More Die of Heartbreak (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Saul Bellow (Author), Martin Amis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: August 31, 2004

Kenneth Trachtenberg, the witty and eccentric narrator of More Die of Heartbreak, has left his native Paris for the Midwest. He has come to be near his beloved uncle, the world-renowned botanist Benn Crader, self-described "plant visionary." While his studies take him around the world, Benn, a restless spirit, has not been able to satisfy his longings after his first marriage and lives from affair to affair and from "bliss to breakdown." Imagining that a settled existence will end his anguish, Benn ties the knot again, opening the door to a flood of new torments. As Kenneth grapples with his own problems involving his unusual lady-friend Treckie, the two men try to figure out why gifted and intelligent people invariably find themselves "knee-deep in the garbage of a personal life."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Saul Bellow, the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, is the author of numerous novels, novellas, and short stories, including The Adventures of Augie March and Humboldt's Gift.

Martin Amis is a bestselling author whose many works include Time's Arrow, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and, most recently, Yellow Dog.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142437743
• ISBN-13: 978-0142437742
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,641 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

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best, but still remarkable, January 2, 2005

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a reader (friendship heights) - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Die of Heartbreak (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This isn't the one to choose if you've never read Bellow. Seize the Day (think brevity) is the place to start. From there, Henderson the Rain King, Humboldt's Gift, or Herzog make the best long reads. Augie March is the most renowned, but a good 200 pages too long if you ask me. After that, Mr. Sammler's Planet rounds out the best of Bellow. Dangling Man and The Victim are quite different from the rest, and are most interesting (I think) as points of reference to watch the evolution of a great mind.

More Die of Heartbreak ranks with The Dean's December and Ravelston as books to read only if you've already fallen for Bellow. Or, I suppose, if you're interested in reading what a Nobel Laureate thinks about sex. (For there is no book in which he tackles the topic more directly than this). There are times when the author seems to lose even himself in the mad confusion that spills from Ken Trachtenberg's head. This, I believe, would be enough to drive impatient readers away from Bellow.

But More Die of Heartbreak, like all of Bellow's work, lifts the reader above the mundane. Its force doesn't come from plot, but observation. His gift is to take the ordinary, the accepted, and acceptable and expose it for something extraordianry, corrupt, or even contemptible. His success, I think, comes from a steadfast and good-natured optimism in the face of Western decline.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Saul Bellow meets Woody Allen, November 26, 2008

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An admirer of Saul "Mr Wobble" (uk) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: More Die of Heartbreak (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

A comedy on modern life and love with a plot that allows Bellow to explore his favourite themes on the role of higher culture in a world that worships the base;are we what we see or how we see the world?
It helps to know the plot a little beforehand,I re read after my first reading to fully re enjoy.
Ken is a Woody Allen type;the one when you're never sure if he's neurotic or the world around him is.He idolises his Uncle Benn,a genius in the world of fauna but a hopeless innocent outside it. Ken sees it as his role to protect his Uncle. Benn was cheated out of millions in a real estate deal by his Uncle Vilitzer, a powerful political figure,something that doesn't interest Benn until he marries in haste (without consulting Ken) into the grasping Layamon family who urge Benn to get his share as Vilitzer is on the way down in the political game.
Bear the above in mind and you'll enjoy this first rate tragi-comedy.
'More die...' is perhaps more for veteran Bellow readers-at times you feel the editor should have pointed out to Bellow that the rest of us are 10 leagues below his intellect and he might be getting a bit esoteric, but one of the things I've always loved about books by Saul Bellow is the way he makes you thirst to know what he knows;read what he's read.First timers may not get the full kick out of this great book or want to re read after taking in the complex and wonderful plot.

5.0 out of 5 stars A great work, witty and compassionate, June 19, 2008

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reader 451 - See all my reviews

This review is from: More Die of Heartbreak (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

`He wanted a statement about the radiation level increasing. Also dioxin and other harmful waste. It's terribly serious, of course, but I think more people die of heartbreak than of radiation.' Such is the premise of Saul Bellow's masterpiece, written at the probable height of his creative power and on a par with Herzog and The Dean's December.

In a refined and richly substantiated extemporisation, Bellow takes a sounding of the place of romance in contemporary life and makes the case that it remains of central if problematic concern. More Die of Heartbreak remains hugely current, and relevant. Modern fears and distractions continue to lay siege to the arguably paramount realms of sentimental and private fulfilment. Our world is even more so one of technicians and specialists, isolated in mutually inaccessible spheres. For this is what Bellow portrays: the difficulty of love when surrounded with the complexities of professional specialisation, money, sex, cultural doubt, moral and social flux. Also just the difficulty of love.

Benn Crader, a botanist, and his nephew Kenneth, another academic, struggle to reconcile intellectual achievement with unsatisfactory love and marital lives. The uncle marries the glamorous social climber Matilda Layamon in a second wedding, to find himself forced into a financial suit that will destroy his ties to his own family. Kenneth strives to fill the gap left by a painful break-up. Nothing much more happens in this ironic, rambling portrayal of floundering individuals who philosophise as they go. And to be fair, this is not for fans of action or quick-paced plots. But if you like reading Kundera or Philip Roth (who is a later writer and seems to me to owe much to Bellow), you will enjoy this novel. Bellow is impressively erudite but never pedantic and always entertaining and matter-of-fact. He tends to divagate, here from the dangers of bad skin to the morals of Hitchcock movies and to court politics, but he is extremely well informed and invariably interesting. There is also a point to his constant asides, namely to put the question of the adequacy of culture to real life.

And it is all told with an effective, deadpan humour. (`Benn was a botanist of a "high level of distinction"... They're relatively inexpensive too. It costs more to keep two convicts in Statesville than one botanist in his chair. But convicts offer more in the way of excitement - riot and arson in the prisons, garrotting a guard, driving a stake through the warden's head.' Or `Mother joined a group of medical volunteers stationed near Djibouti, where the famine victims died by the thousands, daily. She wore chino skirts, cheap cotton twill, as close to sackcloth as she could get.') Perhaps a little sarcastic, but who wants polite, deferential blandness?