads as a thinly fictionalized account of Bellow's recent years, complete with a long (and disappointingly realized) account of an incident of food poisoning that leaves Chick/Bellow with a partially deadened lip--see author dust jacket photo for a glimpse of the lip.

But even as the novel shrugs to a close one can still admire Bellow's intellect and the sharpness and intellectual courage of his writing. And if the only thing a reader comes away with is a desire to read "The Closing of the American Mind," that will have been a noteworthy accomplishment.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bellow's Best
Review: Near the end of this novel the narrator, Chick, life-long friend of Ravelstein (presumably Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago), describes a serious episode of heart failure. These pages are remarkably well-done, but like much of this novel, it's hard to find much on Ravelstein in these pages. Mr. Bellow somewhere in effect admits that his medical problems may be a bit of a departure from the main story line. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the story is a rambling set of recollections; it is difficult to discard anything, and just about everything is fair game in this novel that manages, despite its inclusiveness, to give short shirft to its central character, Ravelstein. When we do meet him, we find precious little exceptional. His materialism is right out of the GQ "central casting" department. We're assured he studied the classics, but when is beyond me, given his propensity to shop. If you want to know about Professor Bloom, you would do much better going directly to the source, particularly his translation of Plato's Republic. You won't learn much about Bloom's apparent weakness for tailored, crisply laundered (wrapped, not on hangers, Bellow assures us) shirts, but you'll get much closer than Ravelstein can bring you to understanding his exceptional mind.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, challenging and sad
Review: The most piercing line of "Ravelstein" is when Saul Bellow, thinly disguised as the book's narrator, laments that there's no one left to whom he can talk about serious things. What a tragedy if this world of passionate, intensely curious and challenging intellectuals is gone forever. But judging by some of the "next big thing" writers I've been reading lately, that may be the case. No one even comes close to Bellow's ability to amuse, educate and inspire without breaking a sweat, except Philip Roth, of course. The twilight of the gods may be upon us. This is a fantastic book, engrossing to the last line and far too much to take in on a single reading. Although it's about old men and their memories, it has more to say about life than a thousand of these crappy memoirs and "coming of age at Iowa Writers Workshop" excrescences that have been afflicting readers lately. After reading "Ravelstein," I started checking jobs and rents in Chicago. Even if the world of this novel is only a shadow of its former self, that would be enough for me.

Rating:
Summary: Life, comedy, intellect: conflicting priorities
Review: This book was first published in 2000, some years after the events described, if you can believe the narrator that his dead friend ("He died six years ago, just as the High Holidays were beginning.") wanted this whole story told in a way that would capture events as they were lived. Abe Ravelstein was a professor who was popular, possibly deep, incredibly intelligent, and HIV positive. Saul Bellow was supposed to write his biography, but this book is a novel, though possibly close enough for government work. Some people in the book have names that might be familiar to scholars or people who `had their shirts made on Jermyn Street by Turnbull & Asser ("Kisser & Asser," as I revised it).' The humor is partly concocted of Jewish individuals living in a world which has a few former Nazis and a former student named Philip Gorman who turned into "right now one of the Secretary's closest advisers." But this was written before the current president was in office, though the gossip has plenty of familiar names. "Colin Powell and Baker have advised the President not to send the troops all the way to Baghdad. Bush will announce it tomorrow. They're afraid of a few casualties. They send out a terrific army and give a demonstration of up-to-date high-tech warfare that flesh and blood can't stand up to. But then they leave the dictatorship in place and steal away . . ."

One of the themes is "Great Politics." Nietzsche would understand how brilliant people ought to be able to fit into productive situations, or educate a flock of brilliant people who could enjoy taking part in whatever action was going on. "It's only a matter of time before Phil Gorman has cabinet rank, and a damn good thing for the country," though a good education in "the fourth wave of modernity" might be as hard for most people to grasp as the bulk of Nietzsche's unpublished notes on nihilism. Saul Bellow does not claim to know the finer points, but he mentions Plato, students reading the original Greek, Paris, Machiavelli, and he can imagine Phil Gorman contributing to the process by keeping in touch:

"But he knew what pleasure it gave his old prof to hear the inside dope, so he briefed him out of respect and affection. He also knew that Ravelstein had masses of historical and political information to update and maintain. This went as far back as Plato and Thucydides--perhaps as far back as Moses. All those great designs of statesmanship--going back through Machiavelli via Severus or Caracalla. And it was essential to fit up-to-the-minute decisions in the Gulf War--made by obviously limited pols like Bush and Baker into a true-as-possible picture of the forces at work--into the political history of this civilization. When Ravelstein said that young Gorman had a grasp of Great Politics, something like this was what he had in mind."

Abe is not above praising Abe Lincoln. "As president of all the people he thought he was obliged to talk to all these parasites, creeps, and promoters. All the while he was standing in a river of blood. War measures made him a tyrant--he had to cancel the habeas corpus writ, you know." Saul Bellow was reckless enough to try to capture the aura of insanity that such a situation provides.

"You're what people would call feckless, in the days when such words were still in use. Of course we're good and fed up with personality profiles, or defects. One reason why violence is so popular may be that psychiatric insights have worn us out and we get satisfaction from seeing them blown away with automatic weapons, or exploding in cars, or being garroted or stuffed by taxidermists. We're sick of having to think about everybody's problems--Grand Guignol mock-destruction isn't good enough for the bastards."

It is impressive that this book was written before the American embassy in Baghdad became such a large command post. Being stuck with such policies is the world-historical joke akin to Chick having a suit made for Ravelstein:

"You wanted to do something for me. It was generous, Chick, and Nikki was the first to say it. But Gesualdo is way behind the times. He makes mafiosi-type clothes, not for the dons but for the soldiers, the lower-rank gangsters."

Intellectual superiority is able to imagine levels which are so much higher that within a few pages Ravelstein will buy a Lanvin jacket for $4,500 and spill coffee on the lapel. "He was still drinking the expresso; his head was far back. I kept my mouth shut, turning away from the large brown blot on the Lanvin coat. Another sort of man might have sensed at once that something had happened--"

If this book had an index, it could have a number of entries for an account by Keynes of the French finance minister who thought he had a prior claim on German gold as opposed to American interests who wanted to allow the Germans to spend the gold for food to feed their starving population. It is mentioned early. "But you did that well, Chick, about Lloyd George's nasty youpin parody." Ravelstein's interest in "the Jewish side of the thing" was incidental to his interest in "politics, a subject for which Ravelstein had a very special understanding."

The book also takes a special interest in certain people and couples. Though it is about intellectual personalities, "I'm going to leave intellectual matters to the experts." It is more like "when he spoke to me he spoke intimately but also for the record. To lose your head was the great-souled thing to do."

Rating:
Summary: There is much better Bellow than this
Review: This is Bellow's most recent and probably last novel. It is the final work of one of the great American literary adventures of this century. It is very far indeed from his greatest works ' Herzog ' and 'Seize the Day'. It at times reads as a kind of exercise built around an idea. It is clearly undisguisedly modeled on Bellow's friendship with Allan Bloom. However much of the ' larger - than-life ' posturing of the Bloom- Ravelstein character give him an unappealing quality that his great best friend perhaps misses. I so much wanted to enjoy this last Bellow as I have some of the others. But this one does not make it for me on that level. I would certainly however recommend it for all Bellow fans. And I would say also that even mediocre Bellow contains many lines and passages of stunning literary brilliance and value.