Rating: 
Summary: A Touching Tribute
Review: This latest of Bellow's books is no great masterpiece of modern literature, nor do I believe it was intended to be. Instead, through the musings of Chick (Bellow), the veils are lifted off a touching portrait of Ravelstein (Bellow's close friend, the great professor, Allan Bloom). He was a wise and worldly man who lived life to its fullest, well in touch with the Dionysian. At once unafraid and uninhibited, prone to the more comic, Nietzschean view of life, he THOUGHT. He READ. Ravelstein/Bloom supplemented a love of life with works great literature and philosophy: a funny and idiosyncratic conversationalist, as we see from Saul Bellow's persistant descriptions, he had much to say about life, love and literature. A mix of supporting characters abound: Vela, Chick/Bellow's ex-wife who is criticized by Ravelstein/Bloom; Rosamund, who saves Chick/Bellow from his near death in the Caribbean; the Grielescu's, husband and wife, former friends of Chick and Vela, and people whose brand of anti-semitism is mulled over by Chick and Ravelstein; Felix Davarr, who does not really make an appearance but certainly deserves mention as he is a thinly disguised caricature of Bloom's great teacher, Leo Strauss; and many others. Ravelstein/Bloom, who buys and ruins Lanvin jackets without a second thought, stocks his lavish home with expensive Lalique crystal, and throws pizza parties with his students, dies of AIDS in the book as he did in life. He was a homosexual; really this is no term to describe the man (or anyone, for that matter) for it captures nothing but his sexual habits, a facet of anyone's character to be sure, yet not so crucial as other things. More fairly, Bloom was a devotee of Plato's Symposium, the book for all lovers, as he himself mentions in his own book: The Closing of the American Mind. Bellow's book is filled with allusions to Bloom's works. And really, that's the point of Ravelstein. It pays Allan Bloom his worthy tribute in the form of a novel. One should have thorough understanding of Bloom and The Closing of the American Mind before reading this book. It's very well done and, in fact, a splendid introduction to the style of the masterful writer Saul Bellow. Brush up on your Bloom beforehand and read or re-read your Bellow afterward.
Rating:
Summary: Biography of a foul human being
Review: This thinly disguised biography of Allan Bloom attempts to be sympathetic, but cannot disguise the fact that "Ravelstein" is a superficial, self-destructive homosexual, concerned with clothes,
dinners, cars, bad ideas, and little else. This walking horror
trained many of today's leaders, accounting for the mess this country is in. I had a copy of "The Closing of the American Mind" many years ago, but rapidly gave it away. Thank you, Saul Bellow,
for showing us what this monster was really like.
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