jenks

thread death
love him - have augie march lined after i finish rob newman's latest. i think herzog is my favouite - the opening lines which go something like 'if i'm going crazy that's ok by me', the shorter works like seize the day are also great - he seem sto me to be a very thoughtful writer, someone who has weight to his setences and some deep seated humanity within his novels. the last novel ravelstein was more patchy and i think all of his work is based, partly on his own life - not much luck with women, jewishness, money and philosophy. i can see why he won the nobel, although i think roth should have been given it by now but he just upsets too many people ( i was thinking just this morning about posting a request for great novel sequences - i think the recent zuckerman novels are some of the finest pieces of the late 20th/early 21st century)
finally he has got very healthy sperm - sired a child whilst in his eighties and has a thirty something wife ( about his fifth, i think) amis is mad about him and calls him his surrogate dad.
 

Melmoth

Bruxist
He starts off as a left winger, is there in Mexico when Trotsky gets spiked, yet ends up writing paeans to Allan effing Bloom and coming out with crap like 'Where is the Zulu Proust'.

So I have problems with him.

That said, Humboldt's Gift, (central character based on Roethke I think?), is very very good.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
Melmoth said:
He starts off as a left winger, is there in Mexico when Trotsky gets spiked, yet ends up writing paeans to Allan effing Bloom and coming out with crap like 'Where is the Zulu Proust'.

So I have problems with him.

That said, Humboldt's Gift, (central character based on Roethke I think?), is very very good.

that book about allen bloom is good tho.: regardless of whether allen bloom was Bad, it's still a great book about their friendship.

but how bad was allen bloom? i've never read him, but have heard conflicting reports; some people say he was just a racist fuck, others say he wasn't really racist, or even conservative, but rather concerned about the kind of 'postmodern' relativism which he felt was taking over US universities.

may be that needs another thread tho.
 

luka

Well-known member
craner's read the book(colsing of the american mind) he'll tell you all about it. theres a good review of ravelstein by hitchens which talks about bloom and his nastiness an hypocrisy, i'll get the link for you, one sec...
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Weird, the only Bellow books I've read are Ravelstein and Humboldt's Gift, in that order, and I read both with absolutely no prior reading about what (or who) they were about. Always strange going backwards through an author's books, but there ya go...

It became clear upon reading the second that both had to be connected to Bellow's own experiences to some degree (both have wrangling with an ex-wife, getting old, the legacy of a dead mentor, etc). I've never heard of the people the characters are supposed to be based on, but just read that review quoted above which expands on Bloom and how functional a memoir Ravelstein is.

A lot of the politics / views voiced in both books didn't agree with mine at all, but I thought both were amazingly well written. I hadn't felt the urge to do a real close reading of a book since the last time I did an English course.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
haven't read "ravelstein," despite my interest in strauss, i.e., ravelstein is bloom but another character is supposed to be modeled on strauss -- reckon i'll eventually get around to reading it

but what i rate by bellow is his early work, especially "the victim"

"seize the day" and "herzog" are also good

and "mr sammler's planet" -- though it's here that you can see bellow's political complexion begin to change(i.e., his contempt for the 60s generation & newfound appreciation for bourgeois values like hard work and familial duty)
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
simon silverdollar said:
but how bad was allen bloom? i've never read him, but have heard conflicting reports; some people say he was just a racist fuck, others say he wasn't really racist, or even conservative, but rather concerned about the kind of 'postmodern' relativism which he felt was taking over US universities.

may be that needs another thread tho.

his accomplishments include his translations of plato's republic and rousseau's emile

he also edited the english edition of kojeve's lectures on hegel

and he helped pioneer, in america, the "literary" approach to reading plato, i.e., taking the dramatic form of the dialogues seriously, i.e., action, setting, characters -- not simply what is said in the dialogues, or treating socrates as plato's mouthpiece

(plus he wrote a great critique of rawls as narrow & provincial & flaccid -- and believe me, if you do legal theory or political philosophy in america, john rawls & dworkin are at the top of the heap)

the knock on bloom is that he wrote "the closing of the american mind" to make $ and win fame & influence

plus some people think that he was a hypocrite b/c of his homosexuality -- he was by many accounts promiscuous -- and he argues in "the closing" that easy sex on college campuses has made students less "desirous" of truth, learning, culture -- so he looks like a hypocrite -- my sense of the matter is that bloom would refer his critics to plato's symposium, i.e., homosexual encounters b/w young & old as propaedeutic to philosophy

as for his being racist -- i think that charge may have something to do w/ his views on music, i.e., he was a great lover of classical music, and he portrays mick jagger as a pied piper, and he goes on about this for several pages in "the closing" -- but there's nothing exceptional about a person of bloom's background & interests favoring classical music & condemning r'n'b and rock -- re: adorno

and still others say that he was entirely too "spirited" to be a philosopher, i.e., too intent on winning battles, too intent on advancing careers of students & allies

and others say he was a closet nietzschean

and as for whether strauss was a nietzschean, i address this over on the "power of nightmares" thread
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
dominic said:
my sense of the matter is that bloom would refer his critics to plato's symposium, i.e., homosexual encounters b/w young & old as propaedeutic to philosophy

didn't mean to suggest, however, that he had sex w/ his students
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I can't believe you put 'Hitchens' and 'good' in the same sentence, Luke. Maybe I should lend you Unaknowledged Legislation.
 

jenks

thread death
augie march

reporting in to the book club wing of dissensus with craner and luka in the richard and judy roles (you guys fight it out for wig rights and shop lifting previous)
finally finished augie march tonight, still can't see how it could challenge gatsby but then again this is a big baggy ramshackle sprawl of a book - like tom jones or one of those other early novels built on the rise of a character from humble backgrounds, as much a social satire as anything else. i like the women in the novel an dclearly below likes (and is confused by) women. also surely the ship wreck is a tip to the hat to moby dick, as if bellow is all too aware that he has trapped in himself in the 'great american novel' project. and isn't some kind od phd in abortion scenes in 20th century novels, it's as deriguer as a duel scene in russian and french 19th century novels - it's why it's odd when we get one in tender is the night, it's kinda out of place.
i suppose the perfection of gatsby lies in its smallness, its fidelity to the romanticism of a world view and a language - i read at an impressionable age and somewhere deep inside of me i am still that impressionable age, it's why i still put 'well i wonder' by the smiths on mix cds.

anyway thanks for the motivation to read augie, what's next onth's recommendation - da vinci code or gazza'a biog? ;)
 

simon

dabbler
I've only read Ravenstein - and I really enjoyed it - a good take on teh Straussian types. His writing is really superlative. I just picked up The Victim at the local school fete (for 50 cents). I haven't looked at it yet. Anyone read it?
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
simon said:
I just picked up The Victim at the local school fete (for 50 cents). I haven't looked at it yet. Anyone read it?

i rate the victim very highly -- and it's a quick read

let me (and others) know what you think once you've read it

has to do w/ the psychology of guilt -- guilt b/c someone whom you've wronged has subsequently lost control of his life -- was your wronging of him the efficient cause of his downward spiral?

other kinds of guilt in the book involve neglecting familial responsibilities

and then closely related to this guilt is the "victim" psychology that allows you to be exploited and imposed on by others

also throughout the entire book the victim's wife is on vacation -- deprived of his wife's sheltering protection, the victim is a victim for the entire duration of the book's narrative -- save for the very end -- though even w/ her sheltering care he may still be a victim and still a perpetrator of wrongs

of course it's up to the reader to determine who's still a victim, who's still a rake, and who's a combination of both figures
 
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