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The Adventures of Augie March

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3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

For what has been widely described as both a picaresque and coming-of-age novel, Augie March is neither a quick read nor an easy one. Okay, there's no rule that requires novels in these categories to be either. But still and all, one somehow feels uneasy, given the various changes in locale and steady aging of the protagonist, that Bellow (or Augie) so steadfastly refuses to get on with it already.

Much of the novel is rendered in a convoluted narrative style-Augie's voice-that may be termed ornate. Or off-putting. Or ornately off-putting. Intended to echo, presumably, the Yiddish, German and Russian speech patterns Augie grows up hearing in Chicago during the twenties and thirties, this narrative device may in fact do that; but its syntactical wanderings soon begin to remind one, whatever their authenticity, of the criticism once leveled at Henry Luce's beloved Timestyle: "Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind." Lexicon also figures in the curious mix, as words are combined in unexpected ways-sometimes cleverly (and with a kind of mini-revelation effect: you mean you can say that?) but just as often, apparently, randomly--just for the heck of it. Augie likes to talk (write), and what comes out, comes out:

"Many repeated pressures with the same effect as one strong blow, that was [Einhorn's] method, he said, and it was his special pride that he knew how to use the means contributed by the age to connive as ably as anyone else; when in a not so advanced time he'd have been mummy-handled in a hut or somebody might have had to help him be a beggar in front of a church, the next thing to a memento mori or, more awful, a reminder of what difficulties there were before you could even become dead."

[...]

"On the final day she watched the trunk wag down the front stairs, on the back of the mover, with an amazing, terrible look of presidency, and supervised everything, every last box, in this fashion, gruesomely and violently white so that her mouth's corner hairs were minutely apparent, but in rigid-backed aristocracy, full face to the important transfer to something better from this (now that she turned from it) disgracefully shabby flat of a deserted woman and her sons whom she had preserved while a temporary guest."

[...]

"Quiet, quiet, quiet afternoon in the back-room study, with an oil cloth on the library table, invisible cars snoring and trembling toward the park, the sun shining into the yard outside the window barred against housebreakers, billiard balls kissing and bounding on the felt and sponge rubber, and the undertaker's back door still and stiller, cats sitting on the paths in the Lutheran gardens over the alley that were swept and garnished and scarcely ever trod by the chin-tied Danish deaconesses who'd come out on the cradle-ribbed and always fresh-painted porches of their home."

There is much to be enjoyed and admired in all this-but at a pace, of course, that can only be determinedly leisurely, as sentences and paragraphs (often enough the same thing) demand re-reading for full appreciation. And while one is doing the necessary appreciating, a small voice in some northwest anterior lobe of the reader's brainpan is becoming more insistent all the while: yes-yes, but where is this getting us?

An interesting cast of characters is presented; the novel's locations are admirably painted in; the years move along, from the twenties through the Crash, the Depression and the war; and yet the principal development one cannot help but wait for-Augie's, as these are his adventures, after all-simply does not, well, develop. The hero is a listener, a passive-aggressive; he has considerable native intelligence and a hungry mind, but no real resolve to put either to work for his own benefit or that of others. Ideas, ideologies, approaches to life and love and various behavior patterns are introduced to Augie; he picks and chooses, learns and doesn't learn, sort of grows and doesn't grow. In the end, working in post-war Europe as a middle-level black marketeer, the hero is in fact little changed from the Chicago street urchin of two decades before. And little concerned by this fact. Which leads one to wonder: should anyone else be?

Are we not vastly more concerned over the fate of Tom Jones, or Holden Caufield, or (closer to home here) Duddy Kravitz-or just about any other coming-of-age/picaresque hero you can think of ? Yes, we are. Augie March's dilemma-what exactly he wants to do with his life-has taken up a dense 557 pages and remained unresolved. This has been called "existential." Fine. No one says that life offers everyone a workable "resolution." But that may be why novels aren't written about everyone. Whatever name one assigns Augie's condition, in any case, the fact remains that all his adventuring leaves him in a state of self-inflicted inconclusiveness-and leaves us muttering okay, okay-get on with it!

When I was a kid, some of my classmates already knew what they wanted to be. They marched in a straight line towards the goal. I, however, never knew what I wanted to do. I liked studying, but had no vision of a future. I drifted along and climbed into whatever boats came within reach. Augie March is a young Chicagoan from a broken home, who drifts with the tides as well, in the period 1927-1947. He winds up smuggling illegal immigrants, stealing books, travelling to Mexico, trying to train an eagle to catch iguanas, and playing poker. After a few good, bad and indifferent experiences with women, he joins the Merchant Marine during World War II, gets married to a would-be actress, and survives a ship torpedoing. When we leave Augie, he's making illegal business deals in Europe. Has he ever made a really conscious decision ? It's not clear. Bellow's novel is full of humor, philosophy, and insights on life. For example, on page 305 --"But I had the idea also that you don't take so wide a stand that it makes a human life impossible, nor try to bring together irreconciliables that destroy you, but try out what of human you can live with first."

THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH is an almost endless literary parade of portraits, of weird and wonderful characters from many walks of life. It's like a pilgrimage back in time to another America, another age---perhaps more innocent in some respects, but not so smooth, not so well-rounded, a thrusting, struggling America where raw money power arbited so much. Even though the book could have been cut down a bit here and there because 617 pages is overlong, Bellow's novel will remain a classic of American and world fiction for two reasons. First, because human nature scarcely changes. So many of the people surrounding Augie March are universal characters, found everywhere and everywhen. Their motives are not simple, their behavior sometimes inexplicable, but always within the realm of the word "human". They strive, they succeed, they fail, they cop out, and they never remain the same. They transform as they live. Life reshapes them. The second reason that I think this book will remain a classic-and the reason why I'm giving it five stars on Amazon---is the language. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote clearly and simply. Perhaps we can say that Hawthorne and Melville's prose was very ornate, stylistic. Faulkner....well, yes, Faulkner. But Bellow's prose reminded me of nothing so much as a Persian carpet---colorful, ornate, and full of useless little frills that lead nowhere, do not relate to much, and yet add such richness to the text. Some examples that I liked (but the novel is chock full of them) p.156 "For there was his stability in the green leather seat, plus his unshaking, high-placed knees beside the jade onion of the gear knob, his hands trimmed with sandy hairs on the wheel, the hypersmoothness of the motor that made you feel deceived in the speedometer that stood at eighty."

p.205 on the ancient Greeks " But still they are the admiration of the rest of the mud-sprung, famine-knifed, street-pounding, war-rattled, difficult, painstaking, kicked in the belly, grief and cartilage mankind, the multitude, some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius of chaos smoke, some inside a heaving Calcutta midnight, who very well know where they are."

p.227 `Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and all the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vault-like rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods ?"

Wow ! If you like writing like this, if you want a rich feast of language, Bellow is your man and this is your novel.

This novel is unquestionably one of the great masterpieces of our time.

Saul Bellow paints portraits of characters like Rembrandt. He has a brilliant technique for divulging not only the physical nuances of his characters but also gets deep into the essence of their souls.

He has an astute grasp of motivation and spins a complex tale with an ease that astounds. Even the most unusual twists of fate seem natural and authentic.

Augie is a man "in search of a worthwhile fate." After struggling at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a penniless youth in Chicago, he ultimately discovers that alignment with the "axial lines" of his existence is the secret to human fulfillment.

While his brother is engrossed in chasing after financial enrichment and social esteem, Augie learns through his own striving that such pursuit is "merely clownery hiding tragedy."

Augie is a man dogged in his pursuit of the American dream who has an epiphany that the riches that life has to offer lie in the secrets at the heart's core. If, as Sartre says, life is the search for meaning, then Augie is the inspired champion of this great human quest.

The true test of a great book is that you wish it would never end. Fortunately, Saul Bellow is as prolific as he is brilliant and there is much more to explore.

Bellow is worthy of the characterization of one of America's best living novelists: he is a treasure. His wisdom staggers the imagination.

Don't let this novel pass you by!

This is easily one of the finest novels that I have ever had a chance to read and proves one of the basic rules of good fiction--experience bucks education. Augie is the product of his own character, intent on understanding all that surrounds him as he makes his way through up and down the cultural, class, and political divides of the 1920's, 30's and 40's. The narrative is the education of a poor boy who could see as much value in the pronouncements of a crippled boss, exiled intelligentsia, and pool room hustlers as in the massive amount of poetry, fiction, and history that he assimilates into his worldview--one that values common decency as much as intelligence and cunning.

This is a book that I have now read three times and the view of American idealism from fifty years ago when it was published is simply awe inspiring. The times when the text breaks from its narrative molde and goes into an extended discussion of philosophicl ideas in Yiddish inflected vernacular with idiosyncratic grammar can make you cranky and can often be perplexing. This is completely secondary though, for a close reading of any of these passages brings to light just how sophisticated Augie is--some of the actions he takes make him seem only slightly smarter than an ape though.

If this had been the only book that Bellow had written he still would have earned the Nobel Prize in 1976. I can thnk of few books I have read where a character has drank so deeply and appreciatively of their own culture, upbringing, and experience as Augie March did. When Augie opens his mouth with the book's first sentence declaring "I am an American," he speaks with a level of sincerity, certainty and complexity that animates very few other characters in the novels of any nation.

Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize. And after his recent death, numerous respectful eulogies proclaimed that the BIG issues of soul and conscience were at the center of his fiction. So who am I, a nobody, to say that THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH is boring?

Nonetheless, I say that the experience of reading this "classic" of American fiction is akin to watching the Home Shopping Network. You know how those HSN salespeople show some object, pour on the details, and then move onto the next tacky item? Well, that's how AUGIE struck me.

You see, what Bellow does in this novel is to focus on the characters that Augie meets as he matures, moving from people who populate his boyhood, to those who populate his adolescence, and onward. And, as Bellow introduces these characters, he heaps, he piles, he shovels on the details. Once in a while, one of his endless descriptions comes to life and the character makes sense. But, what I usually got from these descriptions is pointless and self-indulgent craft. The stuff is absolutely eye glazing.

In my case, I put up the good fight and tried to push through these descriptions. But, my reward was-Gaa!-another endless and tedious description, usually of a character that didn't reappear. Yes, some characters do reappear. But, you know what? Then, you often don't remember anything about them. They're strangers, even though Bellow has told you what kind of sandwich they like or how they pull on their pants. The descriptions just don't resonate.

I bet that people who like this book start off with the premise that Bellow is brilliant. (Only a writer who considers himself, or herself, brilliant, by the way, would ever write such a book.) And if you think the guy is brilliant, you look at his descriptions and see rich and complex nuggets of great descriptive writing. It's brilliant! But if you're a working stiff like me and want to end your day with a good story about a character moving through an emotional challenge, AUGIE is not for you. Instead, it's a chance to go back to college, where professors assign great books that totally turn off the average person to literature.

But, say you're the sort of person who likes to end the day with a progression of baubles? Then, turn on HSN instead. On HSN, at least they're trying to communicate. This book is just a writer indulging himself-a real show-off, Augie might say.

This novel provided a breakthrough in American literature when it was published in 1953. Bellow's fluid--and often florid--inner consciousness writing contains echoes of Walt Whitman, of learning pounded into students of the Old Testament, and of Greek myth. Best of all, his early chapters bring to life 1920s Chicago, the Jewish tenements, the old world condescension and superior attitude of Augie's grandmother, and of life on the streets, just as the film "Once Upon a Time in America" does for Robert De Niro's Bronx character, "Noodles." I marked any number of passages and lines that struck me as superior, too many to quote.

Where the novel goes astray, I believe, is in the episodes set in Mexico (with Thea and her eagle) and in France. The story comes alive only in the Chicago of Augie's inner life, with companions such as Dingbat, Augie's employer, the paraplegic father-figure Einhorn, the gangsters, gamblers and cheats, of his strange relationship with his brothers, the fortune-hunting Simon and the imbecile Georgie, and of his women, Lucy Magnus, Thea, and his wife, Stella.

Bellow used enough real events, such as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 and the GM sit-down strike of 1937, to hold the attention of anyone interested in history, but he personalizes these events with poignant episodes of home life and the hard times his character survived. There is enough autobiographical detail in the novel to fill out the reader's impression of early Bellow, and if that isn't enough, his earlier work, "Dangling Man," completes the task.

There was a time when "page-turner" meant a boring book, one that the reader skims through. Nowadays it means a gripping read. This novel is a definite page-turner of the latter type. Augie constantly searches for meaning in his life, for strength of character he feels he lacks, and for something better than the "reality" we know about. As he has Thea say, "There must be something better than what people call reality."

Although I haven't yet read the later Bellow novels, it seemed to me as I put this one down that he began a philosophical search with this early book, and that he probably never completed the journey. I intend to follow him on his way.

Saul Bellow writing is very poetic and beautifully scripted - it's not straightforward to read, but then again since Bellow is examining the purposes of our lives, I wouldn't expect the novel and writing style to oversimplify our predicament. Augie is a poor Jewish boy growing up in Chicago - "that somber city" - in a broken home with his dictatorial Grandmother, abandoned mother, and two diametrically opposed brothers (Simon and George.) He finds his brother Simon obsessed with material facts and riches that he cannot possess. Whereas Augie maintains a carefree life experimenting and dabbling with various encounters with different people and places in Chicago, Mexico, and Europe - never quite satisfied or convinced of the importance of each situation. Augie resists the Machiavellian pursuits of his older brother Simon, and is willing to live as a pauper, and as a result, not be controlled by money, wives, children, and especially responsibilities.

Augie's plight is like any other introspective journey. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Bellow, I believe tries to not necessarily answer this question, but rather appreciates the quandary that many of us find ourselves in. At one point Augie's epiphany - the essential and natural course and purpose of life is each person's axial lines. Freedom of thought and emotions - and love our what keeps Augie in line with his purpose.

This is not an easy book to read, but a fascinating and poetic journey that requires time and patience from the reader. I am considering reading it again to soak in all of the details I missed. I wholeheartedly recommend this book; despite the ruminations of other reviewers that took offense to the existential tract of Saul Bellow, I believe that whether you believe in a chaotic or an ordered loving universe - either way you'll find the book interesting and the dilemma facing humans an interesting mess. The book took me 5 weeks to read - I have a voracious appetite for books and usually read them in much less time - so those of you considering reading this book - make sure you are in it for the long haul!

This is Bellow's third novel. 'Dangling Man' and ' The Victim' were two compact novels written as Bellow himself said ' correctly'. In this work he finds his own voice, an exuberant Americanese open to the open road of all experience, and happy to create itself in being transformed by whatever it meets. It has its roots in Chicago, and in the Yiddish language and in Russian and American literature, but it takes off in its own particular colloquial way. Until Bellow no one put the mind to the service of reconstructing everyday life in the same way. James of course put the mind to use in transforming experience but his world was a refined one and his people consciousnesses of subtle complexity. Augie March and Saul Bellow meet the world, and the street and a thousand characters on their picaresque road, and like Twain's Huckleberry Finn they seem to talk the languages of everyone they meet.

As to the overall structure of the book, and its goingonness , I can say that for me this work is a preliminary to better Bellow books , above all , Herzog. But this is the real introductory shot, the announcement that a new voice is being heard in America literature.

And what hope and youth in that voice. God bless you, Saul Bellow for having had it. (This review is written a day after Saul Bellow has gone with the help of God, to a better world).

"The Adventures of Augie March" is a coming-of-age story about a young man who grows up in a working-class Jewish neighborhood of Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. Augie is intelligent and articulate, but he seems to wander through life passively with no definite goals and not many interests. As the Depression hits, he is forced to postpone his academic pursuits in order to make a living, taking a wide variety of odd jobs, including stealing books, organizing labor unions, and working as a research assistant to an eccentric wealthy man writing a book about wealthy people. Eventually he decides to become a schoolteacher, but even this profession is relatively short-lived. The novel culminates in Augie's discovery that he must align himself with the "axial lines" of his life.

Augie's "adventures" consist mainly of his getting entangled in various affairs of his relatives, friends, girlfriends, and employers. These episodes range dramatically from his nearly getting caught by the police in a stolen car, to his accompaniment of his friend Mimi to an abortionist and her subsequent grave illness (probably a bold thing to write about at the time), to helping his girlfriend Thea train an eagle to hunt lizards in Mexico. (Thea finds, to her frustration, that she can train neither the eagle nor Augie.) This is a bizarre assortment of events, but the depiction of each is strangely realistic and unique.

The narration is masterfully constructed with Bellow's erudite prose and penchant for rich description. Reading this novel is challenging but ultimately rewarding.

This is the earliest Saul Bellow novel I have read thus far, and I've found it to be on par with his later, more mature and stylistically sharper works. This novel literally recreates life in the Depression and afterwards, something I never lived through but could swear on did now, knowing the attitudes and moods of the times that Bellow so expertly details in this rollicking novel.

The cover alone drew me in, the stark black and white shot of 1930's Chicago, a moment captured of bustling humanity, an era that can never be recreated, that can only be discovered in books suck as these. Augie March is one of the most positive and endearing characters, trusting everyone and falling down again and again, but always get back up.

Bellow weaves his huge cast of characters, far larger than his other later novels, with ease and any comparsion to Dickens are appropriate, but Bellow's style flows better, from first to last sentence, there is not a wasted phrase, not a lost word, not a sentence that leaves one scratching one's head in puzzlement.

This is literature of the best kind, the kind that makes you think and feel. This is literature doing what it is supposed to be doing.