Mr. Sammler's Planet

The story is set in New York around spring 1968/69, a time when people are eagerly waiting for the moon landing. Mr Sammler, a 70-year-old Holocaust survivor and an astute observer of the madness of the times, is slowly working on his writings about HG Wells at the insistence of his daughter. Meanwhile, he is also expecting his benefactor and nephew, Elya Gruner, to die from a sudden illness. Sammler is haunted by his past experiences in Bloomsbury London, during the war years, and his recent visit to Israel. He is also deeply concerned about his nephew, his daughter Shula-Slawa who has her own set of issues, and Gruner's children, the irresponsible Wallace and the overly-sexual Angela. Additionally, there are other matters that weigh on his mind, such as the suave black pickpocket he sometimes sees on the bus and the notebook on the moon that his daughter has 'loaned' from Dr Lal and which Sammler wants to return.

The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, allowing us to get a deep insight into Sammler's mind. He muses on the present, the manners he adopted from his time in England, the craziness of the world in New York, the moon, and the ever-returning memories of his WWII sufferings, including the mass grave, the time in the woods, shooting a man, and hiding in a small mausoleum. Shula also suffers from the experiences of that time. Her wavering between Judaism and Christianity, as Shula-Slawa, partly stems from her being hidden in a monastery during the war. Her packrat tendencies and shabby dressing may also be a result of that, and she seems to be not completely sane.

It is fascinating to observe how Sammler copes with the present world, which he perceives as not getting better but rather becoming crazier, although he does see some promise in the moon landing ambitions. This book also provides a vivid view into the late 60s world, with its unique fashions and political attitudes. I found the first half of the book, which was set in the city, more engaging than the visit to the Gruner family mansion. In the current crazy world we live in, this book's world feels both nostalgic and eerily similar. I couldn't help but wonder who among the characters might still be alive. The Gruner kids, if they managed to avoid a bad fate, might still be around. The book leaves some things open-ended, such as what happened after Eisen took down the pickpocket, what Dr Gruner's will was like, and whether Sammler and Shula managed their money situation well. Nevertheless, the ending was quite satisfying. Sammler visits his nephew one last time and gets to pray for him, leaving the story in a good place, in a state of balance, regardless of how crazy the world, the people in it, and the situation of the characters may become after this.

Who I would recommend it to: when you look at the craziness of the world and feel like an old turtle...

Here's one of the essential books for understanding 20thC America.

It is especially revealing about NYC, which implies that 20C America has more than a hint of Europe. Mr Sammler rides the bus, and Bellow alters every reader's bus experience forever.

The daylight robbery and intimidation, along with the necessary self-reliance, are vividly depicted. Only one other writer, Flannery O'Connor, has perhaps portrayed a bus ride as well, where the son is amused at his mother's humbling, only to regret it for the rest of his life.

Mr Sammler is an old Jew, confused by the sexual contortions of sixties city life. His young female relative has "fucked-out eyes," and his lecture is interrupted by a youth who says, "Why do you listen to this effete old shit? What's he got to tell you? His balls are dry. He's dead. he can't come."

Later, Sammler refuses the key to his daughter's apartment, saying, "He didn't want to walk in when she was with a lover. Such a lover as she would have was surely to be dreaded."

Regarding Shula-Slawa, "Sammler knew her ways; knew them as the Eskimo knows the ways of the seal."

These are just one thread of the story. Another is Sammler's philosophical reflections, partly inherited from his European lineage. The last exhibit of Picasso "was in the strictly sexual sense also an exhibition." Margotte, political scientist Arkin's wife, spoke in his name, and "there was no-one to protect his ideas, the common fate of Socrates and Jesus."

On a physician's anticipated hemorrhage, "Did Elya know this? Of course he did. He was a physician. But he was a human, both knowing and not knowing - one of the most frequent human arrangements."

"Democracy was propagandistic in its style. Conversation was often nothing but the repetition of liberal principles." Margotte's "kind and considerate views of people were terribly trying to Sammler." Sammler tells Angela, "NYC makes you think of the end of civilization. In one day, Caesar massacred the Tencterii, 430,000."

When I taught this novel along with works by Vonnegut and Updike to community college students in the seventies, they were challenged and much preferred the more accessible Vonnegut. I showed the similarities between Billy Pilgrim and Sammler, both isolated from society - both in the thick of WWII, and Billy's insanity isolates him as does Sammler's archaism. Both are mentally alien: Billy's with his Tralfamadorian perspective, Sammler's with his old world historical view. Bellow notes Sammler's "divine entertainment of age, seeing patterns."

I tried to convince my students that Bellow's novel was the best one we read. In fact, along with Bellow's works from Seize the Day, through Herzog to Ravelstein, he has not been surpassed, though perhaps Updike's final book in his Rabbit series, Rabbit at Rest, may finally equal that of his contemporary and rival.

What is there to say? And can't you think of anything but death?

But that's what we have before us.

This short exchange makes an excellent fictional companion piece to The Denial of Death. It seems to capture the essence of the human struggle with the concept of death. The first question implies a certain frustration or perhaps a desire to avoid the topic altogether. However, the second response firmly brings the focus back to the inescapable reality of death.

This fictional dialogue can be seen as a microcosm of the larger themes explored in Becker's work. It makes us think about how we as humans deal with the knowledge of our own mortality. Do we deny it, as Becker suggests? Or do we face it head-on?

The simplicity of this exchange belies its depth and potential for引发 further reflection on the profound and often uncomfortable topic of death.

A remarkable novel tells the story of a Polish Jew. He managed to escape death during the Holocaust in a truly astonishing way. After being buried in a mass grave along with his wife, he somehow found the strength and courage to crawl out. Then, he hid in a mausoleum until Poland was finally liberated. Now, he is living in New York City. At this time, the Americans are on the verge of making their first landing on the moon.

The hospitalization of his nephew with a fatal medical condition brings about profound reflections and conversations within him that deeply trouble him. His intellectual pursuit of concisely summarizing the meaning of life from his own unique perspective is constantly challenged by the antics of his younger relatives. A careful and thoughtful reading of Bellow's frequent three-page paragraphs of Mr. Sammler's reflections reveals their great worth. This novel is so outstanding that Bellow was awarded the National Book Award for it.

I randomly selected this novel with the intention of getting to know a different author. At the very beginning, I truly felt lost. However, then it suddenly clicked. I realized that I was reading a literary style that incorporated a stream-of-conscious narration and a freestyle structure. It became evident that I needed to read extremely carefully in order to keep the storyline intact.

Bellow is indeed a highly skilled writer. He masterfully wrote about an aging Holocaust Survivor residing in a community where his life was somewhat chaotic. This included the arduous process of assimilation. It is truly a thought-provoking read that makes one deeply reflect on the experiences and challenges faced by such individuals.

The unique narrative style and the engaging storyline work together to create a powerful and impactful reading experience. It forces the reader to step into the shoes of the protagonist and understand his complex emotions and struggles. Overall, this novel is a testament to Bellow's literary prowess and his ability to tell a story that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned.

Saul Bellow creates yet another literary miracle. He crafts a beautiful novel with believable characters and a well-paced plot. The philosophical foundation is as deep as the ocean floor, unfolding in perfect harmony with the other elements.

Mr. Sammler, a Polish Jew, was once a snob in the pre-war London salons. After surviving the Holocaust by making his way naked among naked corpses and dragging himself out of the mass grave where his wife remained, he now lives in his seventies in late 1960s New York.

Mr. Sammler, who dislikes explanations and is prone to soliloquies, reflects on modern civilization with his one good eye. Here we see Bellow as the great singer of the madness of the metropolis, of all its neurosis, and the malaise that plagues its inhabitants. The clarity and attention to detail with which the author描绘 this reality create acute, vivid, and universal impressions, along with searing interrogations about individualism and mass society. This is the pivot on which the novel turns: "It is in the last two centuries that the majority of people in civilized countries have claimed the privilege of being individuals," says Sammler. And then he wonders what fruits have been reaped. Mostly pain, suffering, new neuroses, perhaps because the society in which this individualism has developed actually denies it, pushing towards self-representation, theatricality, and being interesting when in fact (even if only at an unconscious level) we perceive our inadequacy to be human, to have to be human.

The relationship of the self to the community is Sammler's true obsession. He, who has literally returned from the grave, an experience that has made him "deformed": it is the experience of death, the death of which we can know nothing because we are alive. At one point he says that the death within us living beings provokes the painful feelings of grief, which are nothing but an expression of love, that is, a feeling that belongs to life. We have the awareness of it, however, as Sammler affirms at the end with that repeated "we know."

I am a bit of a novice when it comes to the work of Saul Bellow. This is truly an educational travesty or unforgivable ignorance on my part. I completed an English literature major in the early-to-mid 2010s and never recall a single professor or student ever mentioning Bellow. It was only because I was already acquainted with Philip Roth's novels and had become a regular reader of Commentary that I discovered his work. So a few years after that discovery, I read Herzog, which seemed to be his most enduring work, and now I have moved on to Mr. Sammler's Planet. My reaction to both works was much the same as they share significant similarities.

Both have aging intellectual type protagonists who are bewildered by the people and the changing world around them, and a dense, introspective prose style. Although I know only a limited amount about Bellow, I've heard that his characters, especially the leads, tend to be facsimiles of himself in some way, which is quite common for many writers but still aids in the interpretation of the work.

Mr. Sammler's Planet has been characterized in various ways. Howard Johnson of Tablet described it as "an erudite and fastidious meditation on the decline of liberal America", while Dominic Green of The New Criterion called it "the first neoconservative novel". I think their takes are reasonable and represent at least some of the psychological journey of Bellow's titular lead, but it doesn't quite capture everything about Bellow's moral messaging.

This seems to be a moralizing novel, and in some ways, it is an old-fashioned morality that Bellow is an apologist for, but it is also a surprisingly strong rebuke to nihilism and cynicism about humanity. This is why I think this book resonated with readers (though this may no longer be true for contemporary readers). Bellow gazes into the moral abyss, such as the portions about Sammler's horrific WWII experiences, and what he sees as the derangement of American social mores, but he turns away toward the horizon. Bellow still thinks the proper response to barbarism of all kinds is humane endurance.

Bellow's central idea, emphasized by the concluding lines, is that there is a clear, intuitive, and universal moral sense shared by all humans, but there are many other forces that try and interfere with the obligation to follow those intuitions. One of the forces Bellow identifies is fear, which is vividly captured with the dapper Black pickpocket character. So I feel that there is a lot of misidentification of purported reactionary sentiment in Bellow's book. What is seen as Sammler's bigotry or retrograde ideas by reviewers past and present is Bellow laying himself bare to improve himself.

Unfortunately, I think Bellow novels will not find an eager audience today or in the near future in the academy or with popular audiences. His style and thematic content will be read as anachronistic, unrewardingly difficult, and malignantly reactionary today. I certainly struggled a bit with the prose style and think a re-read would benefit me. Moreover, Mr. Sammler's Planet may simply be a bit too much a work of its time. I'm not sure the subtleties of its commentary will be grasped by a younger generation of readers who have little to no awareness of the zeitgeist of two decades ago let alone six.

Therefore: a crazy species? Yes, perhaps.

Although craziness is also a mask, the projection of a deeper motive, a result of the desperation that seizes us in the face of infinities and eternities.

This statement makes us think deeply about the nature of humanity. Are we really a crazy species? Maybe it is because we are constantly facing the unknown and the infinite that we sometimes exhibit crazy behaviors.

Craziness may be a way for us to cope with the overwhelming pressure and uncertainty. It could be a manifestation of our hidden desires and fears.

However, we should also realize that craziness is not the only way. We can try to find more rational and healthy ways to deal with the challenges in life.

By understanding the true meaning behind our behaviors and emotions, we can better control ourselves and find a more balanced and fulfilling life.

After all, in the face of the infinitudes and eternities, we need to have the courage and wisdom to face them, rather than being swallowed up by craziness.