Humboldt's Gift

I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow won the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons these days, but I think in the case of Bellow Oslo got it right. From the start the storytelling is brilliant and it never flags. Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a love of literature, writes to his hero poet Von Humboldt Fleisher from his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is invited to visit the great man in Greenwich Village. Citrine comes to New York just as Humboldt is hitting his sole crest of popularity because of his book of show more ballads. Humboldt, however, soon loses it all; drinking and medicating himself in a manner that can only be called suicidal. No wonder he's perpetually blocked now. In the meantime, Charlie Citrine, his protege, writes a hit Broadway play which is made into a hit Hollywood movie. Citrine is swimming in money. And Citrine's success can only be viewed by Humboldt in his madness as a betrayal. Humboldt comes to loathe Citrine whom he accuses of using his life as the basis for the main character of his play Von Trenck. When Citrine wins the Chevalier de Légion d'honneur from the French government, Humboldt hits the ceiling. "Shoveleer!," he writes, "Your name is lesion."

Charlie Citrine is one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from late 20th century American literature. What I admire so much about this book is its unflagging narrative thrust. Line by line it satisfies the reader on an almost physical level. The humor is laugh out loud. The erudition makes me giddy. Just how is it possible for Bellow to incorporate so much knowledge about literature into the book and not end up with some deadly boring piece of tripe? It's miraculous. Citrine is always talking about his reading (Rudolf Steiner, Santayana, Gide, Aristotle, and so on) which is deftly incorporated so as to reflect upon his own tribulations and those of the other characters. This is quite a rogue's gallery, too, consisting of both the high and the low: mobsters; crooked judges; writers; literary chislers, harridan exes; lawyers; Rubenesque golddiggers, old Russian bath house guys; blue collar guys; virtually all ethnicities and predilections as only a great American city like Chicago can produce. I've read all of Bellow's novels and this I think is his best one. I even prefer it to Augie March, which is saying something. This is also a great novel for those who want to know how to write a great novel. With this text in hand and one's own considerable talent on tap, why, you can't miss. It's all right here in black and white. Read it, please, and let me know what you think. show less

Bellow is a fantastic prose stylist, but that wasn't enough for me to get past the fact that all of the lead characters are deeply unlikeable and shallow, despite their supposed intellectualism, and I frankly couldn't care at all about what happened to any of them. Perhaps the book has aged badly; it seems rooted very much in a particular time and culture. It took me weeks to get through the first 75% of the book but I did find it more compelling towards the end.

"Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything."

Humboldt's Gift is a study of a man fighting the world and his inner demons by withdrawing from his life.

Charles Citrine is a successful author who seems to like and trust everybody. As a young man he had travelled across America to meet acclaimed author Von Humboldt Fleischer. They became close friends until Charles's own literary success ruined their relationship. Charles is a decent, generous man, but has a weakness for beautiful women. He has had a number of lovers; one woman is divorcing him, trying to impoverish him in the process, and another desperately wants him to marry her. Charles is in a sad condition but has friends willing to help him out.

Chapters show more have neither titles nor numbers and the narrative didn't really have a structure. The nature of Humboldt’s gift isn't clear until we have read most of the book and we then discover that it is a real and practical gift, a bequest from his old friend rather than an ironical term.

I found I couldn't empathise with Citrine at all. rather his non-participation, his constant contemplation of life rather than actually living merely left me frustrated. Personally, I found this an exhausting read that needed some serious editing. It was verbose in the extreme, littered with French phrases (un-translated) and obscure literary references that made me feel that Bellow rather than engaging with his readers was simply trying to demonstrate how much smarter than them he is.
Overall, not a great read at all for me. show less

“I had a talent for absurdity, and you don’t throw away any of your talents.” No, you don’t throw away your talents; they’re your only protection against the violence of greed and realism. Absurd Charlie Citrine, playwright and biographer, is being dunned by lawyers, duped by friends, and hounded by scoundrels. He needs all the protection he can get. Amid the shambles of his life he receives a gift from an old friend now dead. The gift, which prompts Charlie’s book-length revery of times past, is a token of belief in his basic decency, the quality he clings to even when it gets him into absurdities. Because there are few things more absurd, realistically considered, than being a mensch. There’s no ROI from being kind and show more mild or giving people the benefit of the doubt. But Bellow hints that these qualities might just save us. show less

“He was meddling, just meddling. Still, I took this to heart. For there was a lot of agony in Demmie. Some women wept as softly as a watering can in the garden. Demmie cried passionately, as only a woman who believes in sin can cry. When she cried you not only pitied her, you respected her strength of soul.”

There is an astonishingly short page on Wikipedia to this book that had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976 and is cited on that website as having “contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year”. Then follow two minor paragraphs devoted to plot and two sentences to its reception. This book is four-hundred and ninety-four pages and probably had me consulting the computer for references as show more many times. It’s dense. It’s funny. The two main characters suffer from honesty every bit as painful as their introspection is myopic. Or maybe not. Maybe somewhere in that anthroposophical ether that clouds Charlie Citrine like bad weather, despite his flight toward whatever exotic locale he secretes himself, whatever room or hotel or Russian bathhouse stall, stretched on a couch or crushed between dubious characters on a Thunderbird’s bench seat, Seraphim and Cherubim and Exousiai and Archai fist-fighting in the jet streams of his skull, there’s an acceptance of the limitations of the material world and yet a clear-eyed glimpse of a realm beyond. Even Humboldt’s posthumous “gift” is maybe more trouble than it’s worth. As, maybe, is all life. And that’s at least the fourth time I’ve waffled with that adverb.

Chicago may be the bedrock to this sprawling work, and it is populated with some of the tropes synonymous with that city: gangsters, architecture, restaurants, the old country in the New World. But the world of the mind is the real domain here; wedded to the basest of our human natures. And so we have poets in rural New Jersey trying to mow down their wives with Buicks, low-level thugs horning in on copyright lawyers, Chicagoan entrepreneurs hunting for beryllium in Nairobi, huckster journalists making a buck off their own abduction in South America; and none of these events seem grand enough to fill the space left from the conversations with his departed mentor and friend.

Maybe the gift is more than an object, an heirloom, a sealed letter from the past. It could be nothing more than that moment when he learned to live in the middle of the material and spiritual worlds. How fleeting that moment. And yet, the recollection can seem to last forever when stretched out on the couch, away from the clamor and clangor of Chicago, removed from the clash of new toys in old worlds, some far country yet unclaimed since it hasn’t even been marked on a map.

Or Charlie Citrine could just be a selfish prick. But at least he knows it. And he’s got the perfect escape. Like another Appleton native, Harry Houdini, who’d travelled to the biggest cities to break free from handcuffs, straightjackets and milk cans—all self-imposed. Except Citrine didn’t share the magician’s obsession for debunking spiritualists, preferring instead a peaceful absorption.

And, to be fair, I’ve not totally gotten my head around “anthroposophy”. Certainly, enough for the context of the novel. But, just like that hovering hierarchy of angels, it may demand more research and a second read.

“In the enchanting days we had had such marvelous talks, only touched a little by manic depression and paranoia. But now the light became dark and the dark turned darker.” show less

As a Canadian and huge fan of our dearly departed Mordecai Richler--clever, urbane, witty, acerbic--I had often heard of and been curious about his apparent American counterparts, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. I don't think I mean to lump them together only because they were Jewish, but because they seem to write such witty, complex plots that are largely urban in setting and deal with the desire for acceptance by 'the gentry' and material and apparent success. Well, to be honest, having until now never read Roth or Bellow, this was my assumption--that they were of an ilk, sort of. This book is one for those looking for 'a bit more' (than mere plot or character) to chew into ... it's got plenty of philosophy, art, pathos, desire, comedy show more and tragedy. The idle conversation of the two main characters offers a great deal to the reader, and the supporting cast is fascinating. My copy was a cast-off from the local public library that I snatched up, with the binding-boards printed upside-down, and old tape holding the jacket on turning to toxic dust, but what a pleasure! show less

What a wonderful, great, big, shaggy dog of a novel! While litigating with his ex-wife, being bullied by a B-team mobster, and fending off the marriage plans of his young "palooka" girlfriend, narrator Charlie Citrine contemplates the life of his recently deceased best friend and meditates on big questions such as the nature of death, man's role in the cosmos, and theories of boredom. With dozens of remarkable supporting characters and side stories, this long book is entertaining throughout. It is not a quick read, but it is worth the time.