It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future

Rating:
Summary: A very valuable collection of essays
Review: It All Adds Up, a collection of essays, written with Saul Bellow's great human insight, literary qualities and dry wit. Of course for everybody whom have read Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, The Adventures of Augie March and Henderson the Rain King should just run and get hold of a copy of this book, but honestly: anyone enjoying quality literature and are curious on life, art, politics and about how one of America's greatest authors share of his reflections and anecdotes, will probably enjoy this book. The only collection of essays I can think of, that come near this, is Hermann Hesse's My Belief. It is just such a pleasure to know, that in addition to Bellow's novels, there exist a book like It All Adds Up.

Rating:
Summary: The Fundamental Things Apply
Review: Reader's of Bellow's fiction, with its occasionally essayistic elements, will not be surprised by his interest in the history of ideas. This essay collection covers some of that interest during Bellow's 40 years or so of writing fiction, along with biographical and autobiographical sketches, interviews, and speeches such as his Nobel Lecture.

What are Bellow's philosophical interests? Often he returns to the difficulties and responsibilities of the writer in the modern world. He is particularly occupied by how art, which his fiction aspires to be, acts as a momentary stay against various contemporary discontents and distractions. "For some liberation (perhaps pseudoliberation) is the higher aim. Or the shattering of icons. Or restlessness without limits." For his part Bellow agrees with Joseph Conrad, another novelists who set high standards for his work, and who stated: "Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential." These fundamentals are also sometimes referred to as "eternal verities" and the "permanent things."

Bellow contrasts what he is trying to achieve with what intellectuals, particularly in the academic world, are trying to achieve. He scorns the repeated attempts by professors and critics to politicize literature. For Bellow "activist" art is impossible because art by definition "leads to contemplative states, to wonderful and sacred states of the soul." In short, to a temporary surcease of "busyness." The passages in Bellow's novels that some readers have difficulty with -- the introspection, musing, and shuffling back and forth -- are philosophical, not political. One might contrast Bellow's philosophizing with John Irving's editorializing, such as the passage in Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany about the Iran-Contra hearings, in which Irving pontificates at great length on an irrelevant topic in what was otherwise a fine novel.

By contrast, moreover, I find the following statement by Bellow to be a measure of humility, from a man who has lived enough to earn it: "The world owes (the novelist) nothing, and he has no business to be indignant with it on behalf of the novel."

One might add, via Henry James that art, by definition, must be produced by a fine mind. Bellow's fine mind is quite evident here, searching, defining, delineating, reflecting, and eulogizing. Readers of Bellow's fiction will find their understanding deepened by these rare glimpses into the philosophical and biographical foundations of his work.