In one of his highly revered reviews of Bellow's extensive oeuvre, Martin Amis astutely noted that, rather peculiarly, the letter "O" in the name must have somehow been swapped with "A." Humbold's Gift stands as the most profoundly soulful and intellectually potent novel by Bellow that I have had the pleasure of reading thus far.

A distinct trademark of Bellow's mature-career works, this novel also revolves around an intellectual protagonist. This time, we closely follow the arduous ordeals of the renowned writer and playwright Charlie Citrine. Like a specter of his former self, he is haphazardly yanked around in Chicago's complex social circles, buffeted by both friends and foes, as well as a diverse litany of characters who are difficult to categorize. What little money the divorce proceedings and conniving friends haven't managed to drain from the fortune he amassed at the zenith of his now-defunct career, Citrine now expends on his luxury-hungry and cunning girlfriend.

However, his mind is not fixated on money. Instead, Citrine's thoughts are preoccupied with the memory of his late friend and famous poet Von Humboldt Fleisher. The scant mental space that remains untouched by these contemplations, he devotes to studying the works of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian esotericist and anthroposophist.

As always, Bellow's remarkable mastery as a philosopher, stylist, and comedian graces every single page. Unlike Citrine's young girlfriend, who exploits his musings as a backdrop for her own machinations, I found the novel's convoluted events and intellectual digressions to be utterly satisfying.

And it would be nothing short of sacrilege to recommend a Bellow novel without quoting from it.

On insanity: "Don't kid yourself, kings are the most sublime sick. Manic Depressive heroes pull Mankind into their cycles and carry everybody away."

On life: "Ninety per cent of life is a nightmare, do you think I am going to get it rounded up to hundred per cent?"

On a girlfriend: "Think of an El Greco beauty raising her eyes to heaven. Then substitute sex for heaven. That's Renata's pious look."

On another girlfriend sleeping: "But in a few minutes I heard what I expected to hear – her night voice. It was low, hoarse, and deep, almost mannish. She moaned. She spoke broken words. She did this almost every night. The voice expressed her terror of this strange place, the earth, and of this strange state, being. Laboring and groaning, she tried to get out of it. This was the primordial Demmie beneath the farmer's daughter, beneath the teacher, beneath the elegant Main Line horsewoman, Latinist, accomplished cocktail-sipper in black chiffon, with the upturned nose, this fashionable conversationalist. Thoughtful, I listened to this. I let her go on awhile, trying to comprehend. I pitied her and loved her. But then I put an end to it. I kissed her. She knew who it was. She pressed her toes to my shins and me with powerful female arms. She cried 'I love you' in the same deep voice, but her eyes were still shut blind. I think she never actually woke up."

This writer is truly not to my liking.

There is such excessive jumping around between characters and topics, constantly namedropping famous people or randomly quoting.

It gives the impression of a sense of overly tuned-up energy, all for its own sake, without any clear purpose.

It feels like an ADHD experience, with the writing being so chaotic and unfocused.

Someone like this makes me extremely tired because of their shallowness.

The lack of depth and substance in their work is truly off-putting.

I much prefer writers who can present their ideas in a more coherent and meaningful way, rather than this haphazard and tiresome style.

It's as if they are more concerned with showing off their knowledge or trying to be flashy rather than actually communicating something of value.

Overall, this writer fails to engage me and leaves me with a sense of disappointment and fatigue.

Bellow's endeavor to explore the most predominant literary theories of the 21st century within his fictional work has, unfortunately, had the opposite effect. Instead of engaging the readers, it seems to alienate them, and in some cases, may even compel them to abandon the book entirely.

One would assume that all this excessive and self-indulgent name-dropping would eventually lead to a meaningful point and then cease. However, this is not the case. Every page is filled with his habitual cerebral and overly intellectual approach to writing. It makes one wonder if this was truly intended to be a novel from the start.

I can honestly say that I have never come across anything so pretentious in my entire life. The constant barrage of literary theory references and the convoluted writing style make it a difficult and unenjoyable read. It seems that Bellow was more interested in showing off his knowledge of literary theory than in creating a captivating and accessible story for his readers.

Perhaps if he had focused more on the characters and the plot, and less on impressing us with his erudition, the book might have been more successful. As it stands, it is a prime example of how not to write a novel.

It took me a whole month to艰难地 get halfway through this book.

Surprisingly, it seems that I have been reading a completely different book from what everyone else described in the reviews.

I simply couldn't find any part of this book that was "funny" or "entertaining", nor could I discover any profound meaning lurking beneath the surface.

Yes, the narrator is charmingly dislikeable and has those moments when he suddenly blurts out some intelligent words. However, the majority of his writing is just dull and lacks any sense of excitement or urgency.

It took me a month to reach the halfway mark of this book. After reading just 2 - 3 pages, I would always feel sleepy and uninterested. But I kept hoping that a redeeming quality would eventually emerge.

However, after reaching the 50% mark, it has become abundantly clear that this is not the case. I am now completely opting out of reading yet another description of Renata's round thighs and Denise's violet eyes.

I'm truly disappointed with this book and feel that my time would have been better spent elsewhere.

Another gem by Bellow.

As always, the plot takes a bit of a back seat in this work. Instead, it delves deep into character study, exploring profound themes. In "Humboldt's Gift," the focus is on the human soul and death. The novel is like a wild ride that is constantly moving forward, bombarding you with a plethora of ideas and thoughts. It can be exhausting at times, but that's precisely what makes it so captivating. It challenges your intellect and forces you to grapple with complex concepts. This is the beauty of Bellow's writing. He has the ability to create a world that is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging. Each page is filled with his unique insights and perspectives, making it a truly unforgettable reading experience.

Okay so now I've finally read one of the late-twentieth century biggies.

Maybe now I'll get more of the Humboldt references in the criticism I read. I was truly amused by the wit and absolutely loved the language.

Though not moved emotionally by the story itself, the comic scenes were marvelously madcap and over-the-top.

I also laughed out loud at some of the ruminatory passages.

When Charlie Citrine is told he must participate in an interview about "the dear dead days of the Village, and its intellectuals, poets, crack-ups, its suicides and love affairs", he absurdly claims to be too busy (and sleepy).

"It wasn't that I minded giving information to honest scholars, or even to young people on the make, but I was busy just then, fiercely, painfully busy - personally and impersonally busy; personally, with Renata and Denise, and Murra the accountant and the lawyers and the judge, and a multitude of emotional vexations; impersonally, participating in the life of my country and of Western Civilization and global society (a mixture of reality and figment)." Ha.

I'm pondering how the way Bellow told his story compares to Franzen's big "social" novels.

Why am I amused and interested in following the divagations of Charlie Citrine's thoughts, but find something vaguely icky in Franzen's characters spinning out pages and pages of thoughts?

Let's name and discuss all the reasons that Franzen makes us feel icky... Bellow engages in more wordplay than Franzen ("verbal pyrotechnics" as the critics say).

Both writers indulge in their obligatory scatological scenes, but Bellow's didn't make me want to run screaming from the bathroom stall (at Schweibel's Russian bathhouse in Chicago).

Bellow's language is simply more beautiful and ironic and witty and full of life. Or something.

It probably also has to do with their respective approaches to realism, and I'm not qualified to explore that - I'm sure James Wood has explained it somewhere.

This is not a short novel or a quick read and I admit I got a little tired of it all, despite the fantastic sentences, which I would try very hard to attend to.

Just skimmed Wood's essay on Bellow and find that he describes this for me when he writes: "Good writers tend to raise one up like canal locks, so that one swims at their level and forgets the medium that supports one. After a while, the reader might take for granted Bellow's exuberance of detail [...]. " Alas, I needed to take several breaks from the page in order to dry off.

Anatole Broyard's original review in the NYT was really bad - I mean, he gave Bellow bad marks and the review itself was poorly conceived and badly-written.

He appeared to misunderstand the purpose of the novel.

Lastly, I'd expected to be turned-off by Bellow's portrayals of women, given his rep as a misogynist, but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of female characters, and then by their depth, intelligence, and roundedness (pun?!).

Renata's letter to Citrine at the end of the novel, in which she explains why she married the other guy, was true and wise.

Yes, Bellow employs the old nature-culture divide and gives the men the "intellectual" roles and the women the earthy, sexy, motherly, yet-wiser roles, but by making Charlie Citrine himself a mockery of the intellectual life, Bellow allows that a "female" life of the mind-and-body (i.e., balanced in the passions) is perhaps a better one.

I only wish Mrs. Cantabile (the graduate-student wife of the Chicago mobster Rinaldo/Ronald Cantabile) could have had some page-time.

SB has an intimate knowledge of Chicago. He knows its unique speak, the streets that wind through various neighborhoods and hoods, and the people who inhabit them. This understanding allows his stories to come alive, leaping and bounding like a powerful winter's blast. It seems that he is always delving deep, chewing on some philosophical root that he has unearthed from the dark soil and then examining it in the light of day.

In this particular story, the theme of death looms large. Its realm and those who have passed before are explored, and their memories continue to haunt the main character, Charlie Citrine. Charlie is a woman chaser and an ass-kisser who just can't get enough of a good thing, even though it often leaves him raw and bitten. He has a sadistic love for intrigue and screw-ball characters like the two-bit hood Cantabile and, of course, the nutty Humboldt. Humboldt's gift arrives late, unexpectedly, and yet timely, neatly winding up the tale after not really solving the question of death but at least giving it a thorough examination using anthroposophy as a medium.

Bellow's writing is filled with jibes and jukes on every page, shimy-shamy and blowing smoke up every reader's mind-spout. It shines and glitters like a Lake Michigan white-out. Charlie Citrine, like Harry Houdini, hails from Appleton, WI. He is constantly finding himself in and getting out of shackles and submerged trunks of rollicking capers, much like the crazy Humby who met his end munching on a fat street pretzel, filled with despair. This book is a great big, sad one, but it's also funny as hell and a damn good read!

In the initial four pages of Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, the narrator Charlie Citrine looks back on the mentoring genius and the manic-depressive downfall of his former friend and fallen hero-poet, the late Humboldt Von Fleisher.

At the bottom of page five, we read Citrine's words: "I wasn't doing so well myself recently when Humboldt acted from the grave, so to speak, and made a basic change in my life. In spite of our big fight and fifteen years of estrangement he left me something in his will. I came into a legacy."

One might think, as I did (assuming any reasonable reader would), that this is the essence of Humboldt's Gift.

However, it isn't until page 327 (with nearly 70% of the book already read) that we learn what that legacy actually was. And in the remaining 30% of the novel, Bellow only vaguely hints at any "basic change" that Citrine made in his life.

Certainly, Citrine loses Renata, the leading lady of this somewhat plodding, desultory, and overly intellectualized love story, to his rival. And he sort of regains the wealth that had been at risk of slipping away for most of the novel.

But what exactly was the "basic change" that Charlie Citrine made to his life?

Renata's betrayal, while a plot twist, seems unrelated to the legacy he received from Humboldt. I could perhaps勉强interpret a loose connection between her leaving and the legacy, but her departure is a change that life imposes on Citrine, not the other way around.

The wealth that Citrine regains, including less than $80,000 from a legal settlement, is again unrelated to what Humboldt bequeathed to him.

So, what was Humboldt's actual gift? He wrote a treatment for a screenplay with the specific intention of Citrine inheriting it after his death. As far as I can tell, movie speculators had bid up to $50,000 for it, and Bellow suggests that this figure could potentially increase.

Earlier in the book, Bellow mentions specific dollar amounts related to Citrine's financial situation, such as what he stands to lose in his divorce and advances he's received from publishers. While I'm not inclined to do a detailed accounting, the overall impression is that Citrine's financial gains towards the end of the novel might only bring him to a break-even point, if that.

After learning about this dubious windfall, Citrine turns down lucrative offers to be the main scriptwriter or consultant for developing the treatment into a script. He tells the lawyer that he's "coming back to Europe. To take up a different kind of life."

But in the remaining four pages, we learn nothing about what that different life might be. Maybe Citrine immerses himself in a self-imposed monastic study of Anthroposophy, a school of thought that Bellow seems to be enthusiastic about and that Citrine ruminates on throughout the book. This is the best I can infer from what I've read leading up to the novel's rather lackluster conclusion.

The unconnected Anthroposophical passages are joined by other elements that I found equally odd and off-putting. Events and interior motives unfold through long letters that various characters write to Citrine. Bellow writes these letters in a voice not markedly different from Citrine's narrative voice, which can make it difficult to distinguish between Citrine's explanations and the letters themselves. Sometimes, I think I just stopped caring. In both dialogues and inner monologues, Citrine passionately laments his lonely heart and professes his love and veneration for former flames.

By indulging in these patterns, Bellow might have risked hindering the forward movement of the plot. But in fact, he didn't instill much forward movement in the first place.

Bellow set up the framework for an engaging plot. Citrine is in a difficult situation, with his estranged wife Denise threatening a messy divorce and his current lover Renata pressuring him. Add in writer's block, ennui, concerns about mortality, and a small-time violent crook, and Citrine seems like the classic hero about to be overcome. Then comes Humboldt's Gift, which is supposed to turn everything around. But it takes far too long for this to happen, and when it does, it's hard to see what has truly changed for Citrine.

As I mentioned earlier, I referred to this novel as a love story, which many critics who have called it a comedy might disagree with.

In the layperson's definition of the term, the novel fails as a comedy. It's not very funny. And it also fails according to my understanding of more classic definitions of comedy.

The harmony that the novel's ending achieves doesn't seem to be proportionate to the aimless, self-absorbed, and stilted progression that led up to it. None of the characters, especially Charlie Citrine, seem to have a moment of self-discovery. His circumstances change, but does he?

I consider the novel a love story because it explores the complex, flawed, and ultimately redeemed love between Citrine and Humboldt, and because Citrine is deeply in love with himself. Yes, he shares plenty of self-loathing with the reader, but he also loves his ability to self-loath. Finally, just as Bellow fills the book with patterns such as Citrine's Anthroposophical musings, intellectual introspections, and references to esoteric philosophers and writers, he also shows, through Citrine, his own deep love for the city of Chicago. Bellow devotes a lot of space to these loves, but he never manages to make me feel them.

I don't know where to start when it comes to summarizing this novel.

It seems to aim to cover everything. It delves into the relationship between a commercially successful writer and his now deceased literary mentor, who prioritized artistic integrity over financial gain.

It also explores the antics between a formerly extremely wealthy writer and a ridiculously annoying low-level mobster.

Moreover, it focuses on the midlife crisis of a famous writer as his life and loves seem to slip away from him.

Through the conversations and internal monologues, numerous philosophical themes are examined: death, materialism, artistic truth, sex, success, and so on.

The inclusion of snarky remarks in all of these contemplations made me doubt taking any of it too seriously.

I'm aware that this is considered a masterpiece, and many reviews acclaim its brilliance.

I guess it requires a brilliant reader to recognize the genius in this novel, which I am not and was unable to do.

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Expanded article:

The significance of recycling simply cannot be overlooked. It plays a crucial role in conserving our precious natural resources. By recycling, we can reduce the need to extract and consume new raw materials, thereby preserving the Earth's finite resources.

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In addition to its environmental benefits, recycling also has significant economic advantages. It can create jobs in various sectors such as collection, sorting, and processing. Recycling can also save energy as it often requires less energy to produce new products from recycled materials compared to using virgin materials.

Therefore, we should all make an effort to recycle as much as possible. By doing so, we can contribute to a more sustainable future for ourselves and for generations to come.

Let's start today and make recycling a part of our daily lives!

Published in 1975, it won the Pulitzer Prize the following year and, still in '76, Saul Bellow, the author, won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In short, a lot of stuff, right? Well.

The Gift of Humboldt is one of those typical roman à clef: there are real people/real events that have been altered in some details to make everything unrecognizable. In the novel, the relationship between two writers is explored: Humboldt Fleisher (who pursues pure art) and Charlie Citrine (who gets rich with art and who represents our narrator).

The whole story seems like a sort of tragicomedy where various themes are addressed: art, friendship, power, frustration, pranks, ulterior motives…

I have to say that I had conflicting emotions with this book. Most of the story progresses very slowly, even too slowly for my taste, and there were quite a few yawns. The protagonist narrator also triggered conflicting emotions in me. It's not clear if he's for us or against us. Around him revolve several male and female characters and almost all of them take advantage of him, especially of his money. And he, well, he lets them do it.

And I understand naivety, trust in others, I understand thinking that the person next to you is really in love with you, but at a certain point don't you want to wake up? Do you want to continue to be made fun of by everyone? React! Live! Don't let events drag you along as if you didn't have free will and an intellect. Good heavens!

In short, I'm perplexed. I had moments when I particularly appreciated the reflections or the general hilarity of the situations, but mostly I was bored. Maybe if it had been shorter I would have liked it more. Who knows.

Every piece of writing is an argument.

There is simply no other rational explanation for humans to subject themselves to the unnatural act of contorting their bodies, straining their eyes, and enduring such discomfort for extended periods on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

The essence of this argument, at its most fundamental level, is to persuade the reader to persevere until the final page is turned.

The direct outcome of this can be seen in the number of pages, whether it's ten, fifty, or more, that some people allocate to a book as a litmus test of whether the effort of completion is worthwhile.

This is all well and good if you're a casual reader of casual works and only intend to discuss them in a casual manner.

However, if you're someone who involves books in your career, reads what the career deems as its literary giants, and evaluates both giants and non-giants as seriously as possible, you won't be able to hone your professional skills by developing a habit of being flaky.

And it gets even worse if you choose to go against the grain set by various pasty fanboys.

So, if you want to talk the talk, you might as well walk the walk.

I'm usually quite adept at weeding out works that I know won't do me any good before I make the mistake of picking them up.

However, my fond memories of 'Augie March', along with the Nobel Prize for Literature (hoping it wouldn't be as much of a disaster as BD), the Jewish aspect (especially in these Nazi-enabling days), and the hearsay of respectful treatment of mental illness led me to pick this up, all the while knowing better.

True to form, I found constant mewling and puking attempts at the universal that denied the universal to everyone but the white/white-passing and the male.

The narrative was littered with derogatory terms for Negroes, r*dskins, broads, and cunts in an ahistorical jumble that sought to comment on capitalism without acknowledging its inherent antiblack sadism and ventured to speak of all human souls without granting more than 9% of the world's populations the benefit of the doubt of having one.

Best of all were the repeated assertions of how nice the main character is, how trusting despite knowing better, how important to the broader scope of humanity through the power of their all-seeking intellect.

All the while, the character comments on not liking one daughter as much due to her lack of fuckability and dances around the magical world of the settler state.

And then there were the incessant name drops of the same 15 - 20 types, featuring Proust (queer as fuck but no mention of that, of course), Whitman (also queer as fuck and inspired by the Upanishads rather than simply emerging from the white supremacist void of the US), Chaucer (or at least the Merchant's Tale, with the constant ragging on May/December marriages. If the Wife of Bath or at least the Clerk were read, they didn't make a much-needed impression), and others, resulting in a suffocatingly glib parsing of the greats of the arts.

I don't know how white men function, but this circular reasoning sure seems to explain the tantrums they throw whenever a glimmer of reality shines through.

Long ago, a number of white/white-passing men (before the definition of white was even invented, mind you) were able to lounge around and, on occasion, in minuscule proportion to their general population, contribute or pass off as unique contributions to the wider spectrum of knowledge in science, literature, or whatever.

This was all due to their involvement in colonialism, slavery, violation of human labor laws, or some other artificially induced scarcity that enables a CEO to earn in an hour what a family of four lives on in a year.

A number of white/white passing men attempt to live this lifestyle without acknowledging the necessary genocides for such, and as a result, they become frustrated when their much-publicly bemoaned and privately masturbated to capitalism fails to perform as they expect upon witnessing their prowess at reciting Shakespeare and chasing the children of their former lovers.

It gives me no pleasure to watch such echo chambered violators squirm, with their attempts to choke their girlfriends and run over their wives glossed over as the women should have known better to have provoked such behavior.

The only reason these women stuck around was because they were surviving capitalism as best as possible for the average white woman in 1970's USA.

And if the main character would rather commune with the dead than incorporate that into his meanderings on materialism, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram pale in comparison to that level of bad faith.

P.S. If you take this review so personally that you think it's an attack on you and respond accordingly, go spend $50 and buy yourself some self-awareness.