Herzog

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Writing, Boring Book
Review: I bought Herzog because I wanted a book on madness. My bad. Seize the Day fits the bill much better. Saul Bellow is a brilliant wordsmith but he does not produce particular provocative books. Herzog is flat. I didn't even finish the book. So Herzog gets three stars because Saul Bellow is a writing god but the book fails to attain glory.

Rating:
Summary: Bellow an Excellent Wordsmith but...
Review: I can't get over the fact that there's nothing compelling about Moses. What is the rational behind him doing all these stupid acts? Why should I care?

In case you're wondering I've been over Herzog twice. Once when I was a kid and my dad listened to it on tape. I remember one night, after listening to a particularly banal middle passage in the book, turning to my father and asking in an annoyed tone, "dad, why are you listening to this? " He shrugged his shoulders, unable to answer himself. Several minutes later he mumbled something to the effect that this had one a Nobel prize. I laughed, because I thought he was mistaken. This? This whiny, self-centered/deprecating rant against the unfairness of being a "renaissance" man won the Nobel? I've written more compelling literature on the insides of birthday cards (and much shorter I might add).

Later, as a college student, I decided to give a Nobel Laureate another try. I began to piece together the reasons for popularity. Bellow tapped into a market that was starving for literature that represented a particular group of people.

What is it with authors like Cheever, Bellow and Roth that draws out all the suburbanites. Is it the vapid caricatures pawned off as real people? Is it the pathetic attempts at dissecting frivolous dialogues as Shakespearean prose? Perhaps it's the fact that all these writers dramatize the pointlessness of everyday life to the hilt, making us think it's a Greek tragedy? These writers make a slip look like the collaspe of the Roman Empire.

Herzog is beyond pathetic. And Bellow's attempt at making us love this phantom character by stuffing him with references to literature and philosophy fails.

If I ever have to write a blow-off novel I'll be sure to make it about wandering professors and cram the text with various references to classic literature and music. Then, I too, will be heralded as a genius of staggering insight. Who knows, maybe even a Nobel. If this wins, anything is possible.

Rating:
Summary: Bellow is the Master!
Review: I don't think any other contemporary writer can write with the realism or conviction of Saul Bellow. While most writers these days are going for the absurd and black humor, Bellow tells tales of people dealing with issues that threaten to tear them apart and he can do it in a way that makes the book a fascinating and entertaining read.

Herzog is, of course, no exception. Moses Herzog is a likable fellow who really doesn't deserve all that happened to him, but still has his flaws (he ponders killing his ex-wife and finds that he wouldn't have any problem doing it, although he doesn't), and that makes him, and his problems, all the more real. The way he tears his heart out in his letters, letters that are never sent, in a strange and interesting way to look into the soul of a man baring himself to the world.

Along with Mr. Sammler's Planet, this book forms some of the pillars of modern literature and are written in a style that is often emulated, but never equalled. Don't read those copying Bellow's style, read the man himself. Start here, start anywhere. Just read the book already.

Rating:
Summary: America's Greatest Living Writer
Review: I read Herzog after The Adventures of Augie March and am now reading Henderson the Rain King. I'll probably follow it with Humboldt's Gift, which awaits on my night table. In my humble opinion America currently simply doesn't possess a more gifted living writer than Saul Bellow. Herzog's letters to both the living and dead are brilliant epiphanies that showcase the depth of his genius. His writing style is simple, straightforward and captivating for a sensitive reader,who seeks a true literary experience. Bellow draws full,round portraits of characters and they come alive. Moses Herzog is a misfit, an intellectual whose preoccupation with his aesoteric life produces maddening, comic and sometimes tragic conflicts with the realities of everyday existence. I wish America read less Stephen King and John Grisham, and more Saul Bellow: long after American best-sellers are dead,buried and forgotten, Bellow's legacy to American literature will be remembered and treasured.

Rating:
Summary: A comic masterpiece
Review: I was prompted to write this because most of the reviewers published here miss the plain fact that Herzog is extremely funny. Herzog writes letters. He writes manic, crazy, poignant, inspired letters to people both living and dead: to his friends, to his shrink, to his divorce lawyer, to the President of the United States, and to Heidegger, to Schrodinger, to Nietzche and to Willie Sutton. It is, of course, one of Saul Bellow's best novels, written at the height of his carrer, which would place it somewhere on the list of the Top 10 or 20 best American novels of the 20th century. Herzog is worth both reading and re-reading, but the book is clearly not for everyone. It is as personal, realistic, and autobiographical as The Adventures of Augie March, but it is significantly more difficult to read in terms of both style and content. It is probably less accessible than Augie, the work of a maturer artist. Readers should expect neither a conventional plot or a chronological narrative, although the book is highly structured and is brought to a very satisfying and almost inspirational resolution as Herzog regains his equilibrium, which he loses to such comic effect in the early going.

Rating:
Summary: Frightening Recognition
Review: I'm not sure why a constant reader like myself has waited so long (into my early forties) to begin working my way through Bellow. A critic's favorite, somehow there was always someone else who seemed a little more sexy and appealing.

In the past six months I have read The Adventures of Augie March and now Herzog and I can only say that I think Bellow is absolutely brilliant. Certainly more brilliant than myself as I must admit he loses me here and there in the philosophic passages. I also find myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs far more often than usual.

I read one review which stated that traces of Bellow could be seen in almost every prominent writer of fiction in the last three decades. I'm not enough of an authority to confirm this but I certainly recognize him in some of my favorites like Martin Amis and even Nick Hornby.

I am not Jewish and while an academic of sorts (a psychiatrist by trade) not blessed with Bellow's education in the classics. But approaching middle age and with a tragic marital history, to say that I can identify with Herzog/Bellow (nearly one and the same according to a recent New Yorker article) is an understatement. His recognition that his ex-wife has a raging personality disorder and the absurdity of a man of such intelligence having such little practical ability to control his emotions is painfully familiar.

On reading the previously posted reviews it is apparent that this is a love it or hate it book.

But for anyone who appreciates good writing and wants to learn about life it is a wonderful read. I would put it on my list of great books and if you are a man in or approaching middle age I could not recommend it highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: A necessary lesson on life?
Review: Is Herzog a necessary lesson on life? One reviewer has suggested that everyone should read it as a lesson on life. The real question is Bellow's relationship to objectivity in Herzog. Nabokov has stated that it is childish to see the author in his art; however, I cannot help but to see a postmodern struggle in the character of Herzog. Has Bellow seperated himself from his main character? Is the result (which is a wonderful characterization)worth it? The relevence of Moses Herzog to the reader is in question.

Rating:
Summary: Bellow-Par
Review: It is stunning that this book won the 1965 National Book Award. It is as tedious as it is trite. One of Bellow's most average efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Long-winded. Wordy. Hard to read past page twenty.
Review: Like I said in my summary. Long-winded. Wordy. Hard to read past page twenty.

Rating:
Summary: Herzog
Review: Moses E Herzog is going mad. He's aware of this, doesn't seem to bother him too much, though he can sense that it worries his friends and families. He begins to write letters, first to people he knows, then to celebrities, dead philosophers, himself; letters he never intends on sending but that act as a therapeutic activity for his troubled mind. By the end of the novel, we know Herzog, understand him, sympathise with him, even love him.

His second wife Madeleine recently ran away with his best friend, taking their young child with her. Herzog is filled with hatred towards her, but, strangely, it is an oddly amiable hatred. He recognises her good qualities, wishes her well in life, and generally doesn't want to ever see her again no matter what. The breakup with her is certainly the pivotal point for his madness, most of the events and thoughts in the novel surround her or the marriage.

Through his letters, Herzog explores his past and previous relationships. A letter to an old school friend will trigger memories of his failed crook of a father, a letter to a favoured philosopher will trigger memories of sleeping late with Madeleine and making love. We are rocketed back and forth, from Europe to America, childhood to adulthood with ease and skill, it never jars, but flows naturally.

Herzog is a very complicated character. He is aware of his own weaknesses, but only some he tries to fix. Others he is comfortable with, safe in the knowledge of what they are. He is a man who, while lacking confidence in some areas, has supreme confidence in who he is as a person. He does come off as arrogant sometimes, but he is aware of it, and to an extent enjoys the mild prestige of being the wise, in-print professor.

The narrator is mostly separate from Herzog, but he follows the professor's erratic, excited, jumpy speech. Occasionally the narrator will slip into the first POV, referring to Herzog as 'I', but this is rare. For the most part, the narrator is fresh, exuberant and in love with life - much like Herzog himself.

By the end of the novel, Herzog is complete. He breathes, lives and walks among us. There is no problem with believing that this is a real person. He has flaws, he has problems, he perhaps philosophises a little too much to be of any practicable use (his words), but by the end of the book, I wouldn't have him any other way.