The Adventures of Augie March (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) | Saul Bellow

The Adventures of Augie March (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) | Saul Bellow | Growing up in the depression

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The Adventures of ...

	The Adventures of Augie March (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) Saul Bellow Penguin Classics, 1996 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent writing

What can I say other than this novel is a true 20th Century American classic. The use of language is incomparable.

Growing up in the depression

I read Augie more than 20 years ago and again in 07 and still found it an enjoyable read, engrossing, entertaining, gives one an idea of what life was like back then during the depression. It's really a sprawling succession of stories, not particularly cohesive but what life story is? It's the experiences that matter here. Bellow's themes about family are here as are his usual excessive references to just about every intellectual pursuit known to humanity. If he leaves anything out he'll be sure to mention it in the next book and every successive book and most of the time you have no idea who or what he's talking about but often that's ok, you get the jist of the matter. Naturally there are more than a few dazzling females for the protagonist to blunder with, succumb to, seduce and love. It is not a masterpiece but rather the burgeoning work of a very talented and marvelous young writer as he begins the ascent before he reaches the peak.

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This is Not Carl Sandburg's Chicago

These seem to be Chicago days for this reviewer. He has just done some reviews of Chicago's Chess Records that essentially defined the sound of the electrified blues in what would be old Augie's old neighborhood. Furthermore, I have reviewed the work of Chicago's Nelson Algren who takes more than one look at the downside of Chicago life in the raw - what happens to the Augies when they do not break out of that place between the working poor and the lumpenproletariat. And this is a good place to set up the fundamental difference in Bellow's take on life as compared to Algrens's. Both describe lives and milieus that can expose the nasty, short and brutish side of life but unlike Algren's Frankie Machine in The Man With the Golden Arm Augie is smart (and clean enough) to make the break.

To that extent Bellow's Augie, his pals and his town are a celebration of the possibilities that the immigrants to this country believed was possible (and on too many occasions were dashed to pieces). A nice little devise that Bellow uses to highlight this contrast is the tension between the career paths of Augie and his brother. Both face the existential crisis of being left to one's own devices in the world but the brother survives by creating wealth for himself and forgets, in fact scorns, the idea of intellectual reflections about man's fate. Poor Augie though wants to know the meaning of life once he has finally broken out of the working class milieu- but travel, a rich lady friend and a whole different set of adventures do not satisfy that hunger to know that meaning.

I would argue, and here I go back to Augie's days as a Trotskyist, that he might have cut against the grain of that modern day sense of self-isolation in a heartless world if he had organized others to create an alternative society where that alienation from productive labor could have been diminished. But, that is just this reviewer pontificating against Bellow's facile early literary Trotskyism. Although I read this book initially about 25 years ago the first half still is gripping. The second half meanders a little more than I recall from the first reading. This is an early work though. Bellow gets better as a writer later, if not in resolving the humankind's existential crisis.

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The Adventures of Augie March is a march through the first half of the twentieth century

The Adventures of Augie March was published to acclaim in 1953. The author is the redoubtable Saul Bellow (1915-2005) Canadian born, Chicago raised and the son of Russian Jews. Bellow has been hailed as one of the greatest authors of prose in American literature; he won the Nobel Prize for his many novels and short stories.
The Adventures of Augie March is a long picaresque novel in the tradition of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and Cervantes' Don Quixote. The book may also be considered a bildungsroman as Augie matures from a poor Jewish lad to a worldly wise dealer in the black market in Europe following the war. The novel ends with Augie married to a minor film actress after the book has related countless love affairs in which he has been involved.
Augie March travels in an urban industrialized society. Augie grows up in Chicago during the 1920s and Depression. His friends include petty thieves, gangsters, hoodlums and schoolmates. He is most notable for all the many jobs he has: paperboy, shoe salesman, companion to the eccentric Mr. Einhorn, dog sitter, movie theatre employee,union organizer and service in the Merchant Marine during World War II. Augie was almost killed when the ship on which he was serving his enlistment on was blown up by the enemy. He floats on a raft with a brilliant but very creepy guy who attempts to bludgeon him to death!
Augie March is the least interesting character in the whole novel! He is a listener whose role is to tell the stories of all the people he encounters. One of the most fascinating of these people is the enigmatic would be siren Thea Fenchel. Thea is in love with Augie for a short time. She travels with him to Mexico to obtain a divorce from her husband. She trains a reluctant predatory eagle named Caligula. The bird is supposed to kill giant iguanas for sale but is too cowardly to do a good job of it. Thea also likes to collect snakes and other exotic creatures. She is weird and alluring. She is, in my opinon, the most memorable character in the vast Dickensian like dramatis personae in the work. Bellow had an inventive mind as the narrative never flags in its energy and movement to new scenes and new characters.
Saul Bellow is a master of the English language. His sentences are long and convoluted. It takes a while to get used to his style seeking to keep all the characters straight and follow his rambling verbiage.
Bellow has written a masterpiece with this novel but I thought the book could have been edited with profit. Christopher Hitchens has contributed a fine introduction to Bellow and his oeuvre for the handsome Penguin edition. This book is one of the essential novels to read if you want to understand twentieth century American literature. It is not as easy read but it will get you thinking and marvelling at the wordsmith excellence of Bellow.

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Solid, must read

Fantastic story. Very long and can give more detail than necessary at times. Nothing a skimmer like myself couldn't bypass. One of the first books I've ever read that I could NOT resist underlining and marking up. Saul Bellow truly shines throughout this one.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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