Ravelstein

Rating:
Summary: A well written, very depressing book
Review: Having read "The Closing of the American Mind," I was very saddened to see how little Alan Bloom/Abe Ravelstein differed from his "flat-souled" students. Despite his brilliant analysis of his students in "Closing," it is apparent that his human feet of clay undermined his philisophical insights. Bloom is depicted as self-centered, greedy, gluttonous and prone to heavy gossiping ... It is a very sad tale if you, like me, loved "Closing." I still love "Closing," but I am now more aware than ever, that philosopy is not enough to lead to a truly virtuous life.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bellow at his best
Review: If you want to see this writer in full bloom, you will need go to his earlier works. This novel got respectful if unenthusiastic reviews in the press, and I would concur. The novel often seems more about the narrator than Ravelstein, and reads like thinly disguised memoir (and not particularly compelling memoir at that). Not an exciting read but if you are a Bellow fan (and I am), then something is better than none at all.

Rating:
Summary: In Full Bloom
Review: Bellow's latest immediately hearkens back to his earlier, masterful HUMBOLDT'S GIFT. RAVELSTEIN misses the mark of that masterpiece but shares some of the same enduring qualities: the indelible characterizations, the delicious wit, the irrestible narrative flow.

Bellow dispenses with linear plot to retell, in fictional form, the life of Allan Bloom, the University of Chicago intellectual who won fame and fortune late in his life with THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, a critique of American intellectual malaise which became a surprisingly huge bestseller. In the novel Bloom is Ravelstein, dying of AIDS and requesting his friend-novelist-narrator Chick write his memoirs. Ravelstein is an intellectual gargantuan, having read everything of any import to Western Civilization and bemoaning the decline of standards. His life is a contradiction, however - he is an incurable materialist, buying lavishly expensive clothes and stereo equipment, and he is an inveterate homosexual who nevertheless despises the "gay lifestyle" (whatever that is). Consequently one comes away both liking and disliking the man who seems to have lived by a creed that went something like "Do as I say not as I do." Also interesting are peripheral portraits of other Bellow-Bloom intimates, most notably Edward A. Shils,the celebrated sociologist also affliated with the University of Chicago, who, here, is called Rakheim Kogon. If this is an accurate limning of Shils, who at best could be called belligerent, then no wonder he and Bellow parted ways.

If the novel displays any suspense at all, it is in Bellow/Chick's recounting of his ill-fated marriage to a beautiful, brilliant and high-strung intellectual who humiliates him at every turn until their inevitable divorce. There's a happy ending, however. Bellow/Chick finds true love in the winter of his life in the form of one of Bloom/Ravelstein's former graduate students, who nurses him from near-death.

Rating:
Summary: A Memoir Not A Novel
Review: If you approach Ravelstein as a memoir rather than as a novel you will not be disappointed by the minimal nature of plot and the rambling nature of the narrative. Allan Bloom apparently was a fascinating individual and as Bellow has done in previous works for other memorable individuals such as Delmore Schwartz in Humboldt's Gift, he creates the work around the larger than life personality of one of his friends while he himself acts as narrator and sidekick. The most valuable effect that reading this book had on me was that it led me to read Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, a monumental work of erudition and opinionated impassioned analysis. For that reason alone, it is worth reading Ravelstein.

Rating:
Summary: A Sometimes Great Book from a Great Writer
Review: For me, this book took effort, since much of Bellow's description was about the mind and intellectual values of Ravelstein and how those manifested in Ravelstein's life. This produced an abstract narrative, which wasn't always as interesting as, "He was here to give aid, to clarify and move, and to make certain if he could that the greatness of humankind would not entirely evaporate in bourgeois well-being."

But there are also wonderful concrete passages in this book, which certainly focused my attention. On page 97, Bellow provides this childhood memory: "On Roy Street in Montreal a dray horse has fallen down on the icy pavement. The air is as dark as a gray coat-lining. A smaller animal might have found its feet, but this beast with its huge haunches could only work his hoofs in the air. The long-haired Percheron with startled eyes will need a giant to save him, but on the corner a crowd of small men can only call out suggestions... Then there is a strange and endless procession of schoolgirls marching by twos in black uniform dresses. Their faces white enough to be tubercular. The nuns who oversee them keep their hands warm within their sleeves."

Rating:
Summary: akin Matthews spices the novel of one man's life
Review: Abe Ravelstein is a university professor who has created a bestseller: after his death from AIDS, his friend decides to write a memoir and his findings result in a narrative about mortality, history, and modern times. Dakin Matthews spices the novel of one man's life.

Rating:
Summary: He has a right to Bellow
Review: I reluctantly read this work since the author is in his mid eighties. The novel concerns the relationship between two aging academics, but Bellow always avoids self-pity or any maudlin sentimentality. I felt as if I were eavesdropping on a conversation between two remarkably intelligent, well-read, and all-together nice people.

Rating:
Summary: First half delicious,second half so-so
Review: Saul Bellow promised Alan Bloom that he would write a memoir of him after his death .Ravelstein is a thinly disguised fictional account of his friend as he was dying of AIDS. Bellow plays Bozwell to the T as he paints a vivid picture of the colorful professor with his love of Cuban cigars, Hermes ties , shirts from Jermyn street & Plato .As long as Bellow sticks to his purported theme he makes for quite an enjoyable read as he recounts the quirks,eccentricities,wit and brilliance of Alan Bloom .However the second half of this novel is no more than morbid navel-gazing on the part of Bellow as he broods over his own mortality and brush with death . I don't particularly like Bellow's prose ,though he does compensate for the stylistic deficiency with his somewhat unique wit and idiosyncratic observation .

Rating:
Summary: luminous
Review: It's unfortunate that the content and true theme of this novel has been subsumed by unseemly literary gossip. This a luminous, beautiful, utterly devastating literary photograph of everything that matters: friendship, love, philosophy, food, sex, marriage, literature, work, basketball, and more. I think Saul Bellow must have loved his friend, very much, to write such a thing.

Saul Bellow's ability to plumb the depths through his flawless evocation of the surface is unparalleled. I looked at the faces of those around me in a new light for weeks after finishing this book: to what extent is character revealed by appearance? The plot does 'unravel' at the end, as does our narrator. As we all do, I suspect. I think it's a mistake to assume anything Bellow does is unintentional - including the repetitions and the eventual disintegration of the plot. This is a wonderful, moving, thought-provoking book.

Rating:
Summary: The work of a master
Review: It is a lamentable commentary on the state of contemporary literature to consider thta an octogenerian is far and away the best living novelist in America. Here we have another first-rate work from America's greatest writer, the first full length novel he's written in 13 years. Ravelstein, despite a few shortcomings characteristic of the author, is head and shoulders above anything that has been written in the last ten years in America. The novel is a fictional portrait of Bellow's friend and colleague, the late Allan Bloom. The book has created controversy because of revelations in it concerning Bloom's homosexuality. However, far too much has been made of this in the review press. The novel only contains a few slender allusions to Bloom's irregular sexual habits and makes clear that Bloom himself detested all the trappings of gay pride and homosexual activism.

Bellows fictional account of Bloom is nothing less than masterful, a larger than life portrait worthy to stand next to the greatest characters in American fiction. Unlike so many contemporary fictionalists, who believe that a novelist should merely show and never tell, Bellow transcends this dubious dichotomy and makes you understand as well. The result is a well-rounded characterization of a brilliant but flawed man---a man who, in an age of abject conformity, political correctness, and academic sycophancy, dared to take on the entire academic establishment and tell the world the truth about the American university.

Like so many of Bellow's novels, Ravelstein starts stronger than it ends. Since Bellow rarely provides much in the way of a plot or story, he often doesn't know how to tie up all the loose ends of his narratives. Ravelstein is no exception. By the time we get to the last third of the book, Ravelstein has passed from the scene and the narrator, Chick, whom we assume is based on Bellow himself, takes over center stage. Chick is an interesting character and worth a novel to himself. But he's no where as interesting as Ravelstein, and so there's a bit of a let down when he becomes the primary focus of the novel. But as Nietszche said, great men are great even in their faults; and this applies to Bellow and his new novel. It will be a sad day when Bellow's career as a novelist comes to a close. Without Bellow, I fear American literature would be a mere wasteland, dreary beyond endurance.