2019 is truly the year of Saul Bellow for me.

He continuously astonishes me with his remarkable ability to capture in the fictional world the essence of what it means to "be a human".

Unlike some of his other works where the action unfolds across cities and over the course of days, this particular one is set within much smaller confines and over a very brief span of time.

Perhaps this is precisely why its examination of life feels so much more "personal". It delves deep into the themes of mortality, the moral imperative, one's place in the world, and one's relationships with the people in one's life.

I'm eager to explore more of Bellow's works and see what other profound insights he has to offer.

There's no doubt that his writing has the power to make us reflect on our own lives and the human condition in ways that few other authors can.

I can't wait to embark on this literary journey and discover more of the treasures that Saul Bellow has hidden within his pages.

Is it truly the moment for me to abandon Bellow? So many individuals I hold in high regard have an affinity for old Saul. There exists a Sufjan Stevens song with the title 'Saul Bellow'. He is supposed to embody all that I cherish: a stylist, an intellectual, and a cultural critic unafraid to voice his thoughts. And yet.

Plot spoiler alert, but in truth, the plot is secondary: at the core of this overstuffed narrative lies a remarkable farce. Sammler's daughter steals/borrows a manuscript that Sammler has little use for; the most engaging parts of the book consist of his attempts to return it to its author. Additionally, Sammler becomes somewhat fixated on a well-dressed pickpocket. And someone is on the verge of dying. Moreover, there are approximately 50 other minor backstories that, in my experience at least, only detract from the gloriously farcical essence.

I typically appreciate books in which the main character is racist, sexist, homophobic, prudish, and burdened by class biases, as I have no patience for sentimental literature. Mr. Sammler is precisely such a man. Does he remain so at the end? He requests someone to stop the pickpocket who is attempting to steal yet another minor character's camera. The immigrant attacks the pickpocket, perhaps with the intention of killing him, as a favor to Mr. Sammler, who is horrified.

The pickpocket is black; the man who intervenes is a downwardly mobile European immigrant. Mr. Sammler is, ultimately, able to establish a connection with the pickpocket who had previously held him against a wall so that he, the pickpocket, could expose his genitals to the elderly Sammler.

Now, this could potentially be a wonderful analogy for American politics (where race always trumps class; a black president can be elected, but never a poor one), but it clearly isn't. It could be about Sammler's psychology (latent guilt for killing a German whom he didn't have to kill while fleeing from the Nazis). However, the main point seems to be that one can be a racist, sexist, homophobic prude, as long as one prefers to avoid violence.

I don't like that, but there are many aspects of this book that I should like. There are some excellent bits of cultural conservatism:

"An oligarchy of technicians, engineers, the men who ran grand machines, infinitely more sophisticated than this automobile, would come to govern vast slums filled with bohemian adolescents, narcotized, beflowered, and 'whole'. He himself was a fragment, Mr. Sammler understood. And lucky to be that."

"Individualism is of no interest whatever if it does not extend truth."

"Democracy was propagandistic in its style. Conversation was often nothing but the repetition of liberal principles."

"They sought originality. They were obviously derivative. And of what--of Paiutes, of Fidel Castro? No, of Hollywood extras... better, thought Sammler, to accept the inevitability of imitation and then to imitate good things... make peace therefore with intermediacy and representation. But choose higher representations. Otherwise the individual must be the failure he now sees and knows himself to be."

And yet I found this book incredibly dull, thanks to layers of'realist' fluff that concealed all that cultural criticism and farce: every individual so meticulously delineated, even if they appeared for only three pages; every object described in 'loving' detail, even if it was entirely inconsequential; every idea 'properly' embedded in a character's conscience. Without that, the novel would have been approximately 150 pages, and I would have adored it.

Or would I? Because I also don't understand the deference paid to Bellow's writing. It seems to me to be little more than a mid-to-late-20th-century period style. Fragments. A sort of stream of consciousness. An unwillingness to either embrace or shun free indirect speech, but why?

So, I am defeated. Prove to me that I should attempt Herzog for the third time, or that I should bother to try Augie March. I don't want to give in, but I'm teetering on the brink.

“But a human being, owing to dawning comprehension, may well feel that he is a rat who lives in a temple” (186).

Mr. Sammler’s Planet seems to be deeply concerned with existential matters. It probes questions of belonging, place, and identity. Mr. Artur Sammler, with “conspicuousness […] on his mind”, is a naturalised New Yorker. He is forever orbiting, questioning, never fully settling, and never truly at home in his place and time. “[H]e didn’t know his proper age” (2).

The New York in Bellow’s prose is the planet that could be said to be Mr. Sammler’s. “Broadway at Ninety-sixth gave him such a sense of things” (232). The urban chaos, the NYC noise and smells, even the signs of decay and the conspicuous counterpoints to culture like the vermin are captured in whole swathes of quotable passages. “Sammler once saw a rat he took for a dachshund” (231).

It is Sammler’s own conspicuousness that makes him sensitive to ruptures of the norm, to the conspicuousness in others, and to the Other. The petty criminal, his quirkily suspect daughter, his self-made cousin, his nephew and niece – all are equally conspicuous and individual.

Yet Sammler seems to be merely ‘visiting’. Even in his own home, he is surrounded by “the wrong books, the wrong papers” (1). We learn that his past has firmly shaped him, leaving him out of step and out of time. His features spell a set of standards that contrast starkly with the overly permissive attitude of the age. Sammler’s is “a dry, a neat, prim face [that] declared that one had not crossed anyone’s boundary; [that] one was satisfied with one’s own business” (3). One of the favourite quotes of Sammler’s is “I like ceilings” (151).

The crossing of boundaries, whether social, legal, celestial, etc., is a central theme in Mr. Sammler’s Planet. It appears to be a contemporary trend or ailment. Sammler’s daughter’s act of pilferage shows that she is very much of the time: “stealing, was contemporary – lawless” (133). Sammler’s critique of the age goes beyond the moral to include a denouncement of mankind’s ability to check itself, diagnosing the “shrinking ability to endure restraint” (133) and a concomitant “liberation into individuality” (189).

All the while, the pressure is rising. “We are crowded in, packed in, now, and human beings must feel that there is a way out, and that the intellectual power and skill of their own species opens this way” (180). So, we venture into the vast universe. Sammler finds some solace in a stolen manuscript, but he qualifies his reading: “this is not the way to get out of spatial-temporal prison. Distant is still finite” (43).

Closer to home, cousin Gruner has to deal with an “arterial bulge in [the] brain” (132), another example of rupture. This brings Mr. Sammler back under the ceiling of family, an affirmation that negates the sound of the repeated “know” (260) of his last few words, echoing Shakespeare’s Lear.

A man, during World War Two, suddenly finds himself buried amongst a heap of bodies. Miraculously, he manages to escape and slowly wanders back into the realm of life. But here's the thing, as the narrator, he may still feel as if he is buried, or perhaps he tries to live life, yet as a man who remains emotionally and psychologically buried in that horrifying pile of bodies. Bellows, in this work, does an outstanding job in vividly portraying the narrator's struggle. The narrator attempts to live in a world that no longer seems to have a guiding god. He tries to conform to the outdated customs that have long passed and been replaced by a new set of values and ways that are completely foreign to him. Despite the unique style and pace of the novel, it is a truly searing account of survival. Our narrator is constantly grasping for hope, searching for it somewhere, anywhere, so that he can continue to endure and find meaning in this post-war world that has changed so drastically.

I don't know precisely why this particular book managed to find its way onto my reading list.

I have a vague recollection that it was featured on one of the Wall Street Journal's weekly "Top Five Books on..." lists a few months ago. However, the specific topic or category for which it was listed eludes me at the moment.

What I do clearly know is that I had a greater appreciation for the writing style than for the story itself. This was my very first encounter with a book by the award-winning Saul Bellow.

If I were compelled to summarize the essence of this book in a single sentence, I would say: "An old man who has endured the trials and tribulations of a life filled with hardships grapples with the decay and chaos of late 60's New York, contemplates the profound meaning of life, copes with spoiled young relatives, ponders the state of civilization, and mourns the loss of a dear friend."

This is a book that is likely to resonate only with those who possess a sunny yet pessimistic outlook on life.

I am not a regular viewer of TV programs. In fact, I watch very little television. A few nights ago, it was very late and I happened to see the title of a TV movie called "Survivors". From the few scenes I watched before sleep overcame me, I seemed to understand that it tells the story of a group of people who have survived a virus that has decimated the world's population. Well, looking at the title of this TV movie, I thought of Bellow. There were many people walking along invisible paths and aspiring to reach indeterminate destinations, their roads intersecting, meeting; colliding with each other and apparently each one had a final goal to reach. Those images made me think of humanity as seen through the monocle of Mister Sammler: "the majority went around as if under the effect of a spell, sleepwalkers, circumscribed, in the grip of secondary neurotic activities".

Artur Sammler reminded me of the figure of the inept European described by Svevo and Joyce: he is an elderly intellectual Jew of Polish origin, who lived in London until the age of 40 in close contact with eminent representatives of British culture, and who has lived in New York, a city that makes one think of Sodom and Gomorrah, since 1947 and spends his time carefully observing, through his only seeing eye, the country that hosts him, the United States at the end of the 1960s, populated by young people regressed to an almost barbaric level (defined as "the monkeys in the trees intent on defecating in their hands and then targeting the explorers below with shouts"), a country where "one must manage to train oneself to face the effects of modernity with an open face". His adventures, animated by the backdrop of rather bizarre characters, adventures that are moreover grotesque and always told with an underlying smile, are an opportunity to reflect on the lacerating crisis of an entire civilization, invaded by madness.

Mister Sammler is a survivor: he has gone through the horrors of the Holocaust and has returned from the dead, he has rejoined life. "An experience of this kind distorts": it distorts the soul and the mind that, in its paths of continuous monologues with itself, tends to distance itself from the anguish and the problematics of life, in order to alleviate the pain with which one is forced to live every minute of one's existence.

The conclusion to which Mr. Sammler - Bellow leads the reader is that true wisdom does not lie in closing oneself in the "ivory tower" of the spirit to shelter from the world, but in understanding that death and life are inextricably connected, that death is written in life, is implicit in the human destiny.

Mr Sammler does not desire to journey to the moon. He has incomplete work that demands his attention right here on earth. This remarkable character serves as a bridge from the old World, embodying the finest of the philosophy achieved there. In this book, he scatters breadcrumbs for us to trail, breadcrumbs of utmost importance as his focus is on a life that is fully realized.

The e-book was perused by George Guidad with the intention of attaining perfection. Born into a family of refugees in the early 1960s, the novel and its narration transported me back to those individuals who were serious-minded, deep thinkers, and also possessed a great sense of humor. They spoke with a thick accent yet had a grammar that was superior to any native-born speaker I have ever encountered. And they witnessed things; and they knew things.

Their experiences and knowledge added a rich layer to the story, making it not just a fictional account but a reflection of a bygone era and the people who lived through it.

I am truly overjoyed that I have the privilege of living on this remarkable planet, Earth.

Our planet is a haven of beauty and diversity, offering an abundance of natural wonders that never cease to amaze.

From the majestic mountains that reach towards the sky to the vast oceans that cover a significant portion of its surface, Earth is a sight to behold.

The changing seasons bring with them a kaleidoscope of colors and experiences, from the blooming flowers of spring to the vibrant foliage of autumn.

Living on Earth allows us to interact with a wide variety of life forms, each with its own unique characteristics and contributions.

We can observe the fascinating behavior of animals in their natural habitats and marvel at the complexity of the plant kingdom.

In addition to its natural beauty, Earth also provides us with the resources and opportunities we need to thrive.

We have the ability to build cities, create art, and pursue our dreams, all thanks to the bountiful gifts of our planet.

I am grateful every day for the opportunity to call Earth my home and look forward to exploring all that it has to offer.

Intellectual and Polish Jewish, having survived the Holocaust by a hair's breadth and become an American, Mr. Sammler, now old, has interesting experiences and ideas to convey.

However, his fellow travelers, especially a series of erratic relatives, listen to him little and follow his advice even less. If they were to listen with a bit more attention, they would know that Mr. Sammler doesn't like the explanations that everyone is quick to give, but rather loves distinctions.

He detests a life full of questions and answers because he thinks one should be satisfied with the truth that can be approximated.

He believes that the expansion of the spirit is the true purpose of existence.

And that the best thing is to be disinterested and not judge.

But so much for that, they don't listen, they do as they please and with what results!

Well, one can hope that at least some readers will be able to pick up something good from Mr. Sammler...

Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

The reason for this honor was "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."

This novel delves deep into the exploration of the meaning of being human in a world that frequently appears unfit for such lofty purposes.

It is truly a work of utter genius. Bellow's writing has the power to make readers think about the fundamental aspects of human existence and the complex nature of our modern society.

His ability to understand and analyze the human condition with such precision and insight is what sets him apart as a literary giant.

Through his work, he invites us to question our values, our beliefs, and our place in the world.

The Nobel Prize was a well-deserved recognition of his remarkable talent and contribution to the world of literature.

When I was preparing the biography of Saul Bellow for the magazine "For Books", it seemed that since I couldn't get the information well, I turned to the first translation into Georgian by Diogenes, namely "Henderson the Rain King" by Saul Bellow. In a few moments, I discovered this remarkable novel. In this case too, the author completely fascinated me and, as it seems, he becomes my favorite among American novelists.

It is a complex text, it starts difficultly and hard, but then gradually you get into the world of Mr. Sammler and together with him you start to observe the world - a place populated by fallen people. What resemblance does our civilization have on another planet? Is the problem resolved? Do you open up to yourself?

"Human life cannot be anything else. Only through the path of self-destruction can it free itself from itself."

Those ramblings of an old reactionary are truly fascinating. It is remarkable how Bellow managed to keep me completely hooked without relying on any traditional plot structure whatsoever. His writing is a unique blend of simplicity and depth. He possesses that extremely rare gift of being able to express the most complex ideas and emotions in clear and simple sentences. This ability allows the reader to easily understand and engage with the profound themes he explores. Bellow's work is a testament to the power of language and his mastery of it. Each sentence seems to be carefully crafted, revealing a world of meaning beneath its surface. It is no wonder that his writing has had such a lasting impact on the literary world.