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The Adventures of Augie March Penguin Classics Saul Bellow 9780143039570 Books

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The Adventures of Augie March Penguin Classics Saul Bellow 9780143039570 Books

"I am an American, Chicago-born, that somber city ...and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, 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."

This, the opening paragraph of Bellow's large, sprawling, and exuberant novel, "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953) announces its themes at the outset. We have the narrator's, Augie March's, own voice, both pugnacious and reflective. First and foremost, Augie March is "an American". His story will be a reflection on the American experience, especially as it involves large cities and the Chicago where Augie March grew up. Augie, looking ahead to the story he is about to tell, describes himself as free-wheeling, and learning about things as his life impulsively proceeds. Augie is also a lover of books and learning, as witnessed by his allusion to the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who taught that "a man's character is his fate." Augie will learn and expand upon this lesson as he goes along and also will learn about many other books and ideas.

Augie's story is centered in Chicago. It begins just before the Depression, when Augie is a young boy and continues through WW II and its aftermath in the 1940's when Augie is married and living as a black marketeer in Paris, wondering where life will take him next. In between, Augie tells a long yarn full of adventure, turns and twists, difficulties, and women. Augie is also a highly reflective individual, and the boisterousness of his story is accompanied by thoughts on the course of his life and its significance.

Augie has two brothers, the ambitious and successful older brother Simon and the feeble-minded George. Augie's father abandoned the family at an early age. Augie and his brothers are raised by "Grandma Lausch" who in fact is unrelated to him and by his quiet and unassuming mother. Simon is intelligent and alive to the main chance. He graduates first in his high school, marries well, and becomes a highly successful entrepreneur.

Augie's life takes a different course and is harder to define. He partly goes where life takes him and he partly makes his own opportunities. As an adolescent he becomes involved with an entreprenurial swindler named Einhorn who becomes the first of Augie's many protectors. He takes up with a rich family in Evanston, Ill, who offer him security and who wish to adopt him. But Augie goes his own way. He has many jobs, some honest, some not, reads voraciously even though he never graduates from college, has numerous love affairs, serious, and casual, and somehow works himself through a life of ups and downs. He becomes a labor organizer, travels to Mexico training an eagle with an eccentric woman whom he loves, enlists in the Merchant Marine, where he spends days on the open sea with a crazy mate before he is rescued, and ultimately marries Stella, an actress and one of the many women from his past. With his marriage to Stella, Augie finds he learns the meaning of love, for all his shortcomings and those of his wife.

Augie learns to see himself as an individual, neither determined by his circumstances nor fully independent of them. He becomes a life-long thinker who learns from books as well as from his own experience. He tries to learn to shape himself, to the extent he can, and to take his experiences and be happy. His story is a massive commentary on being an American and on the meaning of Heraclitus's dictum that "character is fate", the themes announced as the book begins. The book rejects the themes of alienation and of being an outsider that were and remain a feature of American intellectual life and that were prominent in Bellow's first novel, "Dangling Man." Alienation gives way to activity, a commitment to the promise and value of American life, and a sense that literature, philosophy, and learning can help to better the human condition.

"The Adventures of Augie March" was the first of three of Bellow's novels that received the National Book Award. It is a rewarding but difficult read that pulls in many directions, street-wise tough and intellectually demanding, simultaneously. Bellow captures the voice of the streets of Jewish Chicago, with long, involuted sentences, passion, humor, and swagger. The book is long and diffuse and at times it flags. In its robust and energetic portrayal of a person, a city, and a nation, and in its devotion to literature and thought, "Augie March" remains an inspiring story.

Robin Friedman


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The Adventures of Augie March Penguin Classics Saul Bellow 9780143039570 Books Reviews

A brilliant writer writes brilliantly and produced as brilliant book. Not an easy read Augie March can require a beside dictionary and a world history encyclopedia finishing this extraordinary read gives one a satisfied feeling of accomplishment.
It's a good read and well worth your time but it's not the easiest read and definitely has its dull moments.
The book is fascinating and at times overwhelming. Bellow endlessly juxtaposes street growls with soliloquies that would make Shakespeare proud -- and often from the same character. At times, this is brilliant; at times, off-putting. If Don Quixote took place in Chicago (and Mexico, and New York), this would be it.
Bellow's Augie March is a Chicago orphan, always an outsider, penniless, on the make, usually on the wrong side of the law. It's not so much what he does or happens to him that makes this story wonderful; it's the minute descriptions of people, from the main characters right down to the ancillary ones.
Augie March is an astonishing book written by a great observer of the human condition. Bellow's writing style takes some getting used too but once you get into the rhythm after maybe 15 pages it becomes a page turner. Bellow is particularly adept at describing situations and characters with a richness of depth not encountered in other authors.
Two lists of the 100 best books in the English language ninclude this book along with such heady company as "Moby Dick," "Bleak House and "The Heart of Darkness." That said, I have decidedly mixed emotions concerning "The Adventures of Augie March." The book was a difficult and challlenging read. I am ever grateful for a tome which enhances my vocabulary with such word as copal, caracul and acedia. My take is the Bellow, at least in part, was deliberately showing off his knowledge of arcane mythological biblical, historical and mythological recondite allusions.It did keep me at Wikapedia. He referred to an Italian named lord who upon looking it up was a fictional character fabricated by Bellow to describe someone pompous and pretensious. What would have the reader done in the pre internet days? I could not fathom why Bellow shoehorned the Mexico trip into the narrative I found it so tedious that I left 2/3 of the way into Augie's journey.
The dictionary definition of picaresque is "of or relating to an episodic style of fiction describing a rough, dishonest but appealing hero." Without a it
doubt this books encompasses this description. It paints a vivid picture of America notably but not limited to Chicago and Jewish live in the 1920s to 1940s.I especially like his writing style, often luminous but on occasion complicated to the point of being tortuous. Certtain passages paint a noteworthy word picture of various persons and events. Augie himself is a most engaging if flawed character. The rise and fall and rise and fall and once agin rise of his ever resourceful brother Simon is a superb character delineation worthy of the best such in literature.
Despite the above cited faults or perhaps, in part because of them, and the demands of the reader "The Adventures of Augie March" deserves to be in the pantheon of great English language novels.
I can hardly believe it took me so many years to get around to reading this novel. Augie March is one of the unique figures in American literature, a follower who constantly finds himself the object of manipulation by others. While some readers have insisted that they found him unlikeable, I felt a great deal of sympathy toward him and found myself pulling for him. Augie is also self destructive and that infuriated me at times, but I eventually came to expect it.

I will say that the opening chapters made me work. This is not a quick read. But once I fell into Bellows's style and got accustomed to the philosophical monologues both from Augie and other characters , I found it hard to put down.
"I am an American, Chicago-born, that somber city ...and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, 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."

This, the opening paragraph of Bellow's large, sprawling, and exuberant novel, "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953) announces its themes at the outset. We have the narrator's, Augie March's, own voice, both pugnacious and reflective. First and foremost, Augie March is "an American". His story will be a reflection on the American experience, especially as it involves large cities and the Chicago where Augie March grew up. Augie, looking ahead to the story he is about to tell, describes himself as free-wheeling, and learning about things as his life impulsively proceeds. Augie is also a lover of books and learning, as witnessed by his allusion to the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who taught that "a man's character is his fate." Augie will learn and expand upon this lesson as he goes along and also will learn about many other books and ideas.

Augie's story is centered in Chicago. It begins just before the Depression, when Augie is a young boy and continues through WW II and its aftermath in the 1940's when Augie is married and living as a black marketeer in Paris, wondering where life will take him next. In between, Augie tells a long yarn full of adventure, turns and twists, difficulties, and women. Augie is also a highly reflective individual, and the boisterousness of his story is accompanied by thoughts on the course of his life and its significance.

Augie has two brothers, the ambitious and successful older brother Simon and the feeble-minded George. Augie's father abandoned the family at an early age. Augie and his brothers are raised by "Grandma Lausch" who in fact is unrelated to him and by his quiet and unassuming mother. Simon is intelligent and alive to the main chance. He graduates first in his high school, marries well, and becomes a highly successful entrepreneur.

Augie's life takes a different course and is harder to define. He partly goes where life takes him and he partly makes his own opportunities. As an adolescent he becomes involved with an entreprenurial swindler named Einhorn who becomes the first of Augie's many protectors. He takes up with a rich family in Evanston, Ill, who offer him security and who wish to adopt him. But Augie goes his own way. He has many jobs, some honest, some not, reads voraciously even though he never graduates from college, has numerous love affairs, serious, and casual, and somehow works himself through a life of ups and downs. He becomes a labor organizer, travels to Mexico training an eagle with an eccentric woman whom he loves, enlists in the Merchant Marine, where he spends days on the open sea with a crazy mate before he is rescued, and ultimately marries Stella, an actress and one of the many women from his past. With his marriage to Stella, Augie finds he learns the meaning of love, for all his shortcomings and those of his wife.

Augie learns to see himself as an individual, neither determined by his circumstances nor fully independent of them. He becomes a life-long thinker who learns from books as well as from his own experience. He tries to learn to shape himself, to the extent he can, and to take his experiences and be happy. His story is a massive commentary on being an American and on the meaning of Heraclitus's dictum that "character is fate", the themes announced as the book begins. The book rejects the themes of alienation and of being an outsider that were and remain a feature of American intellectual life and that were prominent in Bellow's first novel, "Dangling Man." Alienation gives way to activity, a commitment to the promise and value of American life, and a sense that literature, philosophy, and learning can help to better the human condition.

"The Adventures of Augie March" was the first of three of Bellow's novels that received the National Book Award. It is a rewarding but difficult read that pulls in many directions, street-wise tough and intellectually demanding, simultaneously. Bellow captures the voice of the streets of Jewish Chicago, with long, involuted sentences, passion, humor, and swagger. The book is long and diffuse and at times it flags. In its robust and energetic portrayal of a person, a city, and a nation, and in its devotion to literature and thought, "Augie March" remains an inspiring story.

Robin Friedman