Reviews for The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

The average rating for The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-04-29 00:00:00 T Gene Hatcher "I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles." When I worked in a bookstore in Phoenix, there was this judge who frequently came in, usually late at night to buy stacks of books. He was a voracious reader. He had been in the OSS in WW2 and was one of the officers involved in the arrest of Hermann Göring. As he said, "I actually laid hands on the man." Needless to say, the judge was one of the smartest and most interesting guys I've ever met. One slow night, I hadn't seen a customer in over an hour. I was lounging at the register, reading Saul Bellow, and the judge came in. He was so tickled I was reading Augie March, the best book he'd ever read about growing up in the depression. The Odyssey of the modern era. What baffled me the most was when this ultra successful guy says to me...I wish I'd had March's life. Success lays its own traps for us. We find ourselves frog marched along until the next thing we know the whole world would think we were insane to want to be anything other than what we have become. I found the going tough in March, and even though this guy I admired so much had endorsed it so vigorously, at some point, I set the book aside, not to return to it for 33 years. Judge, wherever you are now...I finished The Adventures of Augie March! The weight of this reading indiscretion has been lifted from my shoulders. I don't know that Bellow set out to write a masterpiece as he started stacking the pages of this novel. He might have just been having a lot of fun. The whacky, freewheeling style of the novel has me comparing certain aspects of it to Catch-22. The comedic elements, subtle but constant, keeps even the most tragic of circumstances that Augie finds himself ensnared from becoming too heavy. Throughout the novel Augie is encouraged to go to University and does frequently consider it, usually when events have conspired against him. Going to school is frankly just too rigid a system for him. It is why he can't hold down a regular job and why he is attracted to skilless jobs as long as he has more freedom of movement. He starts working for a man he would admire for the rest of his life, named Einhorn, while still in high school. "'What would Caesar suffer in this case? What would Machiavelli advise or Ulysses do? What would Einhorn think? I'm not kidding when I enter Einhorn in this eminent list." Einhorn is far from being on the up and up. He is a cripple who manages his affairs from a wheelchair but seems to be able to see the workings of the world very clearly, even if he isn't able to see it for himself. Another example of a nontraditional job that Augie holds for a while is stealing books. He is supposed to sell them on to the customers who requested them, but he refuses to give the books up until he has read them. He suffers from a spat of bibliophilia that is nearly impossible to shake off. His partner in crime even offers him his library card. He wants him to check the books out of the library instead. "But somehow that wasn't the same. As eating your own meal." Ahh yes, there is a difference. There is, in my experience, always a stronger bond established between a reader and a book they own. Augie falls in love/lust over and over again. His first big love/lust was Esther Fenchel. "I say, without a push of love and worship in my bowels at the curve of her hips, and triumphant maiden shape behind, and soft, protected secret. Where, to be allowed with love, would be the endorsement of the world, that it was not the barren confusion distant dry fears hinted and whispered, but was necessary, justified, the justification proved by joy. That if she would have, approve, kiss, use her hands on me, allow me the clay dust of the court from her legs, the mild sweat, her intimate dirt and sweat, deliver me from suffering falsehood--show that there wasn't anything false, injurious, or empty-hearted that couldn't be corrected!" Does anyone else have the urge to fix those sentences? Of course, he is basing all this rather courtly devotion to her on her most shallow attributes. Her sister Thea circles around the love sick Augie unnoticed in the glow emanating from her sister. She realizes his desires for her sister are hopeless, and she feels she is the better match for Augie. In a book full of crazy decisions, probably one of the most insane that Augie gets himself involved in is a wild trip to Mexico, featuring Thea and Caligula the eagle. It is a cocked up mess from beginning to end. "'You've lost a tooth.' I nodded. I knew where the gap was. But sooner or later you're bound to lose some teeth." Augie has a chance to be rich more than once, but if there is one thing that he can be counted on to do….it is to make the wrong decision. A rich couple even offers to adopt him as their son. This would have made him a rich man for life. He refuses, unwilling to be a family pet, even if it does mean a lifetime of financial security. Honorable? Well yes, you could make that case, but given the staccato bizarreness of his life, it might have been a very prudent offer to accept. During the war, the army doesn't want him. He joins the Merchant Marine to do his bit. Of course, he doesn't know that the Merchant Marine suffers the highest casualty rates of the war, and sure enough his ship is bombed by a torpedo. Augie finds himself in a raft with an insane genius who doesn't want to be saved but only wants to find an island to continue his research. Only Augie, out of the hundreds of men on the ship, could end up in a boat with the most barmy of the lot. The book ends with Augie living in France with Stella. She is trying to make a go of being an actress, and Augie is involved in some shady dealings. I can sense that Augie is looking towards the horizon, dreaming about the experiences and adventures that await him just over the curve of the earth. Wikipedia has a great summary of this book. "With an intricate plot and allusive style, Bellow explores contrasting themes of alienation and belonging, poverty and wealth, love and loss, with often comic undertones." Because Augie is so free spirited, impossible to chain down in any profession or relationship, Bellow has an opportunity, through this character, to evaluate every nugget of human experience. Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, and this book was mentioned as his greatest contribution to literature. Masterpiece? Of course, it is. The Judge couldn't possibly be wrong. "In yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast." If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit I also have a Facebook blogger page at:

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-23 00:00:00 Robert Ratcliffe Original Review: In Pursuit of Exuberance I first read this in the mid-to-late 70's. For a long time, I would have rated Bellow as one of my favourite three to five authors and Augie as one of my top three novels. I haven't re-read it, but intend to. I am working from long distant memories now, but what I loved about it was the sense of exuberance and dynamism. At that time, it meant a lot to me to find evidence that intellect and vitality could be combined in one person. It doesn't concern me so much now that I have found a level of comfort with my inner dork. 2013 Re-Read: Busy Thinking Doing Being This is a novel by and about a thinking man. In saying this, I'm conscious of the inadequacy of the English language (or my command of it) to make my statement gender neutral. I don't want to say "thinking person" or "thinking human" or "thinking human being". These phrases are too ponderous and artificial. I am willing, however, to call Augie March a "thinking being", because I want to go one step further and say he is a "thinking doing being". And then to say, paraphrasing Bob Dylan, that he not busy thinking doing being is busy dying. What I love about this novel is just how much Augie March gets up to during his [incomplete] life, how much thinking and learning, how much living and loving he does, while simultaneously defying his mortality and death. For me, he is the epitome of a special brand of intellectual and personal dynamism. And this is one of my favourite novels. A Quest with a Request This review is an invitation to read a Great American Novel, but with a few caveats about length and style for some readers. The novel is 536 pages long. It consists of 26 complete, well-defined chapters, but it doesn't follow any preconceived linear plot. It contains a hero, in fact, many heroes, but it doesn't consist of a traditional three act hero's journey. It's not precisely crafted in the sense that what we read, the life experiences, have been heavily edited, abridged, distilled and selected, so that much life has been left out and what remains is the bare minimum the author could say. Instead, much, much life has been left in, and what's been said about that life is precisely crafted. It's what Bellow needed and wanted to say about everything around him. Bellow didn't invite us into a cinema, sit us in a seat, turn out the lights and exclude the outside world, so that we could focus on his art. Instead, he removed the ceiling, the walls and all of the obstacles that might block our sight, so that we could see and experience the real world, real people and real life. The book teems with reality, with realism, so much so that Bellow's brother, Maurice, refused to speak to him for five years after its publication. This novel, this filmic experience, this thought process might be longer than what is conventional. If that bothers you, this might not be the book for you. But if it doesn't, then, like me, you might find it one of the most rewarding reading experiences of your life. A Smorgasbord, Not for the Smorgasbored "Augie March" is a smorgasbord, not a TV dinner. It's not pre-packaged and pre-digested. It invites you to focus and observe and think and enjoy. It's expansive, sprawling, discursive, in the sense of "fluent and expansive rather than formulaic or abbreviated". Sometimes, it seems to be a directionless wander, other times a wild ride. Augie is a wonder boy with a wanderlust. But at all times, Augie's quest is singular, like Christopher Columbus, to discover America, the world, and through it, himself. You might not enjoy this novel, unless you can relate to his quest, his adventures and his discoveries, unless you can imagine yourself on board the "Pinta", the "Nina" or the "Santa Maria", setting sail for some unknown, far horizon. I urge you not to embark, if you are easily bored or fear you might want to jump ship mid-voyage or mid-adventure. The novel is ship-shape. It would take only you to torpedo it. It would break my heart to read yet another uncomprehending three star (or less) review of this brilliant and important novel. But if you're not deterred, welcome aboard! A Picaresque Without a Picaro Now that it's just you and me, let's talk about Augie, baby, and his adventures. Many critics describe "Augie March" as a picaresque novel. The Spanish word "picaro" means a rogue or a rascal. The Wiki definition mentions that a picaresque narrative is usually a first person autobiographical account; the main character is often of low character or social class; and there is little if any character development in the main character, whose circumstances may change but rarely result in a change of heart. The reference in the title to "adventures" hints at this narrative tradition, as does Augie's lower class orphan social status. However, Augie isn't just content to let things happen to him. He's not passive. He goes where his quest takes him. He is not there by accident or fate. What happens there might not have happened if he had remained at home. His experiences and adventures are a direct response to his quest. Achievement Without Lineage Just as there is little or no narrative linearity in the novel, Augie has no familial lineage of any grandeur. Bellow strips him of his father. Augie is "the by-blow of a travelling man" (a child born out of wedlock). He has no recollection of his father. Nevertheless, Augie's mother is responsible for three boys and a dog, and family love is at the heart of the novel: "Georgie Mahchy, Augie, Simey Winnie Mahchy, evwy, evwy love Mama." Mama is not a strong-willed, domineering matriarchal type in the Jewish tradition. The mantle of that role is assumed by Grandma Lausch, not a blood relative, but a Russian (Odessa) lodger, "boss-woman, governing hand, queen mother, empress" and major influence who wants what is best in life for Augie and his brothers. She sees potential for greatness in the boys and wants them to aspire and succeed to greatness. To this extent, the novel is about the achievement of aspirations, both internal and external. Augie's quest is for material independence and love. If he achieves these two things, he will have learned the meaning of his life. Having achieved himself, he will leave a heritage, a legacy for his own family. He will have commenced an empire, a lineage of his own. Nobility Without Savagery The single word that captures both of Augie's aspirations is "nobility". A key metaphor in the novel is the difference between nobility and savagery. We are all part of the Animal Kingdom, but what separates humanity (human beings) from the other animals is the capacity for thought, the ability to be dignified, sophisticated, social, cultured, marvellous, refined, sublime and civilized, the tendency to explore, discover, invent, create, learn and teach. This is our nobility, what separates us not just from animal savagery, but human savagery (such as was to be experienced in the Holocaust). While I understand Augie's name is pronounced "Or-gie", I can't get out of the habit of pronouncing "Augie" as "Ow-gie" in the German fashion (like I suspect Grandma Lausch did). Augie's name is presumably short for August, which hints of the noble in its own right, for example, the name Augustus (Caesar), but more likely in the adjective "august" ("inspiring reverence or admiration; of supreme dignity or grandeur; majestic") and its Latin etymology (augustus: "venerable, majestic, magnificent, noble," probably originally "consecrated by the augurs, with favorable auguries"). With all of these personal aspirations and social expectations, it's crucial that Augie succeed, that he triumph in life. The outcome he fears most is failure. He can't bear the thought of being a "flop". In this way, his adventure with first real love, Thea, in Mexico with an eagle that hunts iguanas and snakes is symbolic of Augie's own plight. The eagle is called Caligula, after the Roman Emperor, but equally importantly, the Spanish word for eagle is "águila", which doesn't take much contortion to become Augie. This eagle should be the most noble and august of birds, yet it fails to achieve its purpose. In the eyes of the township, it becomes the flop that Augie feared. A Man's Character is His Fate Augie's great advantage is that he is a good listener, "clever junge", bright, intelligent, hopeful, optimistic, eager, [mostly] honest, "ehrlich", loyal, strong, tough, robust, sensual, handsome and grows to be 5' 11" (four inches taller than Bellow himself, thus achieving one of the author's personal aspirations). He also feels both obliged (or obligated) in the pursuit of his own self-improvement, and obliging in the support of others. If anything, his greatest risk is that others can easily take advantage of him, his friendship and his generosity. This is not to say he is an easy con. It is his nature, his character, and in the words of Heraclitus, "a man's character is his fate." A Woman's Influence on a Man's Fate While Augie's adventures are necessarily masculine, women play a vital role at every step as mother (Mama, Grandma Lausch, Mrs Renling), lover (Lucy, Sophie, Thea, Stella) and friend (Mimi). Mrs Renling is almost as ambitious for Augie as Grandma Lausch: "An educated man with a business is a lord." Cousin Anna Coblin shares the view that Augie deserves to succeed: "You should know only happiness, as you deserve." Working Class Politics One of Augie's mentors, Mr Einhorn points out that he is a contrarian: "This was the first time that anyone had told me anything like the truth about myself. I felt it powerfully. That, as he said, I did have opposition in me, and great desire to offer resistance and to say 'No!' which was as clear as could be, as definite a feeling as a pang of hunger." Augie spends some of his apprenticeship in life as a union organiser. He is good at it and popular, except with rival unions. Like Bellow himself, Augie reads up on Marx and becomes an anti-Stalinist Trotskyist for a while. He even sees Trotsky in Mexico from a distance, just days before his assassination. (Bellow himself missed meeting Trotsky by days.) However, Augie's heart is not behind the cause at this grass roots level, especially when he has unresolved issues with Thea to deal with. The Universal Eligibility to Be Noble I was always disappointed that, in his later novels, Bellow became less left-wing and more conservative and curmudgeonly. To a certain extent, he moved with the times, in response to revelations about the reality of Soviet Communism and the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I don't think he ever became a fully-fledged Neo-Conservative, more what we called an Anti-Anti-Communist, someone who was sympathetic to the Left, but was not a supporter of McCarthyite tactics. He was a writer, not an activist. Like Augie, to quote James Atlas, he was more interested in experiencing "life's intellectual, aesthetic and sensual pleasures". However, more specifically, in terms of Augie's worldview, what both author and character seemed to believe in was "the universal eligibility to be noble". They were not so much concerned with the primacy of Equality, whether of outcome or income, but the equal opportunity to achieve Nobility in all the senses that make a human civilized and a civilization great. "I am an American, Chicago Born" This might all sound very obvious and trite to you, but I first read "Augie March", when I was defining my own political and cultural views, and Bellow's and Augie's example was absolutely vital to me, especially because, part of my own intellectual development occurred in an anti-intellectual context, where it was reassuring to know that intelligence and personal dynamism could be combined successfully in one person. The other reason I am so protective and assertive of the merits of this novel is what it represented in the America of 1953. Bellow was a Jew, a member of a race that had been denied entry into society, members clubs, golf clubs, academia and the cultural intelligentsia. Bellow's third, most ambitious novel burst onto the American literary scene with the following memorable words: "I am an American, Chicago born…and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted." Augie was asserting his own Americanness, opposed to any attempt to marginalize him because of his racial or religious background. He was an American, first, a Jew, an American Jew. There was no inconsistency between the two qualities. He was proud to be both. He was proud to be the one. When I recently read and reviewed "The Great Gatsby", I wrote about a Capitalist America, that survived and arguably thrived in some way by maintaining an exclusivity. Perhaps, Gatsby's only failure, the reason he could grasp the American Dream as a Holy Grail and find that it disintegrated in his hands, was that he didn't realise that he wasn't welcome by those who were already at the top. In a way, Jay Gatsby handed the baton onto Augie March, who then insisted on making his way through those doors wedged closed, so that more people could follow him and have their contribution to America recognised and respected. Whereas "The Great Gatsby" describes exclusion, "Augie March" conveys a message of inclusion, not necessarily assimilation, but co-existence in harmony of purpose and outcome. So "Augie March" was a major assertion and achievement for an American Jew, an even greater achievement when the novel won the National Book Award for the most distinguished American novel of 1953. I am still more sentimental about this book than "Herzog" or "Humboldt's Gift", and therefore I am motivated to say that "Augie March" was a large part of the argument for Bellow's entitlement to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. I am not an American, I am not Chicago born, I am not a Jew. However, the thing about "Augie March", this book written by a 38 year old American Jew, almost 20 years younger than I am now, is that it resounded with me all this way across the world, once upon a time 20 years after it was written, then again 60 years after it was written, and during every moment in between and for every moment during which my heart might beat and my mind might imagine afterwards. Free-Style, In My Own Way It wasn't just the subject matter that appealed to me, though that would have been enough. It was the language. Bellow's first sentence announced his modus operandi: he wasn't going to be constrained by convention, he was going to write free-style, in his own way, autodidactically, because he wanted to communicate what he had learned himself, rather than being taught. As it turned out, he wrote like he spoke. It didn't read like it was written, it sounded like it was said and we were listening to it. Augie could speak as if in the street, as if in a bar, as if in a club. It was entertaining, persuasive, informative, endearing, inspiring. Even when most intellectual, his words were still beautiful to listen to. This was no smug Ivy League belletrist pronouncing from the comfort and security of his study. As Bellow has revealed, not a word of this novel was written in Chicago. This was a man jotting down the intricate workings of his mind while sailing across the Atlantic or sitting drinking coffee in a Parisian or Mediterranean cafe. Like Joyce's portrait of Dublin, this was Chicago and New York remembered from afar, painted from memory, complete with its own deli sights and smells and Yiddish rhythms and intonation. Bellow never descended into purple prose. Everything seemed to be in exactly the right place, as required to communicate effectively. Yet frequently, I wondered at the beauty of his prose, speculating on whether anybody had ever used this combination of simple words in this precise way before. I'll leave you with a random sampling of sentences that appealed: "I have always tried to become what I am." "I have a feeling with respect to the axial lines of life, with respect to which you must be straight or else your existence is merely clownery, hiding tragedy." "Happy as a god." "You are the author of your own death. What is the weapon? The nails and hammer of your character. What is the cross? Your own bones on which you gradually weaken." "Mama was beginning to have the aging stiffness and was somewhat bowlegged; she enjoyed the cold air though, and still had her calm smooth color of health." "She could be singular too, when she'd swagger or boast or vie against other women; or fish compliments, or force me to admire her hair or skin, which I didn't have to be forced to do." "I felt her conduct like a kind of touching athletic prowess." "There was the object of these wicked thoughts with a warm healthy face, looking innocent and happy to see me. What a beauty! My heart whanged without a pity for me. I already saw myself humbled in the dust of love, the god Eros holding me down with his foot and forcing all kinds of impossible stuff on me." "We were risen up high with pleasure. We had all the luck in love we could ask, and it was maybe improved by the foreignness we found in each other." Nobility Rewarded with a Nobel Prize Here is an extract from Bellow's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. It gives some insight into the Nobility of the thinking doing being and its origin in the quest to know ourselves and others, in other words, in Augie's quest: "When complications increase, the desire for essentials increases too. The unending cycle of crises that began with the First World War has formed a kind of person, one who has lived through terrible, strange things, and in whom there is an observable shrinkage of prejudices, a casting off of disappointing ideologies, an ability to live with many kinds of madness, an immense desire for certain durable human goods - truth, for instance, or freedom, or wisdom. "I don't think I am exaggerating; there is plenty of evidence for this. Disintegration? Well, yes. Much is disintegrating but we are experiencing also an odd kind of refining process. And this has been going on for a long time. "Looking into Proust's Time Regained I find that he was clearly aware of it. His novel, describing French society during the Great War, tests the strength of his art. Without art, he insists, shirking no personal or collective horrors, we do not know ourselves or anyone else. "Only art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides - the seeming realities of this world. "There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. "This other reality is always sending us hints, which, without art, we can't receive. "Proust calls these hints our 'true impressions.' The true impressions, our persistent intuitions, will, without art, be hidden from us and we will be left with nothing but a 'terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.' "Tolstoy put the matter in much the same way. A book like his Ivan Ilyitch also describes these same 'practical ends' which conceal both life and death from us. In his final sufferings Ivan Ilyitch becomes an individual, a "character", by tearing down the concealments, by seeing through the 'practical ends.'"