The Victim (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ON some nights New York is a hot as Bangkok..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Staten Island, Kirby Allbee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Bellow's second novel charts the descent into paranoia of Asa Leventhal, sub-editor of a trade magazine. With his wife away visiting her mother, Asa is alone, but not for long. His sister-in-law summons him to Staten Island to help with his sick nephew. Other demands mount, and readers witness a man losing control.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (March 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140189386
• ISBN-13: 978-0140189384
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #698,103 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great early novel by our greatest living novelist., May 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Victim (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) (Paperback)

Saul Bellow's novel, The Victim, first got under my skin about fifteen years ago. It is not an easy book to read, but not because it isn't well written or well conceived. The style of writing here is very clean, particularly in comparison to later works by this same author, and the plot is both very simple and very tight, maybe too tight for readers who prefer to luxuriate in a more leisurely unfolding of events. It seems to me that what makes the novel somewhat difficult is Bellow's nearly claustrophobic presentation of Asa Leventhal's character and dilemma. He places his reader so close to his main character that at times the proximity becomes unbearable. But this is what makes The Victim such a compelling read. I can think of no modern American novel I would recommend more highly than this one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, January 5, 2006

By	R. E. Whitlock - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the story of Asa Leventhal, a magazine editor living alone one summer in 1940s New York while his wife is away taking care of her widowed mother. One night he is accosted in a park by Kirby Allbee, a slight acquaintance whom he has not seen for several years. The anti-Semitic Allbee has visibly come down in the world, and holds Leventhal responsible.

A parallel plot concerns Leventhal's sister-in-law who is alone in Brooklyn with her two sons. While Leventhal's brother pursues business interests in Texas, Leventhal attempts to act as a surrogate father.


This is a book about responsibility, community, maturity and Jewish/Christian relations in America. We see Leventhal transformed from an insecure, self-absorbed, blame-shifting individual, to a self-confident and compassionate man of action. There are some deft touches of humor, and the evolving relationship between Allbee and Leventhal is complex and fascinating.

I strongly recommend this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Improvement Over His First Novel, December 18, 2005

By	J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I am a Bellow fan and have read most of his novels.

Saul Bellow wrote two manuscripts in the early 1940s. One was so bad that he threw it out. The second was "Dangling Man" is probably his worst novel, or tied with "The Actual," but there are some good passages. However, in 1944, he got good book reviews from his first book, and more importantly the publisher liked the book, and it was enough to go on to another book. The present book is of course his second novel. It is slow in the first half back picks up steam as the story unfolds, and by the end is a good novel. It does not have the charm of the later works, but still it is good. It is not as famous as the later works such as "Herzog" but it is a solid well written effort and mostly entertaining.

In case you are new to Bellow, his novels reflect his life, his writings, and his five marriages during his five active decades of writing. He hit his peak as a writer around the time of "Augie March" in 1953 and continued through to the Pulitzer novel "Humbolt's Gift" in 1973. He wrote from the early 1940s through to 2000. His novels are written in a narrative form, and the main character is a Jewish male, usually a writer but not always, and he is living in either in New York or Chicago. Bellow wrote approximately 13 novels plus other works. Bellow progressed a long way as a writer over the five decades.

The early novels "Dangling Man" and "The Victim" were written 25 years before his peak. Those were heavy slow reads. "Dangling Man" is often boring, and Bellow was in search of his writing style in that period of the 1940s. Some compare his style in "Dangling Man" with Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground." Having read both I would say that "Notes" is brilliant while "Dangling Man" is at best average and sometimes a bit boring. By the middle of the present novel, there is a definite change in the writing and we see Bellow leaving that dull pace of the first novel.

The book follows the Bellow pattern: a narrative about a Jewish man living in Chicago or New York. Here it is New York. The central character, Asa Leventhal, is an editor and it takes place in a hot New York summer. To say more would give away the plot.

There are many small touches that we see in subsequent Bellows novels such as the brother, and the brother's family. We saw that briefly with the "big shot" brother in "Humbolt's Gift," and in other works. Here it plays a central role with the sickness of a chld.

I recommnd this novel as an interesting read, but it lacks the charm of his best.