Halfway down the Danube

"The Dean's December", by Saul Bellow.

You got it Jim!

It's an interesting book. While it's not major Bellow, it's not minor Bellow either. A novel of ideas, like most of Bellow of course, and perhaps the characters are a little too emblematic, the situations a little too rigged. I mean: Corde versus Spangler? Paging Doctors Settembrini and Naphta. Still, it had strong memorable central women, unlike most of Bellow's stuff. And I liked the thematic use he made of lead metal, very nicely done. Fit the whole wintry, somber tone.

I would be curious to know what any Romanians made of the novel. The personal histories of the Romanian characters seemed off to me somehow -- to be sure, so did those of the Americans; and it's not a novel of photographic realism anyway -- and old Nic comes off as a box of hair, as opposed to an evil box of evil hair. But many of the descriptions of life in Bucharest in the winter after the earthquake rang true to me.

C.

I have to say I'm surprised that I remembered it; I only read the book once, some ten years ago. But your hints stirred a vague memory, and a check for names confirmed it. (I couldn't tell you where in the book the passage is to be found...)

"The Dean's December" is the only Bellow I've ever read. Perhaps it's time to rectify that; which of his books would you class as major?

A Bellow novel is like a suitcase; sometimes it gets overpacked. There's also a question of balance. Part of what makes a Bellow novel go is the tension between the interplay of ideas, and the broad-shouldered Chicago nature of the characters. Most people who read and comment on Bellow are predisposed to novels of ideas anyway, so they would put Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet and Humboldt's Gift near the top; but I like a little more picaresque action, and so I prefer The Adventures of Augie March and (especially) Henderson the Rain King. Then there are his early lean books, The Dangling Man and Seize the Day.

Haven't read Ravelstein yet, but it's about Allan Bloom, the Closing of the American Mind guy, very thinly disguised. Apparently there's a Mircea Eliade character, and even a Paul Wolfowitz one! So I'm curious.

C.

Ravelstein is the only Bellow novel I've read - mostly because of the Bloom connection - and I thought it was decent as long as it stuck with Bloom. Once he died, it turned into a tedious, pointless slog. Wasn't really inclined to read more Bellow, but as a very short disguised-biography of Bloom, it didn't suck.

I find it very difficult to like Bellow - I've only read two books, Herzog (three times) and Humboldt's Gift, and I was profoundly irritated by both, but captivated too. Inhumane, is the adjective that springs to mind, but there's a strange kind of life that I can't help watching, in them. (Ravelstein I tried when I was at the University of Chicago, out of loyalty to the place, but Yawn-Sville, yow.)