Bellowing

I dislike the fiction of Saul Bellow. I offer no apologies or excuses for this. I simply do. I've written an essay expanding upon my reasons for disesteeming Bellow's work (Northwest Review, Vol. 41, No. 1), so I won't recapitulate those reasons here. I bring the subject up now only becasue of J.M. Coetzee's review of Bellow's first three novels, now republished by the Library of America, in the New York Review of Books.

Coetzee's review begins as if it will be just another of the hagiographic treatments Bellow has received over the last several years--"Among American novelists of the latter half of the twentieth century, Saul Bellow stands out as one of the giants, perhaps the giant"--but his appraisal of these three books is rather more tepid. He prefers The Victim, and I guess I would agree with that assessment although I myself find it only mildly interesting, yet even here Coetzee concludes that Bellow "has not made Leventhal [the protagonist] enough of an intellectual heavyweight to dispute adequately with [the antagonist] Allbee (and with Dostoevsky behind him) the universality of the Christian model of the call to repentance."

Coetzee is correct to find Dostevsky "behind" The Victim, as well as most of Bellow's other novels. Bellow takes from Dostevsky a conception of the fiction of "ideas," and if anything makes those ideas even less interesting and more intrusive than they are in Dostevsky's novels. There's lots of anguish and philosophizing and gesturing after profundity in Bellow, and mostly (not completey) I find it all very tiresome. Other readers, of course, are free to disagree. (Obvioulsy most other readers do.)

The most revealing part of Coetzee's review, however, is his distinctly unenthusiastic estimation of The Adventures of Augie March. This is his ultimate judgment of the book:

Once it becomes clear that its hero is to lead a charmed life, Augie March begins to pay for its lack of dramatic structure and indeed of intellectual organization. The book becomes steadily less engaging as it proceeds. The scene-by-scene method of composition, each scene beginning with a tour de force of vivid word painting, begins to seem mechanical. The many pages devoted to Augie's adventures in Mexico, occupied in a harebrained scheme to train an eagle to catch iguanas, add up to precious little, despite the resources of writing lavished on them. And Augie's principal wartime escapade, torpedoed, trapped with a mad scientist in a lifeboat off the African coast, is simply comic-book stuff.

What Coetzee doesn't come right out and say is that Augie March is basically unreadable. I labored through it many years ago, but more recently I tried to re-read it and made it only halfway through. Coetzee thinks its the unearned "exuberance" of the style that bogs the novel down, but I think it's just badly written and terribly paced. The Adventures of Augie March in many ways marks the beginning of the cult of Bellow, and if now a writer as well-respected as Coetzee is willing to say it's not so good, the future of Bellow's reputation could prove to be in some doubt.

Coetzee thinks that Herzog is Bellow's most successful book (at least it's what he implies), and I would also agree with this judgment. Herzog is the sole Bellow novel that I, at any rate, would call a superior work of fiction--although even here the book is marred by Bellow's typically unpleasant portrayal of women. Form and subject mesh together seamlessly, and Bellow's style (which again I mostly find annoying) conveys both in an aesthetically satisfying way. It's finally the only Bellow novel I would gladly recommend to others as a book worth reading.

After Herzog, in my view only parts of Mr. Sammler's Planet, most of Humboldt's Gift, and a few short stories are any good at all. Everything else represents a calamitous falling-off in quality. Has anybody tried to read The Dean's December? Don't bother. At best these books represent a chronicle of Bellow's personal peeves and petty squabbles. They provide a distinctly disagreeable reading experience.

The only reference in Coetzee's review to Bellow's "greatness" is in that first sentence I've quoted. I'd like to think that even this statement is Coetzee's way of describing the current state of Bellow's reputation, but not necessarily his work as a whole. If a few of Bellow's books were to survive as minor novels I wouldn't be saddened, as long as in the long run Bellow's fiction doesn't overshadow the work of his much more accomplished colleagues, including his fellow American Jewish writers Malamud and Roth. That one hundred years from now Bellow would be seen as the "giant" post-World War II American novelist is inconceivable to me. But perhaps I'm just missing something.

Comments

[Jim]

I agree with your assessment of Bellow - at least with the novels I've read (Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, Humboldt's Gift). These are very good books, but if these are regarded as some of his best then I am not following how he has such an almost hallowed reputation. In my opinion even these books do not compare with what Roth is doing now (Human Stain, I Married a Communist and American Pastoral).

[Lance Boyle]

Thanks for the hereticals, both of you.
I've felt strange, missing the weight of Bellow. So many bright minds point to his stature, and all I see is the Sears Tower made out of stale toast. There's no living tissue, no marrow.
Schema and point-cloud, depth of understanding but no commitment, no danger, no loving risk. Just accomplishment of task and recognition of flux, honed craft and breadth of scope.
Roth is nuts but he's alive, an inspirational rebel - like some inmate broken free of the restraints, padding hectic down the hall to who knows where.

[TPB, Esq.]

I agree with you as to Bellow's overrated status. I tend to think the merit of his short stories outweigh the merit of his novels. Here's my real question: does it really seem likely that Bellow would be so pushed into the "Canon"? I don't hear as much awe of him as there once was (it seems to be all about Carver and Wolff these days).

[Daniel Green]

I think it is quite possible that among writers, especially among younger writers, Bellow isn't spoken of as much as he once was. Among certain critics and literary journalists, however, there has been in my view quite a campaign over the past five years or so precisely to "push" Bellow into the canon.

[Stan Izen]

When I read your decidedly negative blog on Bellow, my immediate reaction was to defend him because he has been a favorite author of mine since I read Herzog many years ago. But I could not put my finger on exactly it is about his writing that so engages me. So I looked for a book of his to remind me of why he is a great author. Not finding Mr. Sammler’s Planet, my first choice, I took Humboldt’s Gift down from the shelf and began to page through it. Quite randomly, I found the following.
The following question was more intimate and difficult; what would I have done if I hadn’t been asleep in spirit for so long? . . . this sleeping was no trifling matter. Our unwillingness to come out of the state of sleep was the result of a desire to evade an impending revelation. Certain spiritual beings must achieve their development through men, and we betray and abandon them by this absenteeism, this will-to-snooze.
Whether Bellow is right or wrong (I happen to think he almost always is), whether his writing represents truth or falsity, seems beside the point. It is his genius at creating such fascinating constructs that earns our respect and awe. It is a bit like creating abstract art; the painting doesn’t have to represent reality to stir and amaze us.

[Dan Green]

Stan: Unfortunately, I have no idea what the passage you quote is supposed to mean--and it is clearly straining to be meaningful. At the same time, as I said in the post, Humboldt's Gift is one of the Bellow novels I actually like well enough.