The Actual [Paperback]

Saul Bellow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1998

Harry Trellman has loved Amy Wustrin for 40 years. In Amy, Harry sees what he calls his "actual". Harry has had his opportunities with Amy, but it is not until he finds himself at the cemetery with her for the exhumation and reburial of her husband that he feels free to speak out.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Harry Trellman, the protagonist of Bellow's latest offering since the trio of short fiction, Something To Remember Me By (Dutton, 1991), is an orphan of sorts, a spiritual self-exile who imagined he could "effect a transfer to another civilization"; he made his fortune in the Far East before returning to Chicago to ease his emotional longing, specifically for the woman who has figured in his thoughts since age 15. Harry, as a remote observer of human nature, will put readers in mind of numerous of Bellow's antiheroes, such as Moses Herzog (Herzog, 1964) and Charlie Citrine (Humboldt's Gift, 1975). Harry's vehicle for immersion in the actual is the ancient billionaire Siggy Adletsky and other "notables" of Chicago society bent on a series of coming-clean schemes that Bellow concocts so ingeniously. In effect, this charming, pared-down tale is a study of the master's method, and despite his determined obfuscation, it is an achingly simple cry from the heart that reads like a parting love letter. Essential for all collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Bellow has recently embraced the novella as his favorite form, with brilliant results. His latest confirms not only his mastery of the novella's special qualities of precise yet uncramped expression but also the distinctiveness of the form itself, which, in many ways, is superior in effectiveness to the short story or the novel. Harry Trellman has been drawn back to his hometown of Chicago after a lucrative business career has propelled him to such locales as Guatemala and Burma. By chance, Harry meets mega-elderly and mega-rich businessman Sigmund Adletsky, who immediately perceives Harry's ability to discern human nature and enlists him as part of his "brain trust." This business with the old geezer brings Harry into contact with Amy Wustrin, a woman Harry loved many, many years ago and whom he has never forgotten: thus the emotional tug that drew him back to Chicago in the first place. Amy had married Harry's best friend but has gone through a horrible divorce, and now the husband is dead. Amy is an interior decorator, which is the connection she has with old man Adletsky. Harry and Amy's reacquaintance is the substance of Bellow's piquant elegy to first and rekindled love. The surface of the story carries few valleys and peaks, but beneath its outwardly uncomplex exterior pulsates reassuring emotions about permanence in the face of life's transience. Brad Hooper --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade (August 27, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140253033
• ISBN-13: 978-0140253030
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,863,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Saul Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel HUMBOLDT'S GIFT in 1975, and in 1976 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.' He is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, for THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH, HERZOG, and MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, until the last line, March 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Omaha, Nebraska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Actual (Hardcover)

While there is little disputing Saul Bellow's remarkable gifts at capturing reality and creating amazingly dense and believable characters, I find it a bit disheartening to believe that this truly gifted writer has grown trite in his old age. Without giving it away, the ending to this novella is simply devastating. All of the depth and beauty of this story is lost, for me, in one line. I find it equally dissappointing to discover the Saul Bellow suffers from, what I like to refer to as, the Fitzgerald syndrome. That is to say that the main characters in all his stories seem to be, roughly, the same person. Harry Tellman, in this story, seems to be Eugene Henderson (the Rain King) and Tommy Wilhelm ("Seize the Day") revisited. My recommendation, read the story, because it is quite good, just skip the last line.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engaging book for the modern old-folk in us, April 2, 1998

By 

Eugene G. Barnes (Dunn Loring, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Actual (Hardcover)

A man moves back home to Chicago and into semi-retirement. We all have ghosts from our past, but Harry's ghosts, we come to understand, revolve around a lady he has known since junior high. As he reconciles himself to his past, and to these ghosts, Harry arrives gracefully, bravely, at the only logical conclusion there is for him. The journey there is pure poetry, and Bellow's work in the smaller novella form is a gift to us all. We need to cherish this book and learn its quiet, solid lessons. I read it twice straight through so I could savor its opening pages all the more.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Actually...not very good, January 12, 2009

By 

JustinWrites "book-y" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Actual : A Novella (Paperback)

In this novella by Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow, obsession and denial are key ideas that inhabit a story without much forward momentum or plot. Harry Trellman, the first-person narrator, is Jewish but looks Chinese - a detail of his appearance that is revisited again and again for no truly discernable reason other than to illustrate how much of an outsider Harry is to everyone around him, including himself. In fact, physical appearance takes up much of the non-dialogue description, with every one of the sparse number of characters identified repititiously by similar, if not exactly replicated, specifics of physiognomy. It happens so frequently, in a barely-hundred-page book, that it seems Bellow must be after some deeper meaning, must have some compelling reason to continuously describe his spare cast. Whatever the reason, I think I missed it, so instead of striking my reader's eye as profound, the technique became distracting, and finally irritating at a certain point.

The book starts out strongly, introducing a fairly enigmatic character in Harry, and even pretends for a moment to have an intriguing story at the point the narrator meets billionaire Sigmund Adletsky for a wary, suspicion-bent tete-a-tete. But by page seventeen, Harry's association with the old moneybags is done and the focus shifts to Amy Wustrin, whose story carries practically the next third of the novel. She is an old flame of Harry's, a woman he has never forgotten and who he continues to pine over, to the point of creating daily conversations with her in his much-too-sharp, currently-unchallenged mind. The obsession slant is nice, but it never really develops further than fantasy and backstory, with a scene of confession that comes late and fails to deliver anything dramatic or climactic.

In all, there is nothing very exciting or tantalizing in the book, despite attempts to delve into Philip Roth-style, s#xually-graphic-prose territory that ultimately comes off as feeble and unimaginative. This is the first book of Bellow's that I have read -- and I do plan to read more, despite my extremely lukewarm reaction to this short work -- and far be it from me to slam a multiple-award winner, but the book as a whole struck me as a dud. The shift from Harry's p.o.v. to a sloppily constructed, and ill-advised narrative avenue into Amy's mind was Bellow's first misstep, followed by his abandonment of Harry's direct relationship with Adletsky's "brain trust" and finally, the excessive, mind-numbing attention paid to Amy's ex-husband's burial arrangements. The book takes off like a well-crafted and perfectly aimed bullet, careens into blunt storytelling practices, then ricochets irresponsibly off poorly constructed firmaments, managing to completely shred the narrative terrain. The bullet does its damage, then loses momentum and wedges into an endless scene between Amy and Harry that curtails its projected force prematurely, all without ever managing to hit its intended target.