Synopses & Reviews
Saul Bellow's rare talent has not only earned critical accolades, including the Nobel Prize, it has also made his books perennial bestsellers. Now, in a historic collector's edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic
The Adventures of Augie March, readers will rediscover the novels that laid the foundation for Bellow's towering career.
The comic tour-de-force The Adventures of Augie March (1953) introduced to American literature a startlingly original expressiveness-uninhibited, jazzy, infused with Yiddishisms and Depression-era voices. Ebullient irony bears Bellow's prose aloft. March comes of age in a Chicago bustling with characters as large and vital as the city itself, and his travels abroad lead him through love's byways and the disappointments of vanishing youth. Martin Amis calls it "the Great American Novel" for its "fantastic inclusiveness, its pluralism, its qualmless promiscuity. . . . Everything is in here."
Bellow's sparer first two novels possess a more Flaubertian precision. Dangling Man (1944) penetrates the psychology of a jobless man's anxiousness as he awaits draft orders. The Victim (1947), an increasingly nightmarish story of one man's extraordinary claims on a casual acquaintance, explores our obligations to others and the unfathomable workings of chance. After a half century, Bellow's earliest novels remain as fresh, incisive, and entertaining as ever. Included in this edition are helpful notes and a chronology of the author's life.
Synopsis
Winner of the Nobel Prize and a towering figure of twentieth-century literature, Saul Bellow secured his place as one of the most distinctive and significant writers of the postwar era with the publication of his third novel,
The Adventures of Augie March. This Library of America volume collects all three of Bellow's early works, beginning with
Dangling Man (1944), an incisive character study cast in the form of a diary that depicts the anguish and uncertainty of a man known only as Joseph. Expecting to be deployed to the war overseas, Joseph quits his job and finds himself increasingly on edge when his draft board defers his enlistment. The first of his many books to take place in Chicago,
Dangling Man is a spare, haunting novel in which Bellow lays bare Joseph's dilemma with rigorous precision and subtlety.
The Victim (1947), which Bellow described as "a novel whose theme is guilt," is an unsettling moral parable. Left alone in New York City while his wife is visiting her family, Asa Leventhal is confronted by a former co-worker whom he can barely remember. What seems like a chance encounter evolves into an uncanny bond that threatens to ruin Leventhal's life. As their relationship grows ever more volatile, Bellow stages a searching exploration of our obligations toward others.
In a radical change of direction, Bellow next wrote The Adventures of Augie March (1953). Its eponymous hero grows up in a bustling Chicago peopled by characters as large as vital as the city itself, then sets off on travels that lead him through the byways of love and the disappointments of a fast-vanishing youth. Exuberant, uninhibited, jazzy, infused with Yiddishisms and a panoply of Depression-era voices, Augie March is borne aloft by an ebullient sense of irony. Winner of the 1954 National Book Award and praised by writers and critics ranging from Alfred Kazin to Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, The Adventures of Augie March has had a lasting impact that shows no sign of abating.
About the Author
James Wood, editor, is senior editor at The New Republic. He is the author of The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (1999) and the novel The Book Against God (2003).
Table of Contents
Dangling man -- The victim -- The adventures of Augie March.