Rating: 
Summary: Nobody Makes It Through Life Alive
Review: When I was a kid, some of my classmates already knew what they wanted to be. They marched in a straight line towards the goal. I, however, never knew what I wanted to do. I liked studying, but had no vision of a future. I drifted along and climbed into whatever boats came within reach. Augie March is a young Chicagoan from a broken home, who drifts with the tides as well, in the period 1927-1947. He winds up smuggling illegal immigrants, stealing books, travelling to Mexico, trying to train an eagle to catch iguanas, and playing poker. After a few good, bad and indifferent experiences with women, he joins the Merchant Marine during World War II, gets married to a would-be actress, and survives a ship torpedoing. When we leave Augie, he's making illegal business deals in Europe. Has he ever made a really conscious decision ? It's not clear. Bellow's novel is full of humor, philosophy, and insights on life. For example, on page 305 --"But I had the idea also that you don't take so wide a stand that it makes a human life impossible, nor try to bring together irreconciliables that destroy you, but try out what of human you can live with first."
THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH is an almost endless literary parade of portraits, of weird and wonderful characters from many walks of life. It's like a pilgrimage back in time to another America, another age---perhaps more innocent in some respects, but not so smooth, not so well-rounded, a thrusting, struggling America where raw money power arbited so much. Even though the book could have been cut down a bit here and there because 617 pages is overlong, Bellow's novel will remain a classic of American and world fiction for two reasons. First, because human nature scarcely changes. So many of the people surrounding Augie March are universal characters, found everywhere and everywhen. Their motives are not simple, their behavior sometimes inexplicable, but always within the realm of the word "human". They strive, they succeed, they fail, they cop out, and they never remain the same. They transform as they live. Life reshapes them. The second reason that I think this book will remain a classic-and the reason why I'm giving it five stars on Amazon---is the language. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote clearly and simply. Perhaps we can say that Hawthorne and Melville's prose was very ornate, stylistic. Faulkner....well, yes, Faulkner. But Bellow's prose reminded me of nothing so much as a Persian carpet---colorful, ornate, and full of useless little frills that lead nowhere, do not relate to much, and yet add such richness to the text. Some examples that I liked (but the novel is chock full of them) p.156 "For there was his stability in the green leather seat, plus his unshaking, high-placed knees beside the jade onion of the gear knob, his hands trimmed with sandy hairs on the wheel, the hypersmoothness of the motor that made you feel deceived in the speedometer that stood at eighty."
p.205 on the ancient Greeks " But still they are the admiration of the rest of the mud-sprung, famine-knifed, street-pounding, war-rattled, difficult, painstaking, kicked in the belly, grief and cartilage mankind, the multitude, some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius of chaos smoke, some inside a heaving Calcutta midnight, who very well know where they are."
p.227 `Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and all the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vault-like rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods ?"
Wow ! If you like writing like this, if you want a rich feast of language, Bellow is your man and this is your novel.
Rating: 
Summary: I have been reading this book for TEN MONTHS now
Review: and I'm only up to page 175. Granted, in the past ten months, I have read about 40 other books, but still....
The first two books I ever read by Bellow were the first two books he wrote: "Dangling Man," and "The Victim." I didn't love them, but I did like them, and they did not take me long to complete.
Then I read "Mr. Sammler's Planet" and "Herzog," and I LOVED them.
Then I read the novella "Seize the Day," which I didn't care for, and it took me forever to finish, despite its short length.
So, now I'm reading "Augie," and I've set a goal to finish this book by New Year's Day, 2005. But I have a feeling I should change that "5" to a "6."
Fellow readers, send some good vibes my way that I finish this book by 2005, or else I may be "marching" with Augie until I draw my last breath!
P.S. Because of my love for "Herzog" and "Sammler," I will never give up on Saul Bellow. I have "Humboldt's Gift" waiting patiently on my bookshelf for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Impressive and yet- Saul and Augie, can't we get on with it?
Review: For what has been widely described as both a picaresque and coming-of-age novel, Augie March is neither a quick read nor an easy one. Okay, there's no rule that requires novels in these categories to be either. But still and all, one somehow feels uneasy, given the various changes in locale and steady aging of the protagonist, that Bellow (or Augie) so steadfastly refuses to get on with it already. Much of the novel is rendered in a convoluted narrative style-Augie's voice-that may be termed ornate. Or off-putting. Or ornately off-putting. Intended to echo, presumably, the Yiddish, German and Russian speech patterns Augie grows up hearing in Chicago during the twenties and thirties, this narrative device may in fact do that; but its syntactical wanderings soon begin to remind one, whatever their authenticity, of the criticism once leveled at Henry Luce's beloved Timestyle: "Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind." Lexicon also figures in the curious mix, as words are combined in unexpected ways-sometimes cleverly (and with a kind of mini-revelation effect: you mean you can say that?) but just as often, apparently, randomly--just for the heck of it. Augie likes to talk (write), and what comes out, comes out: "Many repeated pressures with the same effect as one strong blow, that was [Einhorn's] method, he said, and it was his special pride that he knew how to use the means contributed by the age to connive as ably as anyone else; when in a not so advanced time he'd have been mummy-handled in a hut or somebody might have had to help him be a beggar in front of a church, the next thing to a memento mori or, more awful, a reminder of what difficulties there were before you could even become dead." [...] "On the final day she watched the trunk wag down the front stairs, on the back of the mover, with an amazing, terrible look of presidency, and supervised everything, every last box, in this fashion, gruesomely and violently white so that her mouth's corner hairs were minutely apparent, but in rigid-backed aristocracy, full face to the important transfer to something better from this (now that she turned from it) disgracefully shabby flat of a deserted woman and her sons whom she had preserved while a temporary guest." [...] "Quiet, quiet, quiet afternoon in the back-room study, with an oil cloth on the library table, invisible cars snoring and trembling toward the park, the sun shining into the yard outside the window barred against housebreakers, billiard balls kissing and bounding on the felt and sponge rubber, and the undertaker's back door still and stiller, cats sitting on the paths in the Lutheran gardens over the alley that were swept and garnished and scarcely ever trod by the chin-tied Danish deaconesses who'd come out on the cradle-ribbed and always fresh-painted porches of their home." There is much to be enjoyed and admired in all this-but at a pace, of course, that can only be determinedly leisurely, as sentences and paragraphs (often enough the same thing) demand re-reading for full appreciation. And while one is doing the necessary appreciating, a small voice in some northwest anterior lobe of the reader's brainpan is becoming more insistent all the while: yes-yes, but where is this getting us? An interesting cast of characters is presented; the novel's locations are admirably painted in; the years move along, from the twenties through the Crash, the Depression and the war; and yet the principal development one cannot help but wait for-Augie's, as these are his adventures, after all-simply does not, well, develop. The hero is a listener, a passive-aggressive; he has considerable native intelligence and a hungry mind, but no real resolve to put either to work for his own benefit or that of others. Ideas, ideologies, approaches to life and love and various behavior patterns are introduced to Augie; he picks and chooses, learns and doesn't learn, sort of grows and doesn't grow. In the end, working in post-war Europe as a middle-level black marketeer, the hero is in fact little changed from the Chicago street urchin of two decades before. And little concerned by this fact. Which leads one to wonder: should anyone else be? Are we not vastly more concerned over the fate of Tom Jones, or Holden Caufield, or (closer to home here) Duddy Kravitz-or just about any other coming-of-age/picaresque hero you can think of ? Yes, we are. Augie March's dilemma-what exactly he wants to do with his life-has taken up a dense 557 pages and remained unresolved. This has been called "existential." Fine. No one says that life offers everyone a workable "resolution." But that may be why novels aren't written about everyone. Whatever name one assigns Augie's condition, in any case, the fact remains that all his adventuring leaves him in a state of self-inflicted inconclusiveness-and leaves us muttering okay, okay-get on with it!
Rating:
Summary: He Tries!
Review: He is a good-hearted young man who tries to make a go of it, but, as Stella says, falls into the whims and desires of so many people he meets. He is taken along on a trip to smuggle people form Canada, goes along with his brother's whims and practically marries a woman chosen for him, goes to the shore with an employer, who wants to adopt him, runs off to Mexico with a strange woman and her eagle, ends up in Europe with yet another woman he doesn't say no to, and finds that marriage is less than he would have wanted. He doesn't seem to be able to take control of his own life. Undoubtedly there are many people like this, good hearted with a streak of innocence, but winding up with something less than success. And throughout the book one can see Bellow's disenchantment with rampant Capitalism, which is evident with the successful men in Augies experiences. I like Augie, and I sympathize with him. It's a good read . . get to know him, and learn about yourself.
Rating:
Summary: American literature.
Review: I used to think american literature was useless. Now I'm starting to see that there are many gems hidden inside them. There are reasons why some books do well and others do not.
This all has to do with truth. The books that are older and still seem to be around are books of truth. "A lie lasts for a moment, but the truth lasts a lifetime."
-Calvin Newman
Rating:
Summary: A nice bunch of short stories
Review: I'm not going to write a long winded literary review. I think this book is best read as a series of short stories. I read a chapter a day and was able to get through it that way. I never had much interest in finding out what happened next. If you're into picaresque novels a la Tom Jones you will love this otherwise I would humbly suggest you skip it. It's too long and it rambles pointlessly. As I was reading it I wondered if an editor was ever used by Bellow. I plan to read at least one more of Mr. Bellow's works. Hopefully, it will be better than this one. One reviewer states this book alone deserved the Nobel Prize. I saw nothing in this book that deserved a Nobel Prize and most of you won't either. This book is nothing compared to Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway or Morrison who have won the great prize and who's work blows this away.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive and yet- Saul and Augie, can't we get on with it?
Review: Recently Martin Amis claimed this was the great American novel, and it's as good a candidate as I've read. Bellow's long descriptions of city characters cascade through the mind, and create an instantly memorable style. Writers will be awed.
Rating:
Summary: Life is hard and then you get married.
Review: Slow moving story of a young romantic growing up in Depression torn Chicago. Augie pursues love, happiness, and the meaning of life. Unfortunately Augie finds only unhappiness in his pursiut for love, while he learns to understand life only when it has dealt him misfortune. The supporting charcters are compelling and memorable and Augie learns from everyone he encounters. My difficulty was with Bellow's prose which was long and ponderous and sometimes over my head. I would re-read many paragraphs and still not completely understand what Bellow was trying to say. Also if this book was supposed to be comedic the humor was lost on me.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good, But Not a Page Turner
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The American Novel
Review: The perfect gift for any male who has learned to read. Although it is filled with daunting historical and anthropological references, one needn't be afraid to skip them. Bellow would be the first to understand. This is the greatest American novel and nothing else is even close. Melville, Hawthorne, James, Dreiser, Lewis, Wolfe, Hemmingway, Mailer, et. al., are amateurs by comparison. If you are going to read one book in your lifetime, THIS IS THE ONE. What is it about? It's about everything: the straight dope, no quarter given, no sacred cow spared, no good deed unpunished, no relief for either the virtuous or the wicked; humanity celebrated and exposed; the old, the young, connivers, sufferers, strivers, slackers, cons, cripples, pols, debutantes, grand dames, burghers, prize fighters, polymaths, revolutionists, feminists, whores, and tycoons; authority, philosopy, religion, politics, economics, civics, tribalism, philanthropy, sex, money, pride, vanity, hope, despair, all tickled relentlessly and effortlessly, toppled of their own weight. Bellow looks into the void and comes away chuckling, and so will you if you've got the right stuff. If you haven't got it, let Augie help you find it, but don't forget to read between the lines. Whatever you do, don't let academic idiots and caviling critics divert you from reading it.
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