Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Augie March

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The Adventures of Auggie March is a difficult book to read, but when read slowly, it rewards your effort more than most books do.

Auggie is an odd character who meets a lot of other odd characters. During the course of his adventures, he learns a lot about the world, or says he does, but he's not good at applying what he learns to his own life, and he ends up in about as big a mess as he begins in. This is a little disappointing, but Auggie is not that sympathetic a character, so it's not as disappointing as it might be.

We learn a lot too. Saul Bellow studied sociology and anthropology, and he tells us a thing or two about the poor, and people who are down on their luck. At one point, Einhorn, Auggie's mentor, tells him: "Young fellows brought up in bad luck, like you, are naturals to keep the jails filled - the reformatories, all the institutions. What the state orders bread and beans long in advance for. It knows there's an element that can be depended on to come behind bars to eat it." Similarly informative passages, about business, love, the training of wild animals, etc., can be found by opening the book at random to almost any page. (In fairness, a good part of what's said is over-generalization or just not true, but still you're going to leave this book feeling pretty impressed by what the author knows.)

So why not five stars? For one thing, the writing doesn't exactly propel you from one page to the next. For another, the book is not very uplifting. You've heard of Man's Search for Meaning? This book comes very close to telling us that there isn't any. That's pretty hard to take.

absolutely essential if you are a young man (in his twenties) like i am. this is an exploration of a boys quest for other peoples pragmatism which at first, in each case he beleives to be beyond him by way of the affectations of absolute understanding imposed on his attentive personnality by them. these people define their own reality by their own authority whereas augie has not the confidence to do this. the turning point in the novel is when he realises that these people have no more authority than he does. this he realises from his meeting this girl "thea" who overshoots all of the boundaries that have been set by his previous opressive but intently beneficial influences. bellow finally concludes by introducing a new character that is a figure for endurance (as is the millionaire cripple einhorn) and suggesting that although augie is with an inapropriate whoman, and that he may never find it, that he will never give up on the idea that he will find love.
it is a difficult book with some obscure (modernist) proustian strange stuff that is incongruous with the down to earth pragmatism of the theme. but it is beutiffully written. and i found it a hard slog but am so glad that i endured it - things in life are often difficult. this is my desert island book. its greatness didnt hit me at first, but it did, and now i am convinced that if i hadnt read it i would lack ninety nine percent of the success that i have had since.

my language fails me. just read it.

As an author with my debut novel in its initial release, I am a great admirer of Saul Bellow. I think highly of all of his works, and I consider his ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH among his finest novels. To some degree, I suppose because of its title, I've always considered this book Bellow's 20th Century version of Mark Twain's 19th Century THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Augie March has also consistently reminded me of Tom Jones (the Fielding character, not the Welsh singer). Bellow's novel follows the picaresque adventures of a young man searching for a worthwhile fate. His adventures are believable, honest, and often hilarious. THE ADVENTRUES OF AUGIE MARCH is a landmark of 20th Century American literature.

I know - it was important in its time, but this book was one thankless slog for me. I so desperately wanted there to have been an editor, even though I know that its length and serial nature were groundbreaking at the time. I felt like I was back in highschool English class, in its worst incarnation.

(In response to various clowns, bores and book clubbers): Refusing to connect with Augie March is refusing to acknowledge the shots of brillance that can and should be absorbed while traversing through a universally chipped paint existance. To stop yourself short from engaging in the lets-run-through-the-park momentum of Augie's adventure, the thinking person's adventure, our adventure, is to settle for a poster of Paris because the trip is too much the hassle. Fair enough, the "adventure" had by Augie is Not an A to B plot-o-rama, spoon fed lessons learned, ring tosses at color coated Truth. Looks out, he's coming of age...and...he does it! Phew. No, it's not that. It's not loads of misanthropic scandal and unhinged naked nubiles to hold interest. It does expect a little more from us. But simple pages does not an interesting book make. Simple ideas lead to a hobby of televsion watching. Simple perspectives lead to lonely walks, and race riots, and war. If, the senses are geared up for expansion, then stretch out further and get in deeper, dig around in the broken shards and look in the windows, take up a new rhythm, don't turn it off. This book is vitality. Augie is taking us with him gang, all we have to do is tag along, and for the love of god, when the opportunity is there, by all means, pack quickly and go.

This book is long, overly descriptive, and difficult to read due to the constant addition of characters many of whom come and go without giving the reader a chance to care about them. There are chapters and characters that are more compelling than others - but it seems rather hit or miss. Also, more than once I found myself a page or two into a description when I realized that I couldn't remember who or what was being described. The worst part was spending energy and time, page after page only to have it end abruptly and seemingly without purpose. Lastly, it is important to mention that I was the only one of seven (three of whom are English teachers) in our book club that finished this book.

This was the book that had so many of Bellow's friends excited that he had broken out of his sophmore slump. However, the work is immense, wordy and, at times completely incomprehensible. What was Bellow attempting here? I can only imagine the fury at which he was scribbling (or typing) away in some of those opening chapters. If not for passages that I've since attempted to re read seven or eight times, I would consider this a great book. It is instead, an interesting, at times entertaining and worthwhile one. The spirit of the thing is enough to keep one reading, as I did, when there were many moments of lyrical prose to pull the rest of it along. Some of the characters are thin, except for Augie and his family. His brother and his in-law family are amusing and provide for setting and dialogue that are Bellow hallmarks.

Saul Bellow writing is very poetic and beautifully scripted - it's not straightforward to read, but then again since Bellow is examining the purposes of our lives, I wouldn't expect the novel and writing style to oversimplify our predicament. Augie is a poor Jewish boy growing up in Chicago - "that somber city" - in a broken home with his dictatorial Grandmother, abandoned mother, and two diametrically opposed brothers (Simon and George.) He finds his brother Simon obsessed with material facts and riches that he cannot possess. Whereas Augie maintains a carefree life experimenting and dabbling with various encounters with different people and places in Chicago, Mexico, and Europe - never quite satisfied or convinced of the importance of each situation. Augie resists the Machiavellian pursuits of his older brother Simon, and is willing to live as a pauper, and as a result, not be controlled by money, wives, children, and especially responsibilities.

Augie's plight is like any other introspective journey. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Bellow, I believe tries to not necessarily answer this question, but rather appreciates the quandary that many of us find ourselves in. At one point Augie's epiphany - the essential and natural course and purpose of life is each person's axial lines. Freedom of thought and emotions - and love our what keeps Augie in line with his purpose.

This is not an easy book to read, but a fascinating and poetic journey that requires time and patience from the reader. I am considering reading it again to soak in all of the details I missed. I wholeheartedly recommend this book; despite the ruminations of other reviewers that took offense to the existential tract of Saul Bellow, I believe that whether you believe in a chaotic or an ordered loving universe - either way you'll find the book interesting and the dilemma facing humans an interesting mess. The book took me 5 weeks to read - I have a voracious appetite for books and usually read them in much less time - so those of you considering reading this book - make sure you are in it for the long haul!

After the intellectual Left killed off God, they found themselves staring into the abyss; absent God what is the meaning of life? There have been many, mostly feeble, attempts to answer this question. The most disastrous have, of course, been Darwinism--we exist to propagate the species, Hegelianism/Marxism--there are World Historical forces in control and Existentialism--existence is it's own point. Saul Bellow seems to fall into a loose grouping with the Existentialists and The Adventures of Augie March is essentially an existentialist tract. In a return to the style of the picaresque novels (i.e., Tom Jones), Augie March bobs along from Chicago to Mexico to Europe to an open boat in the Atlantic, experiencing life and meeting a variety of characters--observing without judging, experiencing without changing, seeking without finding. Critics claim that this is a life affirming book; but life does not need to be affirmed, it simply is. One recalls Dr. Johnson's response to the argument that the material world does not exist: he kicked a rock and said, "I refute it thus!" The task before us as human beings is to find or bring meaning to life. Great literature illuminates the human condition and reveals truths which help us discern this meaning. Bellow fails in this basic task and does so at mindnumbing length.

GRADE: F

As a sum of landscapes, spaces and altitudes, America as a wilderness has already been explored. In fact, while early American history reveled in the most basic of freedoms that can be found in various lands untrod, the urge that drives us towards (and often away from) freedom remains--sometimes as a nuisance, almost always as a kind of tug away from the quotidian and run-of-the-mill. It's a distinctly American drive that leads us to defy laws and morays, explore the unexplored permutations of our innermost selves, and to transcend the expectations of family, friends and, of course, ourselves. Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March," ostensibly a celebration of the life in the 1930s of a sensitive drifter and searcher, is also a transfiguration of the American novel: The story of a Huckleberry Finn of the urban milleux.

Predating Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" by nearly a decade, "The Adventures of Augie March" tells the story of a young man from an impoverished Chicago neighborhood who rejects conventional expectations that he make the best of all good situations that, in other lives, would have led to riches and satisfaction. While his brother Simon goes out to find the quickest way to taste the cream of the business world, only to discover that it isn't at all the way to the happiness he'd imagined, Augie--a man who never quite makes the break from childhood into manhood but instead continues on the same unbroken line of judging the world through what refractions the lenses of his emotions augur--continually renews himself through a series of piqaresque adventures as he searches for "the axial lines" of his life.

After a miserably unsuccessful flirtation with petty crime (he helps a hoodlum buddy break into a basement), Augie, part of an entire generation of men who really didn't stand a chance at success in the world, at least once the Great Depression descended, journeys through the eccentricities of Chicago, a town that, like Augie, rejected the more conventional ways and means of the East Coast establishment as it came into its own as a great city. Falling under the official and unofficial tuteledges of a variety of oddballs, schnooks and characters, Augie often lucks out, too, meeting beautiful heiresses and slipping into High Society almost without really realizing it. However, regardless of the chance at ensnaring the easy dream, Augie withdraws, to the confoundment of his friends and mentors, only to be reborn again.

Perhaps the most sparkling episode occurs when Augie, enamored by the unconventional activities of his girlfriend, Thea, follows her to Mexico--where she buys an eagle and trains it to hunt huge lizards. How on earth did either of them manage to sleep with that eagle sitting on the dresser of the hotel room? Of course, regardless of the exotic character of this infatuation, the mission fails and Augie returns to Chicago, metaphor and emblem of all the freedom for which Augie yearns.

Each episode is represented by one of several paradigmatic figures; each episode a stage of a hero's journey, a step on darkened glass that cannot help but mirror a phase of every man's life. Poignantly possessing the colorations and expressive details of the hardships, the oddball twists and the distortions of American dreams mutated by the trials of economic depravity, "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow's earliest great novel, ruminates and vents like the wind across Lake Michigan. Of course, Augie is smarter than he thinks he is. If there is any imperfection at all in the story, it's that Augie is simply too smart to be believed.