Rating: 
Summary: The Modern Age
Review: " You have to be learned to capture modernity in its full complexity and to assess its human cost," says the narrator, Chick early on in this latest masterpiece from the Nobel laureate.
Readers familiar with Saul Bellow will know that this is precisely what he has been doing for decades now.
The novel starts off as a precurser to a biography and ends up becoming that biography. The biography of Abe Ravelstein. Famous for his ideas. A millionaire because of his ideas, because of his thoughts. Which centre on love and death. And the notion of truth. That biography - of necessity to be gossipy and idiosyncratic- which could only be written by his friend and intellectual student, Chick.
As always Bellow does not shirk from confronting the big issues, the big questions.
Here love is seen as the quest for the Platonic ideal: we are all separated in two and then spend generation after generation seeking our missing half. The complication in the modern age is that the forces of everyday life conspire against this ("But you can't keep your innocence in this age" and my personal favourite, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?"). Ravelstein's damning summation of Chick's first marriage hits home: "But you falsified the image of your ex-wife. You'll say that it was for the sake of marriage but what kind of morality is that?"
Bellow shows though through the portrayal of Chick's relationship with his second wife that love can succeed amongst this post-modern madness ("Rosamund kept me from dying...") and that such love is "possibly the highest blessing of mankind".
But it is the two central characters facing up to their own mortality which seals the novel as a modern classic. "Nothing is more bourgeois than the fear of death..." is the cry but the realisation is that nothing is more natural than this. Ravelstein seeks the biography which could only be written by Chick as his shot at a kind of immortality, standing alongside the work he had written.
" You must not be swallowed up by the history of your time", charges Ravelstein.
Fair enough. But what Mr Bellow has actually done again is to write the history of his own time. And I stress the word 'again'.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written,
Review: entertaining, and, unfortunately, symbolically true. Why? Because it's a pseudo-biography of Alan Bloom, neo-con author of the fascinating, infuluential,and confused book "The Closing of the American Mind." Bellow was his friend and admirer, and has painted an interesting portrait of the man who taught students like Paul Wolfowitz. A Wolfowitz-like character appears several times in the book at the other end of a telephone line. Ravelstein is well-connected in DC. Unfortunately for people who love peace and freedom.
Rating: 
Summary: It's only alive while Ravelstein is
Review: In this faux memoir, Bellow gives us Abe Ravelstein, a fascinating, infuriating and ultimately delightful character. This is the book's problem. Being so much larger than life, Ravelstein's presence overwhelms all the other characters so that they totally disappear into the background. When Ravelstein dies, the book for all intents and purposes ends as an interesting read. It limps along with Chick's own brush with death which just feels tacked on. I am aware that this book has a basis in reality, but it just doesn't hold together well. The character that Bellow has created in Ravelstein; regardless of his origin, deserved better.
Rating:
Summary: Rich comic detail of characters and a friendship
Review: It is great to read Saul Bellow's longer fiction again! To me its unimportant how fictional it is, (Ravelstein is a thinly disguised version of Bellows' University of Chicago Colleague Allan Bloom). Recall that Bellow's Humboldts' Gift was partly based on Delmore Schwartz. Perhaps fictionalizing, allow Bellow more freedom, or perhaps allow him to get beyond a writers block of a true biography. Ravelstein's surprising best seller, (like Blooms The Closing of the American Mind), presents his ideas .. who he is. Ravelstein is a man who "lived by his ideals", and directed them toward a circle of friends and colleagues.What Ravelstein (the man and the book) is about is friendship ..that spans the passage of time, life and marriages. This is also a tale of the power of a strong personalty ("a character") on those around, and a man using his intelligence on his friends, colleagues, and tangentially on himself. There are rich details on character and comic detail, that no one does better than Bellow!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bellow's Best
Review: Near the end of this novel the narrator, Chick, life-long friend of Ravelstein (presumably Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago), describes a serious episode of heart failure. These pages are remarkably well-done, but like much of this novel, it's hard to find much on Ravelstein in these pages. Mr. Bellow somewhere in effect admits that his medical problems may be a bit of a departure from the main story line. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the story is a rambling set of recollections; it is difficult to discard anything, and just about everything is fair game in this novel that manages, despite its inclusiveness, to give short shirft to its central character, Ravelstein. When we do meet him, we find precious little exceptional. His materialism is right out of the GQ "central casting" department. We're assured he studied the classics, but when is beyond me, given his propensity to shop. If you want to know about Professor Bloom, you would do much better going directly to the source, particularly his translation of Plato's Republic. You won't learn much about Bloom's apparent weakness for tailored, crisply laundered (wrapped, not on hangers, Bellow assures us) shirts, but you'll get much closer than Ravelstein can bring you to understanding his exceptional mind.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bellow's Best
Review: Near the end of this novel the narrator, Chick, life-long friend of Ravelstein (presumably Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago), describes a serious episode of heart failure. These pages are remarkably well-done, but like much of this novel, it's hard to find much on Ravelstein in these pages. Mr. Bellow somewhere in effect admits that his medical problems may be a bit of a departure from the main story line. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the story is a rambling set of recollections; it is difficult to discard anything, and just about everything is fair game in this novel that manages, despite its inclusiveness, to give short shirft to its central character, Ravelstein. When we do meet him, we find precious little exceptional. His materialism is right out of the GQ "central casting" department. We're assured he studied the classics, but when is beyond me, given his propensity to shop. If you want to know about Professor Bloom, you would do much better going directly to the source, particularly his translation of Plato's Republic. You won't learn much about Bloom's apparent weakness for tailored, crisply laundered (wrapped, not on hangers, Bellow assures us) shirts, but you'll get much closer than Ravelstein can bring you to understanding his exceptional mind.
Rating:
Summary: Of Chick and Ravelstein
Review: Ravelstein is about a lopsided Platonic love affair between Chick and Abe Ravelstein that is more than friendship with mutual ethnic backgrounds, interests, tastes, etc. The heart of the matter is that Chick is very attached to Ravelstien from which his thoughts rarely stray, whether it is to his wife, girlfriend or anybody else. Ravelstein is the confident, egotistical, know-it-all - a bon vivant savant -- and, perhaps, a good character study of Alan Bloom. Despite Ravelstein's flaws, which are many, Chick sees something admirable in him: a zest for life, brilliance, a well formed and informed Platonic mind, the qualities of a magnanimous personality, etc. But the down side of it is that Ravelstein always leads and Chick is left only to follow, admire, absorb, and be something of a spongy handmaiden to his personality, insights and philosophy. Sad. Though Chick may benefit at times, he is the weaker personality and he knows it. As the name Chick implies, he is more the woman in the relationship. Ravelstein is placed on an high pedestal and is admired by Chick like some male Greek god who has descended to earth. In many ways Ravelstien is also a deformity of nature and modern society: one foot three times as large as the other, gay, a leader of a cult of student disciples who have given up their families, a man with ancient esoteric knowledge and principles, etc. He is a man uncomfortable with his times but he makes the best of it by writing a book that is a searing critique and indictment of liberal education in America and, ironically, the book becomes a best seller. Chick, the second fiddle, is given the task to write about Ravelstein's life, once it is known that Ravelstein is dying of AIDS. Again, Chick who likes footnotes, becomes exactly that in comparison to the larger than life but dying Ravelstein. Chick doesn't mind for he realizes that he is good at some things and he sees it as an honour to try and capture, in words, the character of this great man. Ravelstein is a great book which addresses many themes. Love and death are central to it. The sad part of it is that Chick, the poet, is by Ravelstein's admission, a lesser human being than a philosopher -- just as women are lesser than men. Not that Chick can't crudely be loved by him, but there is a pecking order after all. The poet is always below the philosopher. For me this principle always gets in the way of true human love with Ravelstein. There is a condition placed on human love that is foreign to it. It seems that Ravelstein is always curious about human love and it may be that his Eros is always directed to the great ideas and texts. This is where he feels whole. Regular human beings are another story. So much for ancient gods who lived in the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: Life, comedy, intellect: conflicting priorities
Review: This book was first published in 2000, some years after the events described, if you can believe the narrator that his dead friend ("He died six years ago, just as the High Holidays were beginning.") wanted this whole story told in a way that would capture events as they were lived. Abe Ravelstein was a professor who was popular, possibly deep, incredibly intelligent, and HIV positive. Saul Bellow was supposed to write his biography, but this book is a novel, though possibly close enough for government work. Some people in the book have names that might be familiar to scholars or people who `had their shirts made on Jermyn Street by Turnbull & Asser ("Kisser & Asser," as I revised it).' The humor is partly concocted of Jewish individuals living in a world which has a few former Nazis and a former student named Philip Gorman who turned into "right now one of the Secretary's closest advisers." But this was written before the current president was in office, though the gossip has plenty of familiar names. "Colin Powell and Baker have advised the President not to send the troops all the way to Baghdad. Bush will announce it tomorrow. They're afraid of a few casualties. They send out a terrific army and give a demonstration of up-to-date high-tech warfare that flesh and blood can't stand up to. But then they leave the dictatorship in place and steal away . . ."
One of the themes is "Great Politics." Nietzsche would understand how brilliant people ought to be able to fit into productive situations, or educate a flock of brilliant people who could enjoy taking part in whatever action was going on. "It's only a matter of time before Phil Gorman has cabinet rank, and a damn good thing for the country," though a good education in "the fourth wave of modernity" might be as hard for most people to grasp as the bulk of Nietzsche's unpublished notes on nihilism. Saul Bellow does not claim to know the finer points, but he mentions Plato, students reading the original Greek, Paris, Machiavelli, and he can imagine Phil Gorman contributing to the process by keeping in touch:
"But he knew what pleasure it gave his old prof to hear the inside dope, so he briefed him out of respect and affection. He also knew that Ravelstein had masses of historical and political information to update and maintain. This went as far back as Plato and Thucydides--perhaps as far back as Moses. All those great designs of statesmanship--going back through Machiavelli via Severus or Caracalla. And it was essential to fit up-to-the-minute decisions in the Gulf War--made by obviously limited pols like Bush and Baker into a true-as-possible picture of the forces at work--into the political history of this civilization. When Ravelstein said that young Gorman had a grasp of Great Politics, something like this was what he had in mind."
Abe is not above praising Abe Lincoln. "As president of all the people he thought he was obliged to talk to all these parasites, creeps, and promoters. All the while he was standing in a river of blood. War measures made him a tyrant--he had to cancel the habeas corpus writ, you know." Saul Bellow was reckless enough to try to capture the aura of insanity that such a situation provides.
"You're what people would call feckless, in the days when such words were still in use. Of course we're good and fed up with personality profiles, or defects. One reason why violence is so popular may be that psychiatric insights have worn us out and we get satisfaction from seeing them blown away with automatic weapons, or exploding in cars, or being garroted or stuffed by taxidermists. We're sick of having to think about everybody's problems--Grand Guignol mock-destruction isn't good enough for the bastards."
It is impressive that this book was written before the American embassy in Baghdad became such a large command post. Being stuck with such policies is the world-historical joke akin to Chick having a suit made for Ravelstein:
"You wanted to do something for me. It was generous, Chick, and Nikki was the first to say it. But Gesualdo is way behind the times. He makes mafiosi-type clothes, not for the dons but for the soldiers, the lower-rank gangsters."
Intellectual superiority is able to imagine levels which are so much higher that within a few pages Ravelstein will buy a Lanvin jacket for $4,500 and spill coffee on the lapel. "He was still drinking the expresso; his head was far back. I kept my mouth shut, turning away from the large brown blot on the Lanvin coat. Another sort of man might have sensed at once that something had happened--"
If this book had an index, it could have a number of entries for an account by Keynes of the French finance minister who thought he had a prior claim on German gold as opposed to American interests who wanted to allow the Germans to spend the gold for food to feed their starving population. It is mentioned early. "But you did that well, Chick, about Lloyd George's nasty youpin parody." Ravelstein's interest in "the Jewish side of the thing" was incidental to his interest in "politics, a subject for which Ravelstein had a very special understanding."
The book also takes a special interest in certain people and couples. Though it is about intellectual personalities, "I'm going to leave intellectual matters to the experts." It is more like "when he spoke to me he spoke intimately but also for the record. To lose your head was the great-souled thing to do."
Rating: 
Summary: There is much better Bellow than this
Review: This is Bellow's most recent and probably last novel. It is the final work of one of the great American literary adventures of this century. It is very far indeed from his greatest works ' Herzog ' and 'Seize the Day'. It at times reads as a kind of exercise built around an idea. It is clearly undisguisedly modeled on Bellow's friendship with Allan Bloom. However much of the ' larger - than-life ' posturing of the Bloom- Ravelstein character give him an unappealing quality that his great best friend perhaps misses. I so much wanted to enjoy this last Bellow as I have some of the others. But this one does not make it for me on that level. I would certainly however recommend it for all Bellow fans. And I would say also that even mediocre Bellow contains many lines and passages of stunning literary brilliance and value.
Rating:
Summary: not a good place to start
Review: This is the third book by Saul Bellow that I have read, starting with Henderson the Rain King, Humbolt's Gift, and now Ravelstein and I have to say that I feel like I am going downhill fast. I have also noticed too many similarities between the main characters in all of these books to make me think each one is strikingly original.
I don't understand why Bellow is considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. There are moments of poetic brilliance, no doubt about it, but not enough to sustain a whole work. Ravelstein meanders around a thin plot and jumps between locations and times much to rapidly for me to follow. This book seems to be more of a short history of each character with more details than needed rather than a traditional story. After reading other reviews I now understand this is a biography of sorts, unfortunately I didn't know that when I started reading it. All in all I think this will be the last Bellow book that I read. It wasn't all bad but it sure wasn't genius as some people claim.
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