This was a truly fascinating and typical Bellow novel. It centered around a self-centered and neurotic middle-aged male hailing from Chicago.

While it had its moments of brilliance, I couldn't help but feel it was less satisfying than Herzog or The Adventures of Augie March.

I understand that it is regarded as one of the Great Novels of Bellow, and I did enjoy the characters and their profound existential questioning about the meanings of life and sex.

The book boasted some amazing characters. There were the Falstaff/Lear aspects of Humboldt, the bellowish Charlie, the boisterous Cantabile, the round and sensual Renata, and the mysterious and devious Señora.

It also delved into Bellow's obsession with Steiner's anthroposophy concepts. It was both funny and moving, although perhaps a bit long-winded at times.

Anthroposophy, an esoteric philosophy that Bellow adhered to, stems from the works of Rudolph Steiner. One quote that I particularly appreciated, despite being somewhat lost in some of Citrine’s musings about it, was: "Thinking, the power to think and know, is a source of freedom. Thinking will make it obvious that spirit exists. The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit’s ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The early is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything." (p. 262)

I found the last bit about death to be especially thought-provoking. I plan to read Zachary Leader’s biographies of Bellow to understand the extent to which this book was autobiographical.

I think the Pulitzer committee had passed over Saul too many times and needed to give him a win to maintain credibility. In fact, Charlie Citrine makes an ironic comment about having won two Pulitzers in the book. I suppose Faulkner felt the same way when they rewarded his lesser works like A Fable and (posthumously) The Reivers rather than his epics such as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, or Light in August.

This isn't to say that I didn't consider this to be a great book. It's just that if you're relying on Pulitzer prizes to find the best work of a particular author, the prize isn't always the most reliable indicator. It can be a hit (like American Pastoral or The Goldfinch) or a miss (like The Underground Railroad or The Road).

My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Close to two weeks of finishing this. If I don't meditate on it now, it probably will never happen.

So here it goes. Out of the four Pulitzer winners that I've read this year, this one I've rated the lowest. The simplest reason is that Bellow writes this mainly for himself. There's a firm distance between the reader and the writer. It doesn't invite participatory reading at all. Bellow goes on a tangent after tangent for pages. He writes about death, the deathlessness of the human spirit, and of course, the commodification of art in a world that is hideously money-minded. The book is about artists who want to make a few bucks to put themselves in a safe spot so that they can partake in their one true calling in life, which is to create art.

It's all fun and dandy, but the list of characters in here, who pointlessly serve probably a very minute role but still come in and go incessantly without the narrative changing the pitch, irritated me.

The experience has been joyless, which is a shame because Bellow really discusses some interesting things. For instance, how all the intellectuals actually struggle to lead a simple life. However, like I mentioned before, I wish I felt he was inviting me into this instead of me feeling like I was gatecrashing an important event of the host who clearly didn't want me there.

I'll be reading more Bellow. A man can only hope those are better than this one. I'm curious to see if his other works will offer a more engaging and fulfilling reading experience. Maybe I'll discover a side of Bellow that I haven't seen yet. Only time will tell.

Saul Bellow's books all essentially follow the same type of main character.

It is a nervous thinker, a great sufferer, and an unapologetic life-liver who is modeled on himself and always happens to be unusually attractive and extremely well-read.

This is definitely the case with Humboldt's Gift. For this reason and due to many stylistic similarities to his other works, I really enjoyed this book.

When it comes to the characters and motifs that set it apart from his other books, some were good, like Humboldt, but most were bad, such as Renata and Anthroposophy. That's why I'm giving it four stars instead of the five I initially expected to give when I started reading.

Anyway, this guy is clearly my favorite novelist, and all his books are basically the same, which is great news for me!

An excellent literary effort indeed. It is truly one most worthy of the Pulitzer. Bellow is a wonderful and beautiful writer.

He has the remarkable ability to string short, direct sentences together in such a way that the narration never comes across as too choppy. At the same time, he can also write long, wordy, unpunctuated sentences without making them seem too incoherent or complex. His writing is simply beautiful.

However, the framing of the book isn't my absolute favorite. There is just enough about aging, angsty, lascivious old white dudes going through existential crises! In this regard, Bellow writes squarely in the tradition that includes John Updike and Philip Roth. They are all masterful writers, but their masterpieces often revolve around decaying, rudderless, old white dudes. Charles Citrine (Bellow), Seymour “The Swede” Levov (Roth), Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom (Updike), are all essentially very similar dudes. And the takeaway messages from their lives are also more or less the same.

But when it comes to elegant, precise writing - they are all superb, and “Humboldt’s Gift” is no exception. I'm glad I read it, and I do recommend it. However, be prepared for a bit of a slog. It can be heavy and oppressive at times, which makes the reading and digestion process slower. It took me longer than I expected to get through it. But it is definitely worth putting in the effort.

It seems as if the writer is an extremely energetic child who simply cannot remain still. His thoughts race at such a rapid pace that it becomes nearly impossible for me to follow his train of thoughts. One moment he is on one topic, and the next, he has already jumped to another completely different one. It's like trying to catch a butterfly that flits from flower to flower without pausing for a moment. The constant movement and change in his writing make it a challenging task for the reader to keep up. I find myself constantly having to backtrack and try to piece together the connections between his various ideas. It's both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

Saul Bellow has an extraordinary gift for writing. He can describe the state of anything with such beauty and precision. In this particular instance, he delves into the complacent slumber of the soul and the artistic instinct that was awakened by the growth of crass capitalism in America during the 1970s. His writing is so captivating that I am almost inclined to overlook some of his less appealing qualities (at least in this book).

He does come across as a pompous, self-indulgent, and often cringe-inducing, preening uber-intellectual who loves to drop names. It seems as if he is desperately trying to recapture the fading powers of his long-gone adolescence, writing with an almost indecent intensity that might even make the most sexually liberated person feel ashamed.

However, we must remember that this is Saul Bellow we are discussing. Read him just once, and you will quickly realize that he has earned the right to be a little bit naughty. His literary prowess and unique perspective make him a force to be reckoned with in the world of literature.

"Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything."

Humboldt's Gift delves deep into the life of a man who battles both the external world and his inner demons by withdrawing from the hustle and bustle of his existence.

Charles Citrine, a highly successful author, appears to be a person who likes and trusts everyone. In his youth, he embarked on a journey across America to meet the acclaimed author Von Humboldt Fleischer. They formed a close friendship until Charles's own literary success unfortunately soured their relationship. Charles is a decent and generous individual, yet he has a weakness for beautiful women. He has had numerous lovers; one woman is divorcing him and attempting to impoverish him in the process, while another is desperately longing for him to marry her. Charles is in a rather sad state, but fortunately, he has friends who are willing to assist him.

The chapters in this book lack both titles and numbers, and the narrative seems to lack a clear structure. The true nature of Humboldt’s gift remains unclear until we have read a significant portion of the book. Only then do we discover that it is a real and practical gift, a bequest from his old friend, rather than an ironical term.

Personally, I found it extremely difficult to empathize with Citrine. His non-participation and constant contemplation of life rather than actively living it left me feeling frustrated. In my opinion, this was an exhausting read that required some serious editing. It was overly verbose, filled with untranslated French phrases and obscure literary references, which gave me the impression that Bellow was more interested in showing off how much smarter he was than engaging with his readers.

Overall, this book was not a great read for me at all.

What a disappointingly shallow author this is.

He yearns for a world that has never existed and wishes he could be in a state that is not the reality. The story itself is passable, but the author truly wrote this book to philosophize about the nature of life, offer insights into the nature of mortality, and refute the Myth of Sisyphus. This is precisely where he fails spectacularly.

A good author should have the ability to amaze you with his cleverness while also confusing you with his bluster. However, this author (or his characters) severely lack the philosophical foundation they pretend to possess. They repeatedly mention Hegel and his Phenomenology, yet it is clear that they have never read it and do not truly understand Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Nietzsche, or any of the other thinkers randomly named throughout the story. By the way, Arnold Toynbee is completely forgotten today because his Christian Teleological process to history is simply idiotic, and only pseudo-intellectuals in 1976 would have thought he was worth reading or having on their shelves.

While listening to this story, I couldn't help but think of two books. One is The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, one of the worst books ever written. Both Bloom's and Bellow's books exude a contempt for the current state of affairs (at least when they were written) and for how things should be in their fictional fantasy worlds, which include numerous references to great thinkers but never progress beyond the idea that things used to be better in their minds closed to progress. Then I remembered that Bellow had written the foreword to the book. How fitting. The other book is "Gravity's Rainbow", a somewhat contemporary work to this one. The author, Pynchon, was able to understand the subtleties of different schools of thought (I have never read better explanations of the memoryless probability distribution function, and Pynchon is not a mathematician but knew how to weave the threads of the story into a coherent whole like a Persian rug) and make them coherent and tie them together under one umbrella, something that Bellow just cannot bring himself to do because he really doesn't understand the essence behind the thinking of the authors and books he continuously seems to name-drop (except for Walt Whitman, whom he used correctly).

I didn't dislike the story. What I hated was the author's shallow approach to life's questions. I loathed the longing for a past that never was. I detested the conservative mindset the author adopted. It is hard for me to believe that the author of this book received certain awards. I can only推测 that the judges who were impressed by the musings of college freshmen who have only read summaries of great works by others were themselves dazzled because they never took the time to read the great thinkers themselves.

Maybe I just happened to read this at the wrong stage of my life. The only other work by Bellow that I had read was Herzog many, many years ago, along with some scattered short stories. What is more vivid in my mind is Brent Staples' excellent University of Chicago memoir, "Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White." In it, Staples hilariously confesses to stalking, even terrorizing, Bellow after his novel "Ravelstein" appeared, which many thought had a racist portrayal of blacks.

And I must admit that the African-Americans in "Humboldt's Gift" are depicted in a way that is sometimes disturbingly like an entomological study, with a constant focus on physical differences as a kind of spectacle. However, this is part of a larger issue in the book. I believe this book is intended as a soul-baring meditation on how an artist navigates between living as an intellectual on one hand and engaging with life in all its diversity as a means of nourishing art. I have to say that this is not only a ridiculous dichotomy but one that is particular to the overly intellectualized and self-satisfied atmosphere of the University of Chicago in general and the Committee on Social Thought where Bellow taught in particular.

Bellow probably imagines that he is bravely exploring this inner struggle of his and that it is part of some grand narrative in Western civilization's exploration of the self. Instead, with his stilted characterizations, his tone-deaf portrayal of "working class" people, and the excessive use of tiresome classical allusions (plus a lot of Rudolf Steiner; what on earth is that about??), he shows himself to be trapped in what he thinks he is transcending: the position of an intellectual nerd pressing his nose against the window of the exciting real world. The temptation (perhaps unfair) is to compare Bellow to the other three overly masculinized post-war novelists with whom he is often grouped: Mailer, Updike, and Roth. Having read far more of those three than of Bellow, I still maintain that he is the worst writer among them, and of the four, he seems the most blissfully unaware of his own personal shortcomings. God only knows why he is the one who received the Nobel Prize. As I said, maybe I just read this one at the wrong time in my life, but I think I'm done with Bellow. However, I plan to continue reading Mailer, Updike, and Roth.

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

My encounter with Saul Bellow’s novels had a promising start but ended on a sour note. The first book I delved into was The Adventures of Augie March. It completely captivated me with its seamless blend of “believable” stories and unexpected, extraordinary tales. For instance, the ownership of an eagle used for hunting in Mexico was truly fascinating. I myself own two Macaws – one blue and gold, and the other green and red. Alongside them, I have five borzois, creating an unbelievably unique combination in the world.

After the remarkable experience of Augie March, I ventured into Africa with Henderson the Rain King, another tale of “mystery and imagination.” While I liked it, it didn't quite reach the same heights as Augie March. Even though the exotic Africa and Henderson's tales held an appeal, the book just wasn't on par with the former.

Continuing this unfortunate trend, I liked Humboldt even less than Henderson. Perhaps it's my distorted perception, but even if I were to follow the advice of positive psychology and focus on self-esteem, I still can't help but assess my point of view. Saul Bellow received the Pulitzer for Humboldt, and the same novel contributed to his Nobel Prize win. But who am I to say the other books are better? I'm not disputing the value of the work, just sharing my own experience. There are entertaining passages in Humboldt, and I did learn quite a few things, such as Napoleon's mother's penchant for visiting battlefields and the fact that some musical families gave us Mozart, Bach, and others, which makes us wonder if souls search for the best place before they are born.

The book also contains funny and incredible events, like the smashing of an expensive Mercedes owned by Citrine, a character similar to Saul Bellow himself. In conclusion, after the outstanding Augie March, Humboldt was a disappointment for me.

This novel contains an abundance of erudition. At times, it appears to be more of a listing rather than elucidating or entertaining. That is, unless one is entertained by book lists, which I am not.

However, it was the narrator's voice that truly made this novel a disappointment for me. Charlie Citrine's bitterness and sense of humor are simply not qualities that I desire to engage with for so many hours. At least not at this stage of my life, or for that matter, during a time of plague.

I should have read this when it was first published, back when I was in college. During that time, I would have been excited to recognize many of the references. But now, it just doesn't hold the same appeal for me.

Humboldt's Gift contains some remarkable paragraphs. Here is my favorite one:

"Communicate to them what you have to have and right away they tell you they've got exactly what you need, although they never even heard of it until just now. It's not even necessarily lying. They just have an instinct that they can supply everything that a man can ask for [...] So you go around looking for a woman like yourself. There ain't no such animal [but she says] 'Your search is ended. Stop here. I'm it.'"

This is a woman giving advice to Charlie Citrine on finding a wife later in life. Despite the candor and brilliance of the quote, Charlie fills most of the book with pathetic and dishonest metaphysical monologues that often distract him from taking control of his life. He ruminates on love while planning affairs.

The women in Charlie Citrine's life are the only characters who speak any true sense in this otherwise dull book, yet their parts are disappointingly short and scattered. Charlie's thoughts are intellectually complex, and there are some nice abstract ideas in his musings, but they are so densely written and take up such a large portion of the book. It seems as if Bellow had a wealth of great ideas and needed to create a novel with a lot of empty space to stuff them all into internal monologues.

To this day, I have found that Saul Bellow, Richard Ford, and Wallace Stegner write well from the perspective of middle-aged men, sometimes experiencing midlife crises, having young children, and facing marital difficulties. However, I think these tropes are already outdated for my generation, as people are having children later and getting married less. So, I'm becoming cautious about what I can learn from this. Stegner presents a peaceful scene, Ford a man working uphill, but Bellow's characters always seem to be floundering, lost, and unlikeable. Bellow often writes a main character who is unlikably weak. Charlie Citrine in Humboldt's Gift is hard to take seriously, and his approach to writing and life seems too disorganized.

I don't want to be able to empathize with the mundanity of a narcissistic, scatter-brained, failing poet. The lives of real artists are often fascinating, but Bellow's characters (based on Herzog and Humboldt's Gift) have no clear desire and are entirely responsible for their own downfall. Bellow's characters reject reality and passion - they are dead inside. They are escaping life through abstract daydreams, thinking they are "finding themselves." I think I have a dislike for these books because it seems that Bellow may be ridiculing self-reflection by taking it to an unrealistic extreme with a character who is not self-aware. I might be personally biased as a PhD student, thinking he is adding to the trope of the "bumbling academic" by presenting a distorted view of academic life.

Humboldt's Gift is the perfect portrayal of a boring academic. But it does so over 400 pages, only useful for someone trying to learn this role for a film. The only thing worse in the world than cruelty is idleness, and it is most unbearable to see in well-educated people. I keep coming back to Bellow because of Christopher Hitchen's recommendation, but it's time to give up and admit that I just don't get it yet. Maybe when I'm older.

Video review here