Ravelstein

Rating:
Summary: more bloom than bellow
Review: if you've read any allan bloom, and especially if you've read bellow's introduction to 'closing of the american mind', rest assured, you will very much like this book; if you have not, it's a dicey proposition. if you've not read bloom or know little of him, i cannot but think that you will be bored. read this book for bloom not bellow; for the latter, read any one of his more critically acclaimed earlier works. it makes me want to re-read my bloom, my bellow to a lesser extent, really, because this is a book more about bloom than written by bellow. in many ways, this book is a big in-joke, and i mean that in the best possible sense. it makes me wish bellow had written this while bloom was alive--i had no idea bloom was so alive when he was alive; i might have given up medical school to study under bloom. not a classic novel in any sense, an unconventional autobiograpy to say the least, and very little an exemplar of bellow's work, this book, nonetheless, deserves every bit of approbation it's received for the way it so whimsically and winningly embodies the love that bloom thought the highest virtue. i give it four stars only because i think five would be hyperbolic and i am trying to resist hyperbole in this hyberbolic age.

Rating:
Summary: Resurrection
Review: Oh my! For six years after his friend's death, unraveling Ravelstein is one of the tasks the would-be memorialist Chick is not terribly good at, even though his job is transforming people into words. Marriage seems to be another area where Chick doesn't shine; his fourth wife is decades younger than he, and had been a student of Ravelstein's. Having almost died himself, captivated by the joy of his continued existence and the whimsical notion that he remains to do this duty, Chick gets down to it. He puts forth words, a lot of words, many as intensely witty sentences, repeating and repeating the stuff of Ravelstein's life as if the names of things and events comprise a mantra, a way to penetrate the Otherness that was his friend. "... I would rather see Ravelstein again," Chick concludes, "than to explain matters it doesn't help to explain." Ultimately, this is a love story.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, unconventional novel........
Review: While there is no doubt that the "novel" is a thinly disguised biography of Allan Bloom, there is much more to recommend than mere insight into the inner life of that bestselling author. Rather than approach Abe Ravelstein's (and Bloom's) life from the standpoint of cheap gossip and innuendo, Bellow presents it as a microcosm of our human struggle against the inevitability and frustration of non-existence. In this way, the book is an affectionate and touching memoir; a presentation of a gifted, passionate man whose ideas changed a culture (for but a brief time, unfortunately) and inspired young people to transcend the limitations placed on them by an anti-intellectual, hostile culture. Despite the trials of death and disease that permeate the novel, this is not a depressing journey. Instead, Bellow is expressing his rage at the unavoidable unfairness of existence itself; that great minds, minds that embrace all of life, never giving in to mediocrity or compromise, should one day cease to be. Bellow wraps up the book with a fitting and powerful display of friendship and the sorrow of loss: "You don't easily give up a creature like Ravelstein to death." Philosophical, thought-provoking, and strong in its character development, "Ravelstein" was a fine introduction for me to Bellow's prose and I hope to revisit him very soon.

Rating:
Summary: how not to be bourgeois
Review: I've glanced through many of the reviews of this book, and am somewhat surprised that some people see no examination of Bloom's ideas here. Recall that it's a novel, not an essay, and that Bellow must find a way to reveal Bloom's ideas through his character and actions (and of course I agree that there's very little action of any kind in this novel). The strongest and most important idea I came away with involved Bloom's manifold, intense, and often funny attacks on "the death-fearing bourgeois." If anxious, stupidly acquisitive (Bloom was I think smartly acquisitive) Americans responded well to Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, perhaps it's because they sensed in his writings and ideas a highly literate and pointed critique of their "softness," the deathly niceness of affluent culture, the timid withdrawal into private life that money and technology allow. Recall that this is the heart of Ravelstein's friendly attack on Chick throughout the novel - that he is too passive, too afraid to be more public, to take risks. For me, the very theme of the novel, as Ravelstein lies dying, involves his stoic acceptance of the price of his "twisted" romanticism.

Rating:
Summary: "Low on plot, but long on character"
Review: Saul Bellow is apparently one of literature's living legends.

I say "apparently" because I had never read Bellow before the April release of his newest book, "Ravelstein."

Quite frankly, I had never even heard of the author, even though he is considered one of the greats, with titles including "The Actual," "Herzog," and "Dangling Man." I don't even know if those represent Bellow at his finest or his worst.

But "Ravelstein" makes for a good introduction, even if it is the author's means of saying goodbye.

"Ravelstein" is Bellow's tribute to his friend, the late Allan Bloom, a political philosopher and author of "Closing of the American Mind" and "Shakespeare's Politics."

Bellowsian narrator Chick recounts recalls his friendship with Bloom prototype Abe Ravelstein, brilliant political professor and bestselling author of a book about the ideas sustaining or killing humankind.

"Ravelstein" is low on plot, but heavy with character development- it's the little things that count.

We are witness to Ravelstein's opinions on Plato, Caesar, homosexuality, love, friendship, history, vaudeville and a host of others.

These conversations and discussions are presented by Bellow in an amiable manner; it is as if the reader is seated one table over in the restaurants or listening through hotel room walls as Chick and Abe sit back and chat.

Things take a downward spiral as the book enters "Tuesdays with Morrie" territory when Ravelstein contracts AIDS. We are witnesses again, this time to Abe's final days and Chick's battle with his own mortality as he mourns his friend.

The book falters after Ravelstein's passing and Chick and his wife Rosamund travel to the Caribbean to escape Chick's ensuing depression. When Chick contracts a possibly fatal illness, his struggle to stay alive doesn't actually hurt the book, but doesn't add anything either.

Things are frenetic and feverish towards the end, but Bellow added more to the book when leaving well enough alone might have been better.

Despite a less-than-stellar finish, however, Bellow proves that the literary giant standing he possesses is not a fluke; indeed, if one has never read the author before, "Ravelstein" is a good place to start.

Rating:
Summary: HOW GOOD CAN YOU GET?
Review: Just like good wine, Bellow ages wonderfully: his new novel is full of flavour, retrogusto and the velvety taste that lingers on closing the book. Each new work he produces, is replete with humanity and the sensitive analysis of human emotions: he fills his writing with his own deep knowledge of existence, enriching us all with the genius of his excellent prose.

Rating:
Summary: A Nobel Laureate's new novel: A rare literary experience
Review: 'Ravelstein' is a rare literary experience shared with us by a Nobel Laureate. The main protagonist in this novel, Abe Ravelstein is a university teacher. "He was not one of those conservatives who idolize the free market. He had views of his own on political and moral matters." He has also written a best seller which has made him very rich, at least materially. "He attracted gifted students. His classes were always full up." Despite all these achievements, finally, the death reaches him. He died of AIDS.

Evidently, 'Ravelstein' is based on Allan Bloom who wrote in the late 80s the controversial 'The Closing of the American Mind'. "We live in a thought-world, and the thinking has gone very bad indeed.'' Wrote Saul Bellow, in his foreword to Allan Bloom's controversial book some 13 years ago.

It appears that 'Ravelstein' is rather fragmented frames of Bellow's memory of Alan Bloom. Some readers may find it difficult to understand the meaning of this book. I'm sure the Gay community will label it as an anti-gay novel. I am not sure whether that was Bellow's intention. Does he want us to get deeper insights into the darkness of human nature?

One of the most important question about Bellow's 'Ravelstein' is the role of a writer and his ability to pass or not to pass judgements on moral issues or the question of mortality. In this novel Bellow passes a judgement about Ravelstein's "sex habits" in fact, as he calls "reckless sex habits" which I'm sure will not be acceptable to the gay community around the world.

In the novel, Ravelstein questions, "With what, in this modern day democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?" This is indeed a difficult question to answer. I believe the same may applies to the message Bellow wants his readers to get out of this important novel about an important theme.

In the novel Bellow writes: "It means that writers are supposed to make you laugh and cry. That's what mankind is looking for." This is what exactly Bellow has achieved in 'Ravelstein'.

It is worth reading a great American writer's new novel which is sad and also a witty portrait of an American academic who has been fighting against the vulgarity that has engulfed American life.

"There are things that people should know if they are to read books at all..." wrote Bellow in concluding his introduction to Allan Bloom's 'The Closing of the American Mind'. In my view, 'Ravelstein' is nothing but what Bellow wants his readers to know about some, perhaps dark aspect of American life.

Rating:
Summary: If you have read Ravelstein already...
Review: Have a look at the wonderful article in the New York Times, Sunday, May 28, 2000, in the Arts & Leisure Section. (I believe you can search for it at the www.nytimes.com website.) "Ravelstein Knows Everything, Almost", by Michael Beckerman, discusses the lacunae in Ravelstein's musical education. Evidently there are a couple of wonderful musical anachronisms (or historical mistakes) which found their way into the book. Who made the mistakes? Is it Bellow, is it the narrator, or is it Ravelstein who is in error? There's also a particularly clever discussion of the book's title.

All of which is to say: a book any less deserving than Ravelstein would not enjoy or deserve this kind of attention, or this quality of criticism. The book, in my opinion, is one of Bellow's best in many years, far outshining the recent novellas. In many ways, it is worth comparison to Herzog and Humboldt's Gift. Ravelstein is not for everyone, mind you -- if you are too interested in plot, for example, or easily bored by lofty prose. And give up on all that criticism of Bellow, his serial uxoriousness, his exploitation of a friend's life, etc. Bellow does not spare himself any criticism, either; why do the critics always fail to mention that?

A propos of Ravelstein's intermittent lapses: I was surprised that, while dining in the restaurant Lucas-Carton, at the Place de la Madeleine in Paris, Ravelstein failed to note that the interior is a famous Art Nouvelle near-masterpiece by Majorelle. How could that have escaped his attention, commenting, as he did, on every other aspect of the meal? Ravelstein is very nearly a great book, and one that I look forward to reading again.

Rating:
Summary: A book well worth reading, and more than once
Review: As a way of discussing the novel, how about a commentary on the commentary given below (in the article headed "The Old Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry")? Much more could be said, but the commentary I've made is restricted to remarks set in brackets.

To those interested in the subject of this novel (the late political philosopher Allan Bloom) [Is that what he called himself?] it is most interesting as an illustration of what Bloom would have called (from Plato's Republic) "the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry". I think the purpose of the book (conscious or not) is to suggest that, while the novel's protagonist turned to political philosophy primarily to understand love and death, philosophy did not enable him to understand either one as well as Bellow can in his capacity as a novelist.

Chick's wife Vela is a foil to Bloom ("Ravelstein") [She is a partial mirror of Ravelstein, too]. They are both scientists, she natural, he a political philosopher. Both despise natural beauty (trees birds etc.) in favor of their respective studies. [Bloom/Ravelstein doesn't despise natural beauty-he just doesn't want to live in the country or botanize a la Rousseau.] But she ignores politics for chaos physics, while Bloom is engaged in what Bellow refers to as a higher duty (we can be assured Bloom did not regard it as a mere duty): the study of man. Both are voluptuous, but Bloom's tastes are informed by a broad view of history [Not only; also by a rank ordering of goods, higher aspiration, life-lovingness] and he is not so vain as she. She is dumb about people [Not particularly interested in them, perhaps, but that's not the same as being dumb about them] whereas Bloom is constantly looking at human affairs with all his learning and the perspective it gives and making definitive pronouncements, [Did he spend much time making definitive pronouncements?] which Bellow ostensibly does not quarrel with. In fact, Ravelstein ought to be the solution to the problem Bellow has so long struggled with [Is this a guess about Bellow?]: how to bring the reason of a scholar to bear upon the problems of real human life.

But Bellow sells Bloom short along with the tradition Bloom stood for. [How? What should Bellow have done?] In fact, what Bellow describes as an agreement on Bloom's part with Athens and respect for Jerusalem turns, according to Bellow, into an obsession with Jerusalem toward the end of Bloom's life. [Where is the internal evidence for this?] from the novel, one could say it was under the surface the whole time [How? Where?], and Bloom himself only came to realize his own religious longings when he was about to die. Bloom's science (Socratic philosophy) is supposed to be the highest realization that we cannot live forever, "learning how to die" [Is that all that is meant by those words?]; but Bellow goes out of his way to suggest that Bloom's attachment to material possessions and people and life belied his supposed perspective on death. His death was unsocratic, and he had to turn to religious concerns despite himself to deal with the pain of leaving the world. [Does Bellow really suggest this? Or might it be that what Ravelstein says is meant to soothe and instruct his friends?] Bloom's science, like Vela's, fails to deal with love and death, though it fashions a much more elaborate illusion that it has.

This book illustrates the old maxims about poets. They concentrate on the particular to the exclusion of the general ideas behind particulars. [If this were entirely true, how would a quarrel with philosophy even arise?] They are also enslaved to opinion. [What about their role in **shaping** opinion?] As a man dependent upon an audience, Bellow is proud to appeal to the "wider interest" as he announces on page 6, and so he skims over the rational confrontation with death in philosophy for the task of vindicating the common man's counter-rational attachment to an afterlife. He also admits the incapacity of art to comprehend women [All art? Shakespeare didn't "comprehend" women? Jane Austen didn't?] and instead flatters his wife (making her out to have a superior understanding of love than Bloom) for flattering him with her attentions when he was sick. [She might also have been in love with him. Is love flattery (only)? What about his urgent need to survive for the sake of **her** happiness?] Bellow is intrigued by the world and its phenomena and wants to observe them like the philosopher does, but in the end he cannot reconcile this observation with the fact of death and the isolation and vulnerability of the individual in light of death. So he clings to particulars [while referring to the philosophical tradition and large themes], popular distortions [while referring us to Bloom's works, Plato's Republic, and supplying other tips and references], and love uncritically elevated to supreme status. [Really? What about the very existence of this novel? What about the curious dedication? What about various aspects of the content? What kind of love, anyway?]

This of course is not the character of Bloom's eros in deed or concept. the fact that Bellow is obscuring Bloom's true superiority comes out in that Bellow does not even mention Love and Friendship, which Bloom wrote during the severe illness that eventually killed him [but the tension between Love and Friendship is present in the novel. Note also that friendship is not itself loveless, but that sexual love does not necessarily encompass highest friendship]. This work of clear philosophic interpretation of Eros ("Athens" over "Jerusalem") eclipses Bellow's views and understandings of the phenomena of love and death. It refutes Bellow's complacent views on human nature, God, and love and puts Bloom in a league that vitiates the very attempt to do what Bellow claims he has done -- show us something important about the Man behind the Ideas.

Bellow mentions that Bloom thinks the "highest function of our species" is love; and that according to Plato living by Nature or Eros is a strong life compared to a weak modern life. But he does not say that according to Bloom and Plato natural Eros is for Logos and the strong life is the life of philosophy. [I'm a bit beyond my learning herre, but might not Logos in turn lead further into Eros?]. The reader is not even let in on the fact that the dispute is between this (here undeveloped) robust foundation of philosophy and poetry: no connection is made between Bloom's philosophy and his eros, they are made in fact to seem like accidental conjunctions or even incompatible aspects of his character, and so cannot stand up to the challenge of the common appeal of Bellow's compromising position. [I don't think this assessment stands up to scrutiny. We do not **watch** him study or philosophize (how could we, really?), but those pursuits are often referred to, and the connection is for the reader to make. Furthermore, if we see an inconsistency between Bloom's behavior and his highest pursuits, then perhaps we ought to consider that such inconsistency might have existed, or think about what that (perhaps only seeming) incompatibility might mean. Why assume that Bellow is being unfair?]. Bellow manipulates our view of Bloom [No, he **creates** a view of Bloom, as an author must do] to make the wishy-washy appear more satisfying than the "hard" insight of Bloom into the human condition. [Is that really the distinction between commonly held and Bloomian views: wishy-washy v. hard?] In this novel, poetry seems to win the "old quarrel", but readers should be aware that it does so only by obscuring the facts of the case at hand. [Hogwash! The novel is both subtle and honest; it is also a deceptively easy read.]

Rating:
Summary: Bellow meets the demands of his soul
Review: Ravelstein asks, "With what, in this modern day democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?" Bellow accomplishes this artfully as he did in Humboldt's Gift by establishing ongoing dialectics between an intellectual hero (Ravelstein/Bloom) and himself in a persona (Chick). The narrative and dialogue are always exquisite as they address issues emerging from their mutual confrontations with their own mortality. "He had, however, asked me what I imagined death would be like -- and when I said that the pictures would stop he reflected... No one can give up on the pictures -- the pictures might, yes, they might continue." I found pearls on every page, which were beautifully articulate and cogent. Ravelstein is a great literary experience: it's vintage Bellow. Naturally, at this time of his life Bellow has focused on the big issues of life. His problem over a literary career graced with every imaginable honor has long been: what will he do for an encore? Ravelstein suceeds because it is supremely wise, simple in its construction and relevant. As Ravelstein advises, no one in his mind of minds or heart of hearts believes that the pictures do stop. Long live Bellow! And his pictures that never stop.