Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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54 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What Makes Life Meaningful?, March 16, 2001
Gene Henderson, a 50-something millionaire living in 1950s America, decides to take a trip to Africa to try to quiet the voice inside him that keeps saying "I want, I want." Since Henderson already has everything material he could want, he can't find any way to satisfy that voice, and he has already tried several other things prior to his African trip. I'm not sure what Bellow intended, but as I read it, Henderson represents America - huge, crude, often well-meaning but causing destruction nevertheless. Bellow's imaginary Africa would then be the entire developing world - or even the whole world outside America. It's hard to like Henderson at first; even his own first-person narration casts him in a bad light. As his attempts to help the people in the first tribe he meets end in catastrophe, he seems to represent the American ignorance and arrogance that led to so many disastrous overseas projects in the 1950s and 1960s. Subdued by his first failure, Henderson allows himself to learn from the second tribe, and although he ultimately barely escapes with his life, he comes away with the inner peace he had sought, with a new wisdom, and with a determination to become a healer. The message seems pretty obvious.An alternative way to read it makes Henderson representative of anyone who no longer has to work for a living and who searches for something to give life meaning. This should resonate with any young dot com millionaire as much as with any healthy retired person. Either way, the book reads smoothly and moves along briskly. Read it long enough to get past your initial dislike of Henderson, and it will reward your efforts.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Into the Heart of Africa, June 29, 2004
A few days ago I finished reading Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, which was a great and entertaining read. The basic premise is comedic: a grumpy, spoiled, acerbic, rich American in his 50's seeks to discover meaning and wisdom and fulfillment by leaving New York and traveling to Africa to live and commune with a primitive African tribe. If this induces at least a subtle chuckle, then it is safe to say that you'd be laughing frequently through this hilarious and sometimes ribald romp. Not enough? Then consider that it has been named as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the well-respected Modern Library.Henderson is an independently wealthy man in his 50's who is unhappily married to his second wife, and when he gets to the point where he can stand his meager existence no longer and the trivial aimlessness of it all, he hires a guide to take him to the remote, African sahara, to the most primitive tribe they can find. They first end up with the Arnewi tribe, where Henderson becomes obsessed with the tribe's superstitious obsession with the frogs in the cistern, which keeps them from watering their cattle, and so in his attempt to rid them of this malady he ends up blowing up the whole thing while fending off the advances of a large women who is considered a beauty due to her "bittahness." After destroying the cistern, Henderson and his guide escape and try again with the Wariri tribe where he impresses the natives with his unparalleled feats of strength (Festivus, anyone?), which then propels him unwittingly into the position of sungo (rain king) when rain immediately follows. There he befriends the king of the tribe, Dahfu, and the tale of Henderson carries us on a humorous journey where we come face to face with lions, tall amazonian women, and scheming uncles. Henderson is an interesting counter figure to someone like, say, Roth's Swede Levov (American Pastoral), where both men have a privileged adulthood but yet both are incapable of settling down into it. Levov gets tragically ripped away while Henderson is comically tied to it even in the far reaches of Africa. Henderson's pretentiousness and bombastic response to everything (his attempt to kill his little house cat still makes me laugh) makes him the perfect target for Dahfu's psychological experiment, for even in his gregariousness, Henderson's goal is to existentially discover the importance of being an intricate, vital element of some grand venture, which Dahfu supplies. One might fall into the temptation of reading this book as a generic critique of the dangers of "civilization" within a sort of Rousseauian framework, although the "savages" in Bellow's book are something less than entirely "noble." Nevertheless, I decline to read it this way, for I think the book speaks to psychology, to the inner man, to the aspirations and "life-force" in a discontented soul, rather than to politics or history or the delimitating ways in which cultural norms interact with those on other continents. Or, one could just sit back and have a grand old time laughing at Henderson, and the fact that he laughs at himself, even in his gargantuan seriousness, makes us love him all the more. He's like that grouchy, eccentric grandfather we can't help but love, even in his most obnoxious cantankerousness. The bottom line, though, is that this book is terribly funny and clever, and Bellow has a way of avoiding the negative qualities of stream-of-consciousness prose while at the same time distilling from it its funnier aspects. This was the first Saul Bellow book that I had ever read, but immediately afterwards I put several more on my reading list.
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29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Henderson the Rain King, March 22, 2000
This is the BEST book I've read in ages. I found it so thoroughly engaging, I couldn't put it down! Eugene Henderson, a great (often) drunken oaf of a man--rich, somewhat crass, a man who does not suffer fools gladly and makes life for his wives and children difficult--chafes at the restraints of a sophisticated, civilized existence in New York and makes his way into Africa. Once there, all his innate qualities--sheer strength, his instincts, rashness,while drawbacks in an artifical social world--serve him well in the natural world. He encounters princes, kings and hired guides, who he treats with equal respect. Africa gives him an arena to test himself, quench his thirst for an answer to the internal (and for him, eternal) question that eludes him throughout his life: I want, I want, I want. Through his journey, he finds out what he really wants to do with the rest of his life and comes out of this adventure with a greater sense of who he really is. Saul Bellow makes Henderson and his experiences so real, the reader feels as though he or she is there, seeing it all through Henderson's eyes. I think this book is a gem, a completely entertaining read.
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