Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
FINALLY! I’ve FINALLY finished reading this book. It’s only taken me like a month! I have 5 other books sitting here waiting to be reviewed, but I have to do this one first so I can put it back on the bookshelf and work on relieving my bitterness.
I have very mixed feelings about this work. I understand all too well that it is Great Literature. And therefore not to be “enjoyed” necessarily, but to educate, inspire, and uplift. I didn’t enjoy it, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. I didn’t feel particularly educated, inspired or uplifted either, and that’s probably what I should address.
Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976, shortly after this book’s publication. In the press release, the Nobel organization cites Bellow’s contribution to literature as, “emancipation from the previous ideal style” and his use of the anti-hero. I feel that, as a reader in 2005, I’m at a tremendous disadvantage in appreciating this book. His style might have been revolutionary in 1976, but there have been many revolutions since then and now it just seems…unformed. I suppose he started the change, but he did not finish or perfect it, so from my vantage point it seems like the first faltering steps of a kid learning to walk. Of course, walking from the perspective of an amoeba in the primordial ooze would be revolutionary and deserving of any honor available. A quick scan down the list of Nobel laureates also shows that they love their philosophers, so again it makes sense. This book is almost more philosophy than fiction.
Humboldt’s Gift also won the Pulitzer prize that same year, but the Pulitzer board is notoriously secretive about their selection process. If you win, you win. The end.
There is no doubt that Bellow is a tremendous writer. His descriptions of the vast number of different locations the characters travel to in this book are top notch. Tangible. And his characters are so distinct in their voices, that I could probably pick them out without any further identification. Each one has vocal quirks and phrases they use as crutches. His dialogue is perfection. But the book loses me with the main character. Charles Citrine is a famous and successful writer who is haunted by the estrangement and death of his mentor, terrorized by gangsters and divorce attorneys, manipulated by a floozy and her pimping mother, taken advantage of by everyone he knows…the anti-hero if there ever was one.
The central conflict in the book is art vs. money. Expression vs. stability. And every single relationship in Charlie’s life sets this conflict in play. But Charlie is so lost in his own head that he doesn’t even see it. Charlie is a genius, an intellectual, a philosopher, and every single thing he sees sends him off on tangents of intellectual splendor. My mom, thinking she was cute when she was trying to shock, used to call this Mental Masturbation. It’s a beautiful set up. As I’m describing this I’m reevaluating my reaction to the book because it seems like it will be brilliant. You can see so clearly how the structure will work, and yet it doesn’t.
With an anti-hero, you’re supposed to come around to him by the end of the book. Either he’s supposed to become a hero, or you’re supposed to empathize with him. Neither of those things happened for me here. Charlie did eventually discover his own path, which was great, and got rid of most of the parasites, which was bad because none of them left through his efforts. They all hung around until the money was gone, and then they left of their own free will while he was left with nothing. Which happened to suit the new austere artist in him, which is alright I suppose, but he didn’t learn any lesson other than “Mo money, mo problems.” Why couldn’t he discover his backbone?
This book needed an editor with a much firmer hand. The little penguin version that I have is nearly 500 pages long, and most of that is Charlie rhapsodizing about anthroposophy and regurgitating other philosophers thinking. A little of that would have gone a long way to show the artist’s disconnection from the world, his focus on higher things while everyone else is trying to bleed his pennies from him. Instead I got so bogged down in all the circumlocution that I debated if it was worth finishing the book. It was. This is a masterful book, but it’s heartbreaking when you realize how little it would have taken to make it so much better.
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