The Adventures of Augie March

It's amazing to me that people argued about Great American Novels as recently as 2003, fifty years after Augie March settled the question. It even starts with "I am an American" and ends with "America"! How can it not be the GAM?!

I'll never tire of this book, the only modern inheritor of the picaresque tradition and the first since Huck Finn. It's different from everything else I've read by Bellow, consciously visceral and eclectic, a multisensory kaleidoscope of the American century. It's a goddamn long novel but somehow the creativity never lapses and the voice never wavers and never sounds writerly, despite being intensely literary as in this streetcar trip:

It was stiff cold weather, the ground hard, the weeds standing broken in the show more frost, the river giving off vapor and the trains leghorn shots of steam into the broad blue Wisconsin-humored sky, the brass handgrip of the straw seats finger-polished, the crusty straw golden, the olive and brown of coats in their folds gold too...

Or this description of the coalyard manager Happy Kellerman:

He was a beer saufer; droopy, small, a humorist, wry, drawn, weak, his tone nosy and quinchy, his pants in creases under his paunch; his nose curved up and presented offended and timorous nostrils, and he had round, disingenuous eyes in which he showed he was strongly defended.

Bellow is brilliant at punctuation; his sentences move not like rivers but like traffic, interruptedly, with trams and big shots' cars and stumblebums syncopating the flow. The novel is profoundly planted in the picaresque tradition: in its rambling plot, of course, the story of an American trying on everything for size, but also in its assertion of the primacy of the real, the tangible, the sensual world:

Everyone tried to create a world he can live in , and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

This is the reality-preferring, the reality-delighting, creed of the picaresque. It's an ironic inversion of Hamlet's spiritualist finger-wagging to Horatio. The world has more in it — more actual people, more dreams — than are dreamt of in your philosophy — turning the "philosophy" from the original "science" to the modern, hand-waving sense. Of "people generally": "they dug for unreality more than treasure, unreality being their last great hope because then they could doubt what they knew about themselves was true." This from the most hard-headed character in the novel, Mimi, who embodies resilience and pragmatism.

And the language here is such a treat, such a multifarious delight, it adds up to an alternate, better, reality of its own. Bellow stacks nouns like a gourmet burger chef: "...if I chose to be a lawyer, I wouldn't need to be a mere ambulance chaser, shyster, or birdseed wiseguy and conniver in two-bit cases." And he knows the power of the monosyllable: "blue gas stink in this hot brute shit of a street". Language is tactile, pungent, impinging on the ear: a band "began to pound and smite" and shortly after "clashed, drummed and brayed". These verbs are of the construction trade or the military, and they describe Bellow's tactile technique in this book.

The overriding theme of Augie's life (until he runs out of paper) is his clientism, his being serially adopted in his fatherlessness, his dependence on others as he gropes for his own identity: "Admitted that I always tried to elicit what I hoped for; how did people, however, seldom fail to supply it so mysteriously?" This is something I identify with — maybe in part 'cause of my race and gender, but even within the world of the story, and my world, Augie's and my caromings seem fortunate. But to what extent do Augie and I over-appreciate our dependence on others, our status as objects of fate? The novel take Heraclitus' "fate is character" for its leitmotif. To what extent is that true? Less and less I think so.

But I'll always love this book. It's a humongous beating heart of human sympathy, of love and trying to make things better. It's weird and sad (like at the end of chapter 4 when they commit Georgie to the institution — I cried) and full of dead-ends and wrong turns and schemes and capers. Rereading it caused me to fall five books behind schedule for my 2022 reading goal, and I don't regret a single second. show less

Bellow acolytes beware, your emperor lacks clothes and it's mighty cold outside...

Okay, hold on, no no no...it's not quite that bad. Bellow isn't abysmal. I'd actually, if I could on goodreads.com, award this novel something like 2 1/2 stars. In fact in certain stretches of this novel 'The Adventures of Augie March' he's damn good, treading philosophical waters with the grace and aplomb of a crane. Much like his first novel Dangling Man and sporadically in his Collected Stories. But two very telling Charles Bukowski quotes came to mind as I read Augie March.

The first Bukowski quote references Truman Capote, whom the former accused of merely 'ice-skating' in terms of his literary output. This, to me, exemplifies Bellow in spots. He show more presents wonderful philosophical ideas and quotes or references (usually in place of traditional metaphor or simile) some of the greatest minds and moments of history, drawing on his extensive reading in literature, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and various other disciplines. However, he doesn't seem to do much with the bulk of borrowed ideas he presents. They're piled on and piled on to his characters showing their (and by extension their author's) extensive knowledge in multifarious fields and disciplines, but for most of the cast, it feels distinctly out of place. Seriously, how many pool shark hustlers, illegal immigrant runners, card sharp gamblers, street walkers, high school dropouts, and various mid to low lives (as well as the other end, top of the heap intellectuals and WASPS) are able to hold court on linguistics, the meaning of life, extremely esoteric historical figures, the bathing habits of Charlemagne, and everything else...as well as be able to sling out a biting sample of yiddish slang? And then ask how your conversational latin is?

To quote Mark Hamill to George Lucas, allegedally: "(Real) People don't talk like this,"

The second Bukowski quote can be read as the antithesis to Bellow's entire authorial ethos, that 'true genius may be saying a complicated thing in a simple way'. It would seem that, much like the Stephan Fry of his day, Bellow will take a hundred words to say or describe what two or three words could easily accomplish. And be damn proud of it.

I understand that Bellow is verbose, loquacious, even hedonistic in his language. And yes, I understand that there are many authors I love who are similar (Faulkner, McCarthy, Joshua Cohen in his Witz, among others)in their style, sort of. But Bellow's delineations, while for the most part gorgeous and excellently described, drag his text down, down, down. Characters think a lot, talk a lot, describe a lot, but don't actually do, accomplish, or evolve a lot. It strikes me as a hurricane in a desolate field in the midwest, disrupting, destroying, and otherwise dominating this tract of land...until it dissipates, leaving only a slightly put off patch of land. Now granted, my reading of Dickens (one of Bellow's great influences), so far, isn't extensive, but I'm uncomfortably reminded when I read Bellow of the literary sins of Dickens (Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens in memory forgive me), those sins being excess, frivolity, a complete lack of pacing, and a near collapse and trivializing of narrative. Though in the final sin's regard, Bellow is far worse then Dickens. This may sound odd, at least it did to me, because Bellow was lambasted by many in the literary establishment of being old fashioned in his approach to writing while I find his method vague, unfocused, and weighed down by dense but ultimately only tangentially relevant allusive detail.

I said it before in my Collected Stories review, and here it is again: Bellow's authorial voice strains almost visibly under the lash of two many influences. And I can add definitely what I only just suspected with that last work, that one thing that struck me as odd concerning Bellow's literary voice. It's fake. Well, not fake per se, but it's too practiced, too cultivated, too prepared and trained, too much a dance at too many weddings, too many times an instance of trying to be all things to all people all the time. I was reminded of Kerouac and On the Road and his struggle to find his voice. The difference is though Kerouac, sometime after the first third and definitely after the first half, found his voice and began to really develop it, ending his novel not only memorably, but almost expertly (impressive given it was the first of his published novels). And Bellow...well, some context if you please.

I just this evening read the Saul Bellow interview conducted in the pages of The Paris Review and I found myself surprised. Bellow goes into some detail about his slavery to, in his earlier novels, traditional novelistic forms and conventions. Also he discusses his need to declare himself to the, mostly, Anglo-Saxon literary establishment that, paraphrase, questioned the validity of a Jewish son born of Russian Jewish immigrants ability to use English, a perpetual 'borrowed language'.

I was...quite taken aback at this revelation as it rang true in my own mind, this idea that English was and is an 'inappropriate' language for me given my name and incredibly clustered, confused, and more than a little contradictory ethnic and cultural background.

But Bellow, unfortunately, yoked together a voice in response to this that, while bold and ambitious, collapsed under the weight of its own intellect and confused aspirations. In this same interview Bellow mentions the enthusiasm and near glee he enjoyed while writing Augie March, and it shows, certainly in the first two hundred or so pages. But the further past the halfway point of the novel you venture the more you can almost feel Bellow running out of steam, becoming more and more desperate (like Augie himself) to declare, declare, declare, while really only piling more ideas, more fancies, more theories, onto a character whose chronic inability to decide or break free from whichever random person is shepherding him that chapter becomes enervating, frustrating, and ultimately, more than a little maddening.

And this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the stylistic mess of this novel. Tonally it's all over the map but almost always ensconced comfortably in the clueless arms of whimsy and old fart sentimentalism, which is the main reason Bellow's much vaunted comparisons to Dostoyevsky ring false to me. This divide between the two writers is no better evidenced than when after the stock market crash of 1929, one sentence, read: ONE SENTENCE is used to reference the fact that people are jumping to their deaths from the windows of skyscrapers...while ol' Augie eventually goes down to Mexico to, i'm not kidding, train an eagle to catch iguanas...in what universe is that considered 'realist'?

And not to put too fine a point on it, but speaking of realism, and one of the writer's whom Bellow admires, Theodore Dreiser, I have to point out something funny or at least odd. In Sister Carrie, a far more naturalistic and even realistic seeming novel then most anything Bellow conceived in March, the ending consists of (spoiler) the eponymous Carrie having succeeded in the material but dying in the spiritual, sitting in a rocking chair and moving back and forth, back and forth, moving a lot but actually going nowhere...this was Augie March for the most part, to me.

I would just like to say at this point that I don't hate Saul Bellow as a writer. In fact, again, like I stated at the beginning, he's actually very good in spots. The intensity of tone of this review is directed less at him and more at the accolades upon accolades I've heard concerning Bellow, and the surprising defensiveness of some of his most die hard fans. I've read at least one review, of this book in particular, calling those who reviewed this book less than glowingly, 'uncomprehending' and I have to say two things, but I'll say the polite version now:

Leo Tolstoy set free all literary contrary types, dissenters, and just those with slight (or not so slight) differences in opinion about what defines literature when he stated, quite emphatically, that he didn't 'get' Shakespeare...let me repeat that, Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, one of the greatest literary minds who ever lived, openly admitted that he just didn't get the appeal of William Shakespeare, one of the other greatest literary minds who ever lived.

So, basically, there.

Jewish Literature is a labyrinth, one I anxiously and joyfully, and also madly find myself lost in. Bellow's voice is certainly different from the rest, more willfully Old World, consciously European, and enthusiastically intellectual, but it's, so far, not a voice I'd favor. Norman Mailer's bombast rages like dying stars, Joseph Heller's blacker than night comedy affirms life while making us weep, Kakfa is cosmic horror made beautiful in its pain and relentless searching, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Yoram Kaniuk, are the beating hearts keeping alive the Israeli conscience...and onward the list goes. Bellow is of this company, but not in its upper echelon, and not the man I'd award a Nobel, though maybe, after some time, I'll more than love to lend an ear to again. show less

This story starts off in Chicago and is set mostly during the 1920s, Great Depression, and World War II. It is a coming-of-age story for the titular Augie. We get to know his family, including his practical elder brother, Simon, slow brother, George, and overbearing grandmother. He drifts through life not knowing what he values or wants. He forms a number of relationships, jumps from job to job, and gets involved in a series of escapades, largely at the request of his relationship du jour.

This picaresque book has been touted as a contender for the “Great American Novel.” It is a must-read according to the Boxall List. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I do not think it has aged well. I like parts of it, especially show more Augie’s adventures in Mexico, but the story feels antiquated, especially it is depiction of women. It was published in 1953, so perhaps it is representative of its time, but young women are the described by their body parts and older women are said to be shrewish. It was hard for me to get past these segments. It is long and detailed. It meanders. The writing is fine, but reading it felt like a chore. show less

Epic in the truest sense, an astonishingly dense and beautifully lyrical account of an undistinguished Chicago kid's coming of age. I wasn't too far into "The Adventures of Augie March" before I realized that one reading wasn't going to be enough and that I'd have to re-read it before too long. Bellow packs more material and feeling into two or three pages than some novelists can manage in entire novels: the book fairly bursts with characters, anecdotes, and uncannily great descriptive passages. There's something Joycean about the whole thing, too. Bellow inserts plenty of classical references in his description of grimy, busy mid-century Chicago, and his writing transmogrifies Chicago's trainyards and ethnic slums into hauntingly show more beautiful and memorable places, making them unlikely settings for literary greatness, But great is what "The Adventures of Augie March" is: its rich, almost grandiose sentences subtly probe the Big Questions while capturing the deeply affecting idiosyncrasies of the book's characters. It's nothing short of stunning. The next time I've got a few weeks to fill -- and God only knows when that will be -- I'll surely be picking this one up again. show less

I couldn't even get to page 100... The introduction of The Adventures of Augie March makes a claim for the "primary of feeling and of unsymbolic real life" depicted in the book. But the most beautiful thing about books is the fact that they offer either an escape from this "real life" or a different perspective of viewing or living it. Saul Bellow consciously decides to offer neither and makes a brave attempt at portraying the life of Augie realistically but, unfortunately, the result is not entertaining, educating, or interesting in any way; to me, at least. "I went to the bakery today. I stole some bread. Grandma scolded me." Sure, you can take those sentences and transform them into long paragraphs, embroidering the text with show more adjectives and adverbial phrases; it will look a great deal better stylistically, but it won't have any more meaning than the original. And that's exactly what Bellow seems to be doing. Describing in great detail and authentic style an extremely boring character and his extremely boring life. There's nothing sadder than an author blessed with the gift of writing but deprived of the power of imagination. show less

Suffice it to say I can see why this is such a classic. The first person narrative by the book's title character tells the tale of a poor Chicago born Jewish kid who seems to be a natural attraction for other people's schemes. He is smart and good looking and as we listen to his story we realize Augie is always getting advice, from the Russian boarder, Mrs. Lausch to then being adopted, almost literally once, by a series of mentors who all thought Augie would be great for their plan. His jobs are listed here for a reference. He becomes a handbill-distributor, a paperboy, a Woolworth’s stocker, a newsstand clerk, a trinket-seller, a Christmas helper at a department store, a flower delivery boy, a butler, a clerk at fine department show more stores, a paint salesman, a dog groomer, a book thief, a coal yard worker, a housing inspector, a union organizer, an eagle-trainer, a gambler, a literary researcher, a business machine salesman, a merchant marine, and ultimately an importer-exporter working in wartime Europe. Throughout these endeavors, there are also wonderfully drawn characters who try to give Augie direction on how to get ahead. His brother Simon marries into money and can't understand why Augie doesn't follow in his lead. There are also the women in his life that he falls for, Thea who takes him on a wild Eagle training adventure to Mexico and Stella, the girl he meets there and eventually marries. The writing is complex, filled with allusions to Greek and Roman gods, various figures are compared to universally know references, but it is wonderfully constructed. An example below details Augie and his friends riding in the elevator cars of the luxury hotels:

"In the cage we rose and dropped, rubbing elbows with bigshots and operators, commissioners, grabbers, heelers, tipsters, hoodlums, wolves, fixers, plaintiffs, flatfeet, men in Western hats and women in lizard shoes and fur coats, hothouse and arctic drafts mixed up, brute things and airs of sex, evidence of heavy feeding and systematic shaving, of calculations, grief, not-caring, and hopes of tremendous millions in concrete to be poured or whole Mississippis of bootleg whiskey and beer.” Such sentences occur on almost every page. They are like hall closets; you open them and everything falls out. "

That's true of this book, when you open it up, everything falls out, but going through the trouble to make sense of the contents is very satisfying.

I will include here some lines from a New Yorker essay on Saul Bellow intentions regarding the novel:

"Then, as he recalled, he experienced an epiphany: “I had a room in Paris where I was working, and one day as I was going there after breakfast, a bright spring morning, I saw water trickling down the street and sparkling.” The shining stream, he said, suggested to him the form of a new novel. Perhaps so, but a few other circumstances should be taken into account. This was the time, the postwar years, when American art came into its home country. Not just Bellow but many others walked out from under the shadow of the European masters and invented new, personal styles. Bellow was part of a Zeitgeist, and the stay in Europe encouraged his enlistment. The more he hated France, the more he loved America, and wanted to make an art that was like America—big and fresh and loud.

With this teeming book Bellow returned a Dickensian richness to the American novel. As he makes his way to a full brimming consciousness of himself, Augie careens through numberless occupations and countless mentors and exemplars, all the while enchanting us with the slapdash American music of his voice." show less

I want to read this again. It is a rambling picaresque set mostly in Chicago (and Mexico) in the years before and during WWII. The writing is complex, and notable for
1. long, dense descriptions of characters and setting
2. characters that are shrply observed
3. similes and metaphors that are arresting: wait, what, let me reread that, oh, I'd never have seen that but it is so very apt! (on almost every page
4. allusions, both direct and indirect, to legend, myth, literature and philosophy that made me want to stop every two or three pages to learn more (but not pedantic)

The picaresque form is somewhat antiquated, but the writing more than holds one's attention and admiration