Transcendental.

Profound.

Scholarly.

Challenging.

Invigorating.

Agile.

A literary treasure indeed.

Citrine, the central character, seems to live and breathe with the perspective of a true writer, grappling with great existential issues just like Walt Whitman's ultimate question.

Humboldt, on the other hand, is a complex figure - brilliant, pitiful, hilarious, and in the end, victorious even from the grave.

The gangster, Cantabile, serves as Citrine's cosmic foil, like the Dionysius of Nietzsche to Citrine's Apollo.

This work has the potential to be life-altering. It can truly change one's outlook on life and death.

Bellow redeems late 20th century American literature with his rich writing, which has bestowed upon him a mantle of immortality. He will surely be long remembered as one of America's most brilliant 20th century writers.

This novel further confirms Bellow's consistent gift for writing, as seen in his prolific virtuosity in works like Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March, and Henderson the Rain King.

What a masterful literary legacy Bellow has left us!

Forget about the NY Times Best Seller List and Oprah's mind-numbing, witless wonders. Read Bellow.

Hardly anything this substantive is likely to be created hereafter.

Con la tua poesia di dolce verità

“Ma l'amore è una divinità che non può lasciarci in pace. Non può, perché dobbiamo la vita a atti d'amore compiuti prima della nostra nascita; poiché l'amore è un debito contratto dalla nostra anima”. This profound statement sets the tone for the story that unfolds.

L'alter ego di Saul Bellow in questo romanzo è Charlie Citrine, a neurotic, Hamlet-like, and womanizing writer. The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, he has a great inclination towards philosophical and speculative thought, an inexhaustible sense of humor, and a natural unconsciousness that leads him into trouble and makes him affectionately attached to ambiguous and failed characters with the lightness of a dreamer. Always charmed by the beautiful young representatives of the multifaceted female gender, Charlie is at the center of Chicago society. He is cultivated, the author of a successful comedy, always in the spotlight. The beauty of women, the shape of their bodies, sensuality, and charm, attraction and instinct are the center of his existence and fantasy. Then there is writing, the talent to be released, and the money that comes with it. He thinks he is smart but needs to be loved for himself, not for his qualities that he is now tired of. He is divorcing, and his wife wants to put him on the street. While a gangster with worldly ambitions involves him in delirious adventures and grotesque events, Charlie is dealing with the memory and testament of his childhood friend Von Humboldt Fleischer, a depressed and cursed poet (modeled on Delmore Schwartz), soon forgotten by everyone and dead in solitude and misery. His gift is the screenplay of a film that will bring wealth and notoriety, allowing Charlie to give his friend a new burial and take care of an uncle abandoned in a hospice. The story tells of a journey of the self in memory and the unconscious, in an ethical discourse on logic and the absurd, obsession and vocation, in search of something that can awaken the spirit and cure with intelligent irony the deep anguish for mortality that haunts the soul of the writer. Charlie discovers himself to be fragile, loses the people he cares about the most, and faces absolute defeat in the contradiction of his aspirations. Thus, Bellow tells the key to a friendship between melancholy and courage, pride and frustration, reasoning about the relationship between power and art in the composition of a carnivalesque existential picture, where joy and despair, a sense of eternity and regret, sacrifice and glory alternate. Between literature and necessity, the inner life fills with disillusionment and restlessness: a path towards madness or awareness, depending on the reckless coherence with which one relates to chance.

It was a difficult yet enjoyable reading experience.

The book made one think about death, friendship, marriage, relationships, siblinghood, art, philosophy, and old age.

However, it was also an equally entertaining book.

It delved deep into the human psyche and explored various aspects of life that we often take for granted.

The author's writing style was engaging and kept the reader hooked from start to finish.

Despite the heavy themes, there were also moments of lightheartedness and humor that balanced out the narrative.

Overall, it was a thought-provoking and enjoyable read that left a lasting impression on the reader.

Humboldt was a poet who once enjoyed great reverence but eventually faced ridicule. Charlie Citrine, the narrator, was his follower, friend, and enemy. Despite having an inferior talent, Citrine achieved much greater commercial success than Humboldt. This anomaly forms the basis for extensive soul-searching regarding the relationship between the artist and commercial success in America.

Humboldt meets society's most cherished expectation of a poet - he goes crazy and dies ignominiously. In other words, he is too delicate for this world, a feeling we all experience in our most sensitive moments. Poets do what we sometimes desire - overindulge in sensibility to the point of isolating themselves from the outside world. Perhaps we honor them as much for this as for their poetry. Here, Bellow attempts, not entirely successfully, the Nick/Gatsby divide in the novel. He has a prosaic narrator recounting the larger-than-life character of Humboldt. However, a flaw of this novel is that Bellow cannot keep his own voice subdued for long, and soon the narrator Charlie Citrine and Humboldt almost become the same character. Charlie ends up as eccentrically broken as Humboldt, and the title's gift is a rather weak and implausible conclusion.

"There's the most extraordinary, unheard-of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it...the agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way." So says Charlie. But this passage is much more applicable to DeLillo's novels than Bellow's. I'm not sure if I ever truly felt that Bellow was reaching the heart of this buried poetry. DeLillo is actually much better at uncovering the poetry in our technological, media circus age because he is better able to project beyond himself. DeLillo shows where Bellow tells. Bellow often ends up sounding like a patient on the psychotherapist's couch, beautifully eloquent but telling rather than dramatizing.

Saul Bellow would rank quite high as a nightmare husband. He loves the sound of his own voice too much. He speaks brilliantly, but there is a sense that he doesn't listen much. He tends to view others as appendages or anecdotes. Bellow's novels are always about Saul Bellow, his relationship with the world, and his dysfunctional relationship with women. All the novels I've read by him have had the same narrator, lacking versatility in his voice. The supporting cast of characters often serves more as showcases for how brilliantly and wittily Bellow can write rather than as approximations of real people. His most successful novel was Herzog because he parodied his rampant egotism in a brilliantly witty manner. Bellow is probably a much better writer than a novelist. His prose is fantastic, but his plots are often half-baked and flimsy. This one just manages to scrape four stars due to the quality of the prose; as a novel, I found it essentially a combination of inspiration and daftness in equal measure.

Last night, I had a vivid dream. In that dream, Saul Bellow was still alive, and to my great surprise, I actually met him.

The setting of our encounter was at the Chicago branch of a rather peculiar bank called the Hitler-Piedmont Bank. As soon as I saw him, I was overcome with excitement and started to gush about my admiration for his works.

There are so many wonderful phrases, characters, and scenes in his novels that I hold dear. However, in that moment, the only thing that came to my mind and that I managed to praise was his brilliant description, in one of his novels, of Humboldt's mud-spattered station wagon. He described it as looking like "a Flanders staff-car."

This particular description had always stuck with me, and it was the first thing that popped into my head when I met the great author in my dream. It was a strange and yet memorable encounter that I will surely remember for a long time.

I don't know precisely what it is, but Saul Bellow's books have an uncanny allure for me. They go down with such ease that I can (and indeed have) devoured them in one, two, or even five long sittings, completely enthralled and unable to tear my eyes away from the page.

There's something about his protagonists, those nervy, learned, spunky, earthy, thoughtful, and hyper-attentive 30 - 40-year-old males, that strikes a chord with me time and time again. I seriously contemplated creating a special category on my bookshelves for "old-drunk-wannabe-writer" books (and it truly is a distinct genre), but I suppose I'd rather not. It seems demeaning.

I relished this chatty, fluid, and easily digestible novel every single time I picked it up. Bellow on the page (though I'm not sure what he'd be like in person, though I suspect it wouldn't be too dissimilar) is the ideal companion to read in a somewhat noisy, folksy place with a bit of bustle. Like a local pizza shop at midday, while making phone calls (if you're into that perversity), or on the train, that sort of thing.

Bellow is effortlessly introspective while also being open, grand, educated, and beautifully exact in his perceptions. He's essentially a talkative guy from Chicago who was seduced by the vibrant Greenwich Village and never looked back. And we are all the better for it.

I was particularly drawn to this one because it fictionalizes an already fascinating and larger-than-life figure whom I happen to adore. That man is Delmore Schwartz, the author of "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" and several books of now-underrated excellent poetry. Schwartz is the eponymous Humboldt, and the character is very much like the actual man: obsessive, erudite, manic, manipulative, visionary, charismatic, self-destructive, energetic, eloquent, and completely messed up. His all-night gin-fueled stream of consciousness captivating monologues (don't twitch; Bellow himself throws together more than a few of these adjectival pockets without punctuation in a near-Beat stylistic choice that always warms the cockles of my heart) somehow manage to include Plato, Dostoevsky, Harry Hopkins, Frank Sinatra, Emerson, Whitman, Henry Ford, the politics of the Weimar Republic, Eisenhower, Beethoven, Stalin, Lenin, "Finnegans Wake", litigation, Houdini, Thomas Mann, T.S. Eliot's sex life (!), the Pentateuch, Yeats's visionary cycle of history, Gibbon, Chevrolet engines, Dante's bird imagery, Marx, Lenin, Mary Pickford, and a possible spot in the (never-to-be) administration of Adlai Stevenson to bring about an American cultural renaissance.

If lists of names, contexts, and events juxtaposed in a stream of association appeal to you - if you'd buy this guy a beer or twelve - then this is the kind of book you'll love. If not, well, you're pretty much like about half the people in this story, who seem to take a naïve yet honest pleasure in upbraiding the narrator for his sentimental and seemingly stupid attachment to this volcanic freakshow. By the time the book begins, Humboldt is (obviously) a bit of a burnout, a has-been mixed with a never-was who has fallen so far from grace that the narrator himself has to duck behind a car when he spies his former intimate gnawing on a vendor's pretzel with extra mustard at three p.m. while standing on the sidewalk, seemingly the only food he'll have for the day.

But Charlie Citrine, a writer of some renown and a fairly large income, just won't let the dream die, damn it. Not even the fact of his own draining and costly divorce settlement, his own existential mid-life confusion, his spacey, wily, unsatisfying mistress, or Humboldt's own massively jumbled legacy and final papers will allow him to put the matter to rest.

All I'll say is that the title obviously has more than a few symbolic levels but is, in fact, entirely literal in a very plot-based way. No big surprise there, and frankly, I was getting disappointed because I thought I had called it from about 200 pages away, and when a dunderhead like me catches whiffs of plot points, it's probably time to knock the thing down a few pegs aesthetically. But that disappointment, luckily, lifted. There is a gift, certainly, but it's not quite what you think even when it's pretty much what you'd assume. Bellow frames it beautifully, which is to say in a true-to-life way, in that what he is given is ironically separated from what it means and how it plays out in the Rube Goldberg wackiness of reality and chance. It's a weird but fitting denouement to a story that keeps you going in newer and better directions all through its surprising and unexpected bulk and literary heft.

If you're thinking of reading it, bump it up a couple notches and you'll be glad you did!

I am fully aware that the vast majority of the online reviews for this particular book are filled with rave comments. As a result, my 2-star review seems rather aberrant. However, to be completely honest, this rating is actually higher than what I truly desire to give. I find myself at a loss when it comes to reviewing it, yet I will give it a try.

For one thing, I have been an avid reader throughout my entire life and possess multiple degrees. Nevertheless, this book managed to make me feel rather stupid. Mr. Bellow composed this work with an abundance of peculiar mechanisms and deliberately poor grammar. The consistent omission of commas throughout the book when words were presented in a list form truly drove me over the edge! Additionally, there were at least 6 words for which I had to consult my dictionary, which is quite unusual for me. I have a passion for learning, so that aspect is fine. But often, the words chosen felt far less fluid and elegant compared to their synonyms. (For instance, "pellucid" instead of "translucent." It just felt like such an unattractive word.)

On the other hand, there were indeed some truly lovely paragraphs that provided entertainment. However, they were unfortunately sandwiched between lengthy, dreary, and whiny pages. I found myself constantly flipping through the pages in the hope that something would leap off the page and shout "read me!"

Since I was reading on Kindle, I did highlight a couple of passages that, in my opinion, summarize the entire story.

The first quote, which appears approximately three-fourths of the way into the book, perfectly encapsulates my view of Bellow's prose: "So that screwball friend of yours Von Humboldt is dead. He talked gobbledygook and was worse dressed than you, but I liked him."

The second passage, and for me, the crucial word here is "frantic." So often, this book gave the impression of being frantic. Or perhaps I should say: Frantic. "...poetry was one of the frantic professions in which success depends on the opinion you hold of yourself. Think well of yourself, and you win. Lose self-esteem, and you're finished."

There is not much need for me to review this book, as it is well known, and as I already wrote substantial reviews of Herzog and Sammler's.

As a young man, when I read this, I adored it (5-stars); this time, I saw also its flaws (4-stars).

All the threads of Herzog, Seize the Day, and Sammler come together here in near perfection... 'near'. A picaresque comedy, Charlie Citrine is thoroughly modern, and romps through the latter part of the 20th century, trying valiantly... like Harry Houdini (-- Harry comes from Charlie's hometown, in Appleton, Wisconsin)... to get out alive. And, as this is a comedy, he almost succeeds... 'almost'.

The slapstick is sometimes too broad or too slick.

And then there is Bellow's obsession here with Rudolph Steiner... WTF...? Are we supposed to take this seriously...? Philip Roth thought it was irony, and in large part the text proves that he is right. And yet Bellow is joking entirely... Well... what can you do. You haven't understood the 20th century... urban, passionate..., living on the edge of the light as it warps at accelerating speed into history... if you haven't read Humboldt.

My only reason for reducing this book from five to four stars is that I have just finished...

The Dean's December.

((Ahh... A fine book. Review to follow...))

((Read this book 30++ years ago -- and adored it. Will reread it now, as part of my rereading of Bellow.))

Overall, Humboldt's Gift is a complex and engaging work. It combines elements of comedy, drama, and social commentary to create a vivid portrait of life in the 20th century. While it may not be perfect, it is still a remarkable achievement that showcases Bellow's literary talent and his ability to explore the human condition. Whether you are a longtime fan of Bellow or a newcomer to his work, Humboldt's Gift is definitely worth reading.

I almost gave up on this book.

It was extremely annoying, and I couldn't find any pleasure or interest in any part of it, not even in the characters.

However, I finished it for my brother.

I guess I'm glad I did.

That way, I can add it to my list and write a review, knowing that I read the whole book and didn't miss anything in the last half that might change my opinion.

To be honest, I didn't learn anything from this book, and at times, I was even confused.

This book was simply not for me.

Maybe someone else might find it interesting or valuable, but for me, it was a bit of a disappointment.

I hope that my review can help others make a more informed decision about whether or not to read this book.

This is the year of the difficult Americans. After Updike, I challenged the powerful Bellow. I don't mean "difficult" because after all they are old-school narrators and as for verbal intricacy, a Faulkner would eat them for breakfast. They are enchanting pens, reluctant to simply weave the fabric of their plots. I'm not only talking about narrative linearity. Indeed, I know very well that there is life beyond Mark Twain. But it's about the tendency to exaggerate situations that can be summed up in three lines, the uncontrollable vice of digression or rather conceptual redundancy. I premise this because today authors like Saul Bellow seem doomed to yellow in antiquarian bookshops. Not everyone feels like "investing" precious time in unaccommodating readings that always travel in third gear with the petrified hand on the gearshift. Well, under a 1970s overcoat (do you remember those absurd oranges?), there is a breathtaking body. The old system, certainly surpassed by contemporary speeds, does not mar a single gram of beauty. The rather horizontal story of Charlie Citrine, who has to deal with the specter of his friend Humboldt and unhappy loves, has some bright spots of vivid light, the gift of gracefully composing ideas and words with a pictorial touch. There is a "European" introspection of the characters. As the old Humboldt - a magnificent, carnal and poetic character - declares in one of his tirades: "The world looks Americans in the face and says: Don't come and tell me that this so blooming and cheerful people really suffer! And yet, democratic abundance has its singular difficulties. America is an experiment of God". The "blooming and cheerful" people in Bellow's book - writers, editors, great women, parasites and ruffians - conspire against the unalterable Citrine and his inexplicable attraction to the worst side of humanity. There is an ineffable poetic vitality in the worst, literature has been teaching us this for millennia and it doesn't stop doing it. We will continue to fall in love with irascible poets and sordid profiteers until the end of the word.

Roman a Clef a Trois

“Humboldt’s Gift” is widely regarded as a roman a clef, with the titular character inspired by the poet Delmore Schwartz, an early friend and mentor of Saul Bellow. However, within the novel, the roman a clef operates on three levels. Firstly, Von Humboldt Fleisher accuses the narrator, Charlie Citrine, of basing his successful play, “Von Trenck”, on his life. Then, Humboldt writes a movie treatment apparently based on Citrine. Finally, the novel as a whole is a fiction inspired by Von Humboldt/Delmore Schwartz, although Bellow/Citrine makes it primarily his own story.

Noble Madness

Citrine, like his mentor, is fixated on the idea of the author as noble. He believes that being an intellectual guarantees a higher life. However, as both the novel and Delmore Schwartz's biography show, this nobility comes at a cost. Delmore suffered from mental illness and was a victim of his own high standards. Robert Lowell's poem in memory of Delmore describes him as "nobly mad". In Greenwich Village, Humboldt would talk to Citrine about various intellectual topics, but later, he started to sink and became a savage noble.

The Savage Noble

In contrast to Humboldt's decline, Citrine became famous and made a lot of money in the early Fifties. However, this success caused tension between them, with Humboldt resenting Citrine's wealth. Citrine views Humboldt as a complex figure, a poet, thinker, and problem drinker. In the last years of his life, Humboldt was bitter towards Citrine and would say negative things about him in New York.

The Commercial Stuff

Both writers are confounded by success, especially financial success. They struggle with how to achieve it, maintain it, and not lose their integrity in the process. Humboldt pickets Citrine's play, and Citrine's ex-wife and a mobster both批评 him for his attitude towards money and success. Despite his belief in the importance of the spirit, Citrine is lured into the world of business and money-making, where he finds himself in a conflict between practicality and his ideals.

I don't often rate books with one or two stars, mainly because I usually don't bother to finish them. Years ago, I abandoned the idea of plowing through every book, especially those hefty tomes approaching 500 pages.

So, the mystery persists as to why I completed this particular book. I can't quite explain it myself, really. All I know is that I've now read my first Saul Bellow novel, and from here on out, I'll probably be a bit hesitant when it comes to his works. Perhaps I should have chosen a shorter book to introduce myself to the man, but I spent a couple of nights in the home where he lived while teaching at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson (what a mouthful of pretentious hyphens!). And this was the Bellow book I had at hand. As I poked around his study, listening to the mice scurrying behind the walls, my curiosity got the better of me, and I picked up the book.

Now, I'm like George without the Curious. Or a cat with only 8 lives (having sacrificed one to curiosity in the spirit of things).

I believe this novel won a Nobel Prize, of all things. Maybe it was the Nobel for Verbosity? Or perhaps, to be fair, excessive wordiness was more in vogue during Bellow's era. Or maybe the mice kept him awake at night, causing him to write and write, such that his protagonist, the erudite Charlie Citrine, just goes on and on and on. And Charlie isn't the only one. Just as Annandale-on-Hudson seems to overuse hyphens, Bellow's characters seem to overuse quotation marks. They talk, talk, talk. Non-stop. These characters absolutely love the sound of their own voices.

What's strange is how all this talk has so little plot to support it. Charlie's mentor and friend, Humboldt the Poet, dies after being bitter towards his now more successful friend (a common issue among writers, as jealous as cats are curious). Charlie starts to lose money. His wife sues for divorce, hires a top-notch lawyer, and benefits from a judge who is sympathetic to women. His love life takes a nosedive. He ruminates on this mistress, that one, and another one. It's almost like the ladies from the TV show Mad Men.

And then there was the subplot that really grated on my nerves. It revolved around a two-bit mafia wannabe named Cantabile who constantly harasses Charlie. I think Cantabile was supposed to be a source of over-the-top humor, but he just wasn't funny. Every time he showed up (like a bad penny), I would groan and say, "Oh no. Not him again. A mafia wannabe who trades in words instead of money!"

In some ways, the book reads as if the author is trying to show off his erudition to the reading public (or the Nobel judges). The allusions to great literature are like mosquitoes in Alaska – huge and impossible to ignore. A little less of this would have gone a long way.

But I persevered, if only to fill a gap in my reading resume. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," I kept telling myself. "Talk, talk, talk," the book seemed to reply. You know how it is when you meet someone at a cocktail party and at first they seem friendly, but then you realize they're bores who love to hear themselves talk? Well, there are intelligent bores and dumb bores, and the boorishness in this book was of a higher caliber (except for Cantabile). It was truly impressive. But at times, my eyes would wander over their heads as I searched for an escape route.

Still, in the end, I was happy for Charlie. And, if I may be a bit self-centered, I was happy for myself. I've been eyeing other books for a week now! (It's like Tantalus and the food that's just out of reach.)