Ravelstein

Rating:
Summary: look before you leap
Review: as someone who will read just about anything by saul bellow, and about bellow, i look forward to this new work of fiction. but i can't separate the man from the myth, so last week, i read a memoir by his former agent of several decades, harriet wasserman. her book, oddly shallow but fast-paced, gives us a myopic view of bellow the man, the author, the deeply flawed genius with too many wives to keep track of. she talks about bloom--she helped agent his book due to bellow's insistence. bellow is our great national literary treasure, yet we can not excuse his callousness towards his fellow man and woman. what are we to make of this bloom roman a clef? i dunno. i guess it's our job as readers to enjoy the fictional ride. finally, bellow once commented that he felt that there are about 7,000 readers in the u.s who really understand and appreciate his novels. as a privileged minority we must take our gods as they are, despite their clay feet.

Rating:
Summary: Ravelstein
Review: While I appreciated the chance to spend time again with the unique voice and viewpoint that Saul Bellow brings to each of his works, I am sorry to say that I found the book to be a disappointment. Surprisingly for a Bellow novel, the portrayal of Ravelstein seemed very one-dimensional, and I felt that the decision to devote the last third of this very short book to the narrator's medical problems rather than to a final orchestration of Ravelstein's life and personality was misguided.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but unenlightening attempt at memoir
Review: The good news is that this 84-year-old has produced an interesting and readable book, his first in the quarter of a century since Humboldt's Gift. Bellow is good at portraying Jewish libertinage and the friendship between Jewish males.

The bad news is that Bellow is no more able than in his early works to create credible female characters (here, the two wives of the narrator, one a stock narcissist, the other a stock life-saver). Ravelstein's beloved, the "Chinese prince" Nickie is slightly better realized, though he is mostly seen by Chick/Bellow as an analogue of the Jewish American princess for whom one is glad to buy things. The love between Ravelstein and Nickie is beyond Bellow/Chick's imaginative grasp. And, yes, it does matter that he/they see AIDS as divine wrath. Given that the reader learns nothing of Ravelstein's sexual modus operandi -- and, in particular, there is no evidence of any unsafe sex after the discovery of HIV (well, OK, there's nothing about what Ravelstein did sexually at ANY time!) -- why is AIDS divine punishment and the toxin that nearly kills Chick is not? Because a wife can save a husband but a male lover can't save a male lover? And why is smoking as soon as Ravelstein is out of intensive care celebrated, but his homosexuality is treated as necesarrily fatal? Perhaps the failures of empathy for or any imaginative understanding of Ravelstein's same-sex loves are supposed to be Chick's, part of his smallness, but I wonder if there is any separation here between the minor writer and the much-honored Nobelist.

And Ravelstein/Bloom himself? Lotsa schtick, no real substance. An entertaining greed for expensive things, but no sense of the ideas and values that mattered most to Bloom.

Rating:
Summary: Death Defying Performance
Review: I've been a life-long Bellow fan, so it's hard for me to be objective about Ravelstein. If you are interested in the big human issues - love, death, meaning, how to greet one's own end, mankind's humanity, lack thereof, men and women, marriage, ego, the politics of academia, the direction of culture, and some specifically Jewish questions having to do with one's place in the scheme of human and cosmic existence, then you will plow through this plotless poetic masterwork and be amazed at how square in the eye an eighty-five year old artist can look death, and life. You will come away from Ravelstein appreciating how all of us must deal with the ultimate fate. Roman a clef or no, the book goes well beyond commemoration of an intellectual hero, reasserting all of the themes Bellow has so elequently embraced for so many seekers - asking what it means to be here, on earth, human, awake, for so brief and incredible a voyage as that which a thinking, alert person is willing to experience. How do we contend with our own mortality? our sins? our omissions? the desire to quell the pain? who will remember us? what will it have meant? Bellow answers these questions, this time, in less than 235 pages, with hardly a moment's digression, in a sensational mind-boggling read. You will find yourself asking, How is it that nothing is happening and I want to know everything he has to say! How does a great story teller turn dying into a page turner? a pot boiler? He never patronizes, never compromises, always goes for the heart, and soul, of the human experience. Ravelstein is Bellow purified - deceptively simple, enlivening and heartening, tender at last. You won't forget Ravelstein, and in accomplishing this, Bellow affirms that there is something quite worthy in the human experience, no matter how painful, horrific, mindless, or pleasing the particulars may be.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Saul Bellow's "Ravelstein" will probably be a finalist for the National Book Award. It's a brilliant thinly disguised roman-a-clef about Bellow's friendship with the bete noire of the multi-cultural movement, Alan Bloom.

A great discourse on a friendship between two men, one straight and one gay, as well as an insight into the life of a unique, but deeply flawed man.

Rating:
Summary: Another masterful example of art imitating life
Review: For the past 50 years, Nobel laureate Saul Bellow has been perfecting the *roman à clef* -- a novel in which real people or actual events are portrayed in fictional disguise. But what should we call a memoir in fictional disguise?

Bellow's latest novel, "Ravelstein," is a thinly fictionalized character sketch of his late friend Allan Bloom, a rakish classical scholar who wrote (at Bellow's suggestion) "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987). But "Ravelstein" -- the "novel" -- is also the story of a relationship between two men: Abe Ravelstein, an intellectual who becomes a best-selling author, and Chick, an older writer who suggested Ravelstein's treatise on human nature and the narrator of this story. Five years after Ravelstein dies of AIDS, Chick faces the consuming task of writing a biography of the complex don, whose outsized appetites for Hermes ties, Armani suits, and Cuban cigars rival his esoteric fascination with Rousseau, Machiavelli and Plato.

Why fictionalize this real-life friendship between two larger-than-life figures in American culture? Only Bellow knows. Fictionalizing the story of Allen Bloom might have allowed Bellow more flexibility with an intricate, humanly inconsistent subject. Or it might simply have been Bellow's way of exceeding the natural bounds of novel structure. To be sure, "Ravelstein" swells with all the irony and artistry with which Bellow has imbued his earlier novels. "Ravelstein" taken *in situ* slides gracefully along it. It will stand among the best *writing* of his long career.

Still, "Ravelstein" is deeper than the words on the page, like a ghostly image seen beneath the surface of water. Bellow blunts the impact of Bloom's character and life by labeling it as fiction. The lesson of a real life retold burns brighter than a memoir masquerading as a fable.

Rating:
Summary: The Old Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry
Review: To those interested in the subject of this novel (the late political philosopher Allan Bloom) 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"). They are both scientists, she natural, he a political philosopher. Both despise natural beauty (trees birds etc.) in favor of their respective studies. 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 and he is not so vain as she. She is dumb about people whereas Bloom is constantly looking at human affairs with all his learning and the perspective it gives and 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: 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. 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. from the novel, one could say it was under the surface the whole time, 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"; 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. 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. They are also enslaved to 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 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. 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, popular distortions, and love uncritically elevated to supreme status.

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. 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. 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. Bellow manipulates our view of Bloom to make the wishy-washy appear more satisfying than the "hard" insight of Bloom into the human condition. 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but a few problems
Review: This book is not bad on the whole. It is a "piecemeal" biography/novel about Alan Bloom. I don't know why Bellow chose the title (well the second sylable is obvious enough). I think the greatest problem is that Bloom comes off as part "hippie" professor, part genius, part materialist, part "jew", part "invert", and so on down the list like a voting ballot. Why? Because this book is strictly objective and strictly subjective at the same time. Bloom's life with his students is simplified into Bulls games and gossip. We also learn his dad was a "dumbhead," and that's that. Insights on Bloom's personality ("few scientists have personality" - and this is really an attack on Bellow's ex-wife instead of insightful) come from Bellow's (Chic's) own (boooring) revelations (the thoroughly uninteresting bedroom intrusion, for example, which is, again, an attack on Bellow's insipid ex-wife). The purple haze around the center is captured, but the man is missing. Why Bloom is a rough-putting, chain-smoking, homo animici magni is lost and the answer lies buried in a Jimi H song. Also the book reads like Heart of Darkness in the sense that it is terribly awwkwward (i.e. a glinting whiz, an august benevolence, in the twinkiling of an eye, etc.) The reader gets downer doses of the "when I was your age" Great Depression bit added to the hilarious and beautiful characterization of "the old clinging jew" [not an actual quote] made by Sir Loyd something during the WWI reparations (perhaps that is the best part of the book, and you probably think I am kidding you, but it really is in the book as part of Bellow's thoughts on Keynes (the friend of Wittgenstein who had a knack for math). (Please don't think I am an anti semite by writing this, for if you did think that you would have to call Bellow an uncle tom.) This books REALLY reminds me of Wittgenstein's Nephew, the Thomas Berhard book, by the way, and I consider the latter superior. Ravelstein is an interesting book, and it is filled with very interesting tid bits about interesting lives very different from mine. Interesting one liners abound, but stupid smarmy things like felix the cat leo the lion come up. I think it is also very artificial. From the beginning Bellow puts on no airs ("I will portray (such an ancient word by the way) the man not the scholar" [not an actual quote]). But this is a cop out, and he replaces pretense with a costume like so many modern writers. Bellow doesn't need to bother with Plato or Thucydides because Bloom seems not to care about them towards the end. Bloom has talked about his relationship with all those dwebs, but can a superficial, non-dweb presentation of him do him justice? It is also a tedious book that I yawned over, it is disorganized and "modern," you know. It has a very boring tale about how Bellow almost died of food poisoning at the end (mixed with heart transplants provided by southern hicks and canabilism in some stupid land, and I hate to think any of it was supposed to mean something), and rather than expressing something deep and heartfelt it's a trip to the prune factory (it succeeds in playing a Sartre - the end of The Words - i.e. tells us nothing but tricks us into not believing it). Bellow has a gorgeous (but very dull) 30 something wife and complains (like an old man) about his gorgeous (similarly dull but b****y) ex-wife relentlessly (and she seems a real b****, too). But, as Rimbaud said at the age of nine about Greek, what do I care? Is this an old man's last attempt at immortality? Will future generations make trips to the Carribean to pay homage as some do to Weimar? What difference does it all make, Saul? I'm sure you've read Crime and Punishment. But I am being to hard. Life and death is captured much better by Shakespeare as everyone knows, and every generation needs to reiterate the facts. Not a bad book, but it has many problems. I liked the "ghetto" discussion the best (plus the "clinging jew" bit). In the end it seems like a the blather of a drunk man who stumbles around the subject, but it certainly deals with a subject that makes it untouchable and I will read it again. Perhaps if I were older I wouldn't say that it feels (and leaves you) impotent. [disclaimer] This is the first Saul Bellow book I have read, so perhaps I am just dense, but I think I know enough to know that a cheap discussion of the Symposium doesn't sell tickets. If there is an afterlife, I would talk to Bellow, if he let me. Plus the quotes I've provided aren't really quotes, but they maintain the sense of the material, and, since the material is so modern (spongy), they can be taken in a quote-like sense.

Rating:
Summary: A No Man's Land Between Novel and Memoir
Review: "Ravelstein" is a noble project in intention more than achievement. Bellow, charged with telling the story of a pretty wonderful person, has decided to exclude any treatment of "ideas" from an account of a person who lived for "ideas." As an intellectual memoir, the work does not exist. As a novel, the work is without what any propagandized Aristotelian from the University of Chicago would call an imitation of an action. In other words, as a novel, it is without a significant plot. Allan Bloom was a man of genius, wit, and charm. Saul Bellow tells us that on nearly every page, but for whatever reason he fails to recreate this person. Bellow doesn't do for his Socrates what Plato did for his own.

Rating:
Summary: A Mixed Result
Review: At many points a very funny novel, and one which provides many striking observations. Despite its title, however, the book seems not really to be about Professor Abe Ravelstein. Rather, the book appears to be about the narrator, "Chick" (maybe there's a last name somewhere, but I missed it), and his somewhat incoherent version of Ravelstein, of life, and of death. Inevitably, that is not the same as revealing to the reader Ravelstein himself. Indeed, the novel's portrait on its face is radically incomplete, since the narrator admits that he neither understands nor will he address the thoughts of a man who ostensibly cared most deeply about thought.

That approach is especially ironic if the novel is actually meant, as everyone says, to be a "disguised" portrait of Professor Bloom, who with his teacher Professor Strauss taught that we must attempt to understand great thinkers as they understood themselves. Perhaps the novel in some way constitutes Mr. Bellow's rejection of that thesis in favor of a competing thesis: At least for a poet such as "Chick," a narrative about someone else inevitably is really a narrative about the writer himself. Put differently, it is hard to see how one would conclude from this book that the title character might have believed that the pursuit of philosophy is man's highest activity.(On a separate note, if the book is really meant as a thinly-veiled sketch of Professor Bloom, query the propriety of revealing so publicly so much that was so private.)