The Bellarosa Connection

Rating:
Summary: Direct, with a disconcerting finale. Be prepared to think.
Review: For most of this novella, Bellow tells a story that appears to be going nowhere. The narrator, the child of Jewish immigrants who has become ionospherically wealthy selling memory-enhancement techniques, recalls two friends he last saw thirty years ago.

The narrator begins to tell the tale of Harry Fonstein, a Jew smuggled out of Fascist Italy by an underground organization financed by the Broadway producer Billy Rose. Rose refuses to hear Fonstein's thanks, and so his life is overshadowed by a cloud of gratitude he is not allowed to express. Until his wife Sorella decides to avenge Rose's treatment of her husband...

and then the narrator stops telling his story, because he hadn't seen the Fonsteins since. The final third of the novella raises difficult questions about memory and the duty to remember. Has the narrator's eidetic memory replaced actual relationship with the people he remembers? Is that memory even accurate? Has he in fact, failed to fulfill the whole point of memory, despite near-perfect recall of the actual facts?

This story lulls you in with an almost colloquial style and simple plot, and then ends that plot to force you to confront how easy it is to fail duties to friends and cultural identity. After its unsophisticated beginning, the final revelation is very disconcerting.

Rating:
Summary: Direct, with a disconcerting finale. Be prepared to think.
Review: For most of this novella, Bellow tells a story that appears to be going nowhere. The narrator, the child of Jewish immigrants who has become ionospherically wealthy selling memory-enhancement techniques, recalls two friends he last saw thirty years ago.

The narrator begins to tell the tale of Harry Fonstein, a Jew smuggled out of Fascist Italy by an underground organization financed by the Broadway producer Billy Rose. Rose refuses to hear Fonstein's thanks, and so his life is overshadowed by a cloud of gratitude he is not allowed to express. Until his wife Sorella decides to avenge Rose's treatment of her husband...

and then the narrator stops telling his story, because he hadn't seen the Fonsteins since. The final third of the novella raises difficult questions about memory and the duty to remember. Has the narrator's eidetic memory replaced actual relationship with the people he remembers? Is that memory even accurate? Has he in fact, failed to fulfill the whole point of memory, despite near-perfect recall of the actual facts?

This story lulls you in with an almost colloquial style and simple plot, and then ends that plot to force you to confront how easy it is to fail duties to friends and cultural identity. After its unsophisticated beginning, the final revelation is very disconcerting.

Rating:
Summary: Hold on Tight
Review: I picked this book up at a second hand sale without any real expectations, but feel I have now discovered a classic author for our times. The style is witty and conversational with a biting edge, but moves forwards at a relentless pace. At times the writing seems 'throw-away', but by the next sentence one realises this is only a deliberate trick on Bellow's part. Saul Bellow (what an incredible name for a Jewish author - a Biblical character with a booming voice!) somehow squeezes a gripping narrative into one hundred and two pages. It is laced with dark and morbid humour, but seems to retain an essentially humane quality.

The novella is told in the first person by a rich American Jew who has made his money via a gift for memory. He (I don't think he is ever named) is trying to recall figures from his past who remain elusive and in the process finds out something new about his memory. At the heart of the novella is his own guilt feelings for his success as a first generation American Jew as opposed to the suffereings of the previous generation.

In some ways I regretted that thwe novrella was not longer, but this might have destroyed its fleeting quality. There is something about a short and sharp shock to the system...

Rating:
Summary: Hold on Tight
Review: I picked this book up at a second hand sale without any real expectations, but feel I have now discovered a classic author for our times. The style is witty and conversational with a biting edge, but moves forwards at a relentless pace. At times the writing seems 'throw-away', but by the next sentence one realises this is only a deliberate trick on Bellow's part. Saul Bellow (what an incredible name for a Jewish author - a Biblical character with a booming voice!) somehow squeezes a gripping narrative into one hundred and two pages. It is laced with dark and morbid humour, but seems to retain an essentially humane quality.

The novella is told in the first person by a rich American Jew who has made his money via a gift for memory. He (I don't think he is ever named) is trying to recall figures from his past who remain elusive and in the process finds out something new about his memory. At the heart of the novella is his own guilt feelings for his success as a first generation American Jew as opposed to the suffereings of the previous generation.

In some ways I regretted that thwe novrella was not longer, but this might have destroyed its fleeting quality. There is something about a short and sharp shock to the system...

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Story Pales Behind Endless Fat Jokes
Review: If Bellow could've just cut his endless surmisings and jokings about how fat one of the characters was by maybe half, I would have greatly enjoyed this story of a spoiled rich American-born WASP-marrying Jewish man, who is the head of a mnemonics group, looking back over his life and realizing what a profound impact two friends of the family really had on him.