A reactionary often views the 60s as the very end of civilization. This era, with its radical social changes and upheavals, seems incomprehensible to them at first. They attempt to make sense of it all through half-digested philosophies, grasping at ideas that may or may not truly apply.

However, over time, a sort of acceptance begins to dawn. They realize that, despite their initial misgivings and fears, the 60s was a pivotal moment in history that cannot be ignored or wished away.

Perhaps they come to understand that the social movements and cultural shifts of that decade were a necessary step in the evolution of society. Or maybe they simply grow tired of fighting against the inevitable and learn to live with the changes that have occurred.

In any case, the reactionary's journey from seeing the 60s as a threat to a sort of acceptance is a complex and often painful one. It is a journey that reflects the larger struggle between tradition and progress, between the old ways and the new.

4.5 stars.

This is a truly remarkable book. It is a very well-written, entertaining, imaginative, witty, and interesting read that is set in New York in 1969. The story mainly unfolds over two days in the life of 71-year-old Arthur Sammler, a Holocaust survivor from World War II. In 1947, an American, Dr Arnold Gurner, paid for Mr Sammler and his daughter Shula to immigrate to the USA. Dr Gurner remained Mr Sammler's benefactor for the next 22 years.

The novel predominantly represents Mr Sammler's thoughts and views. He is a wise, reticent, diplomatic, and intelligent man. His daughter lives with him and takes care of him. Over the two days, a number of events take place. Mr Sammler witnesses a black man pickpocketing. His daughter steals the manuscript of a Dr Lal. Additionally, Dr Garner's daughter and son want Mr Sammler to act on their behalf to get Dr Gurner to provide them with funds.

Bellow writes with smoothly flowing paragraphs. Here is an example of his writing style: 'The earth 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.'

Saul Bellow fans are sure to enjoy this book. It is one of my favorite Bellow novels, along with 'Herzog', 'The Adventures of Angie March', and 'Humboldt’s Gift'. 'Mr Sammler’s Planet' won the 1971 National Book Award, which is a testament to its quality and significance.

A truly stunning novel that I happened to pick up at our local little free library during a pleasant stroll here in town. The story follows Mr. Sammler, a Holocaust survivor, as he meanders through the bustling streets of 1970s New York City. He is constantly engaged in deep pondering about the profound questions of life. However, he is continuously harassed by the petty humans who surround him, and this even includes his own relatives. It seems that the only person who truly takes life seriously is his rich nephew and benefactor. Yet, this nephew is constantly living in the shadow of an aneurysm, waiting for his life to end at any given moment. It is indeed pretty dark stuff, but it makes for an incredibly mentally challenging read. It forces the reader to grapple with the harsh realities of life, the impact of trauma, and the complex relationships that exist within a family and society.

I Am Opposed to Explanations

Mr Sammler is a man in his seventies, thin, with only one functioning eye, using an umbrella to support his limping gait. He is of Polish origin and has emigrated to the United States, where we know him.

Mr Sammler is an intellectual and a Holocaust survivor. He pretended to be dead among the real dead buried in a pit, naked, and then became a carrier of death himself to obtain clothes and food. It was a matter of survival.

Now, he observes the world through his monocle and feels lost. He doesn't recognize himself in any behavior. The distance between his way of observing and thinking and the frenzy for empty anxieties and fashionable trends of the people around him is vast. So much so that even the reader doesn't know if the events that happen to Mr Sammler's strange and out-of-the-ordinary relatives are really absurd and fantastical or if it's his gaze that makes them seem that way.

"Accept and concede that happiness consists in doing what the majority of others do. Then you must embody what others embody. If it's prejudices, then prejudices. If it's fury, then fury. If it's sex, then sex. But don't contradict your era. Just limit yourself to not contradicting it. Unless, by pure chance, you are a Sammler and are convinced that your place is outside."


Mr Sammler doesn't like to give explanations.

"Explanation? I'm rather opposed to lengthy explanations. There are too many of them. It makes the mental life of humanity ungovernable."


Mr Sammler loves distinctions. He thinks that the truth can only be approximated and one should be content with that, and the only wise thing is not to judge the actions of others. One should not allow oneself to do so.

Because what will matter when looking in the mirror at the end of the journey is being true to oneself.

To the contract signed with one's own conscience. Just like his nephew, to whom he is grateful for taking care of a survivor like him and his eccentric daughter.

"He knew that he had to respect, and he respected them - through all the confusion and the crude buffoonery of this life in which we rush headlong - he respected the conditions of his contract. The conditions that, in the deepest part of his heart, every man knows. As I know mine. As everyone knows theirs. For such is the truth of all this - that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, know, know."

Mr Sammler, it has been nice to know you.
Your acute and unconditional reasoning, free from commonplaces, will be missed.

This is a seedy book, seedy in multiple ways.

Mr. Sammler witnesses a society that is being threatened by an excessive attachment to sex rather than love, and it is steadily deteriorating.

Just as seeds get planted and grow into various things, sometimes great and sometimes not, in this story, the children are mostly disappointing, and so is society in general. However, Uncle Sammler has wonderful ideas that he expounds splendidly.

The writing in this book is of the highest quality. It pains me to give it only four stars, but I simply didn't enjoy the characters as much as I would have liked.

When the astronauts planted the flag on the moon, they also pinned this book to a specific place and time. Rabbit Angstrom would fit comfortably into this setting, but even though I appreciate Bellow's writing more than Updike's, the Rabbit series was more captivating to me than this one.

Nonetheless, this book still has its merits and is worth reading for those who appreciate fine literature and thought-provoking themes.

It offers a unique perspective on society and human nature, and Bellow's masterful storytelling keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end.

Despite my reservations about the characters, I can't deny the power and beauty of the writing.

Overall, it's a book that will leave a lasting impression and spark discussions about the state of our society and the role of love and sex in our lives.

Mr. Sammler And Meister Eckhart

In Saul Bellow's National Book Award winning novel, "Mr Sammler's Planet", Artur Sammler, a 74-year-old Holocaust survivor, is a dedicated reader of the medieval German mystical philosopher, Meister Eckhart. Sammler's passion for Eckhart instantly creates a connection with me. We share the same Jewish heritage and age, and are both devout students of the Meister. As the novel begins, Sammler makes a daily journey from his west side New York City apartment to the 42 Street Library, where he immerses himself in Eckhart's Latin works. Later in the novel, Sammler recalls how, upon returning from a trip to Israel, he was in his usual spot in the library reading the following passage from the Meister: "Blessed are the poor in spirit. Poor is he who has nothing. He who is poor in spirit is receptive of all spirit. Now God is the Spirit of spirits. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, and peace. See to it that you are stripped of all creatures, of all consolation from creatures. For certainly as long as creatures comfort and are able to comfort you, you will never find true comfort. But if nothing can comfort you save God, truly God will console you." (209)

Sammler remarks that he doesn't literally believe what he reads. Nevertheless, after a lifetime of insatiable reading, he discovers that he has no desire to read anything other than Eckhart. Eckhart and his teachings on spirit and detachment are just one starting point for Bellow's rich, philosophical novel. The novel explores the relationship between detachment and spirituality, as well as human connection, through the character of Artur Sammler. Set over a three-day period in 1969 in New York City, the novel features numerous flashbacks to Sammler's earlier life as a Jewish-Polish emigre in London, where he was a friend of H.G Wells, and then to his wartime experiences in the Holocaust, where his wife and many others were brutally murdered before his eyes, and he narrowly escaped death at the hands of both the Nazis and the Poles.

The book contains extensive dialogue, and the reader hears the voices of Sammler and many others. However, the novel is written in the third person through an omniscient narrator who seems to understand the inner thoughts of all the characters, and whose voice often merges with theirs, especially Sammler's. The third-person narration allows the reader to maintain a certain distance and reflect on the voice and thoughts of Sammler.

The novel is set against the backdrop of what was once known as the sexual revolution, as well as the rise of the student protest movement and the New Left. Technological progress and the moon landing also play significant roles in Sammler's reflections in the novel, as do the crime-ridden, violent streets of New York City. Sammler contemplates his surroundings in interior monologues, but even more so in conversations with others. Bellow introduces many of Sammler's relatives and acquaintances, and Sammler's relationships and responses to them shape the book, which combines elements of interiority and action. Here are some of the main characters in the story.
Sammler was rescued from a displaced persons camp in 1947 by his nephew, Gruner, a successful physician and investor who has largely supported Sammler financially throughout his life in America. Gruner has two adult children: a daughter who is sexually promiscuous and a son who is intellectually gifted but a drifter constantly on the lookout for opportunities. Sammler is uncomfortable with the lifestyles of both of Gruner's children.
Gruner also rescued Sammler's daughter Shula, known as Shula-Slawa, who was in turn rescued by nuns and lived in a convent during her teenage years, where she absorbed Catholicism in addition to her Jewish heritage. Shula-Slawa has been in an abusive marriage in Israel. Sammler rescues her once again and brings her back to New York City. She steals a manuscript from an Indian biophysicist, a theft that eventually leads to a long and important philosophical discussion between the scientist and Sammler.
Sammler lives with his widowed, lonely niece in a west side apartment. During his bus trips from the library, Sammler notices an African American pickpocket. The pickpocket,察觉到 Sammler's attention, follows him home, resulting in a pivotal scene and confrontation.
Sammler lost an eye in the Holocaust, and this partial blindness is a crucial metaphor in the novel, as it prompts the reader and Sammler himself to reflect on the possible limitations of Sammler's opinions and perspectives on what he sees. As the book progresses over its three-day span, Sammler appears to move from his internalized, isolated critical perspective on himself, American society, and his family and acquaintances to a less critical perspective that recognizes the importance of human bonds and commonalities. Despite his emphasis on God and detachment, as shown in the earlier quote, Eckhart's mysticism also acknowledges the significance of life in the world. In my opinion, Sammler deepens rather than rejects his understanding of Eckhart's spirituality and comes to appreciate the importance of human loyalty and fulfilling what he calls the "terms of his contract".
Bellow's novel elicited conflicting responses upon its publication, and it continues to do so. The novel has received a great deal of scholarly and critical attention, which is appropriate given its intellectual and human depth and its themes. The book is not an easy read. "Mr Sammler's Planet" rewards repeated reflection. Readers will have different opinions about Sammler and whether they agree with his various positions on the America of his time and our own. The book has inspired me to reflect, as only great literature can, on my own "contract" and my own thoughts and my engagement with life.

This book is fine.

It has its merits and certain aspects that might be considered good.

However, I truly hated reading it.

Maybe it was the writing style that didn't appeal to me, or perhaps the story didn't grip my attention.

Every time I picked it up, I felt a sense of dread.

The characters didn't seem real to me, and I couldn't connect with them on any level.

The plot seemed to drag on at times, making it a chore to get through each page.

Despite its fine qualities, it just wasn't the right book for me.

I found myself constantly looking for an excuse to put it down and do something else.

In the end, I managed to finish it, but it was not an enjoyable experience.

I'm sure there are many people who would love this book, but unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

One of my all-time favourites is this remarkable book. It is one of those rare literary gems that are simply oozing with metaphor and double meaning. There is so much depth and complexity that it leaves you truly at a loss for words when attempting to describe it.

Above all, I firmly believe it is a novel about humanity, with the central metaphor being that of seeing. The obsessively recurring words - eye, see, look, gaze - add a powerful layer to the narrative. "To see was delicious", as the main character Sammler, who is one-eyed, experiences. He views the world with his one healthy eye and witnesses crime in action, which both fascinates and stuns him. He also sees violence that sickens him, and the fat and yellow moon in the Manhattan sky. The other eye he lost through violence when he was nearly killed. Seeing, in this context, is the act of understanding, of seeing through the appearances of worldly life.

Related to seeing is the constant panning and zooming view. It ranges from the minutiae of life on planet Earth, with all its fallacies, erring, and self-deluded aspects, to the outer space and "Sammler's planet". At times, this planet is presented as a place of refuge, at others as a detached viewing point of the big picture of humanity, and still at other times as just a phantasmagorical illusion of the technology-possessed world (colonizing the moon).

And then there is Sammler himself. Disabled by his one-eyedness and having literally emerged from the grave, though not truly a survivor (as Bellow puts it, he had not survived, just lasted) of the Nazi mass killing, he is yet a king in the kingdom of the blind ("the blindness of the living"). His growth is palpable, from being only half-human (one-eyed, half-dead) and seeing through the world's schemes with a detached analytical sense, to being capable of weeping and sensing loss.

Beyond the ever-present metaphors lies the ever-present ambiguity in the tone of the text. At times it is ironical, at times paternal, but always brilliant and pregnant with meaning, both human and humane.

The book begins with a captivating few lines that set the stage for what is to come. It starts with the idea that intellectual man has become an explaining creature, but often the explanations go in one ear and out the other as the soul has its own natural knowledge and sits unhappily on the superstructures of explanation.

And at the end of the book, we are left with the profound question of where the soul stands. The very last lines remind us that the soul knows. "Remember, God, the soul of Elya Gruner, who... (...) At his best this man was much kinder than at my very best I have ever been or could ever be. He was aware that he must meet, and he did meet - through all the confusion and the degraded clowning of this life through which we are speeding - he did meet the terms of his contract. The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it - that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know." The soul knows, and this knowledge is at the heart of this extraordinary novel.

At 75 years of age, I can safely say I have long effectively been an overly anxious clone of Mr. Artur Sammler. Here, let me illustrate.

“Shortly after Dawn, or what would have been Dawn in a normal sky, Mr. Artur Sammler with his bushy eye took in the books and papers of his West Side bedroom and suspected strongly that they were the wrong books, the wrong papers.”

Why “wrong?” I get it. Well, if you don’t, it simply goes with the wizened - read prunish - territory of being 75 and taking in your littered book shelves and dusty papers through the eyes of the executor of one’s estate with one wary, weary glance.

Happens every day as I survey my demesne - blanketed by the drear look of désuétude, all of my possessions - after my demise. Artur - or more chummily and curtly “Art” to the bored cop to whom “Art” anxiously reports a pickpocket on his subway line - is, like me, slightly out of sync with the Land of the Living.

Now, that’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Well, Old age, as Art’s contemporary Mae West might have said, is Scare City, and it’s definitely “not for sissies.” Avoid it at your peril!

Add to this the sobering thought that Art’s dour depression arises - through no deed of his own other than being Jewish - from narrowly avoiding being exterminated in a concentration camp. But Arthur Sammler doesn’t see the Valueless Value of that harrowing encounter with pure Being - the hidden face of God.

God, it has been said, has long hidden His face - from all excepting Moses. For God is the pure Gainlessness, the utter non-reciprocity of Being. Being demands nothing. And gives nothing in return. Its presence is bound to its pure Lack.

Seeing this, and being thus stunned into Moses’ silent stunned retreat from that awful vision, Mr Sammler might have been healed from interminably trying to keep up on his 24 hour moral treadmill. When the law of an eye for an eye encounters the law of non-reciprocity it is silenced forever. Peace ensues.

I know, because it happened to me. I have found a peace within my endless internal conflict.

It is rather disconcerting to me now to remember that my Mom wolfed down this book at a hot vacation spot in our early-sixties family mythology, a summer resort on the shores of Georgian Bay. She said, there, that it was now her favourite book by Bellow!

That was my Mom for you. And surely one reason why she never wanted to live to Art’s age. She thought Saul Bellow was proffering a good bit of advice. But Arthur’s fate is not our own unavoidable sentence.

Well, and she didn’t make it to Art’s age, dying of cancer at a youthful 56… But, somewhere way above this deafening postmodern fracas, she’s surely chuckling with me now…

As she sees this now-elderly son of hers relive old Art’s aged half-life - And repeatedly repeat the same feeble misadventures that Art succumbed to daily, like ancient Sisyphus - And both of us getting tired of our ersatz lives between the Ivory Gates, until finally we are freed.

Bottom line, of course, is that needless to say, we're now more than ready for the Horned Gates of Heaven! Like where we are when the end of our lives comes... tired of all the headgames: Spitting from the mouth The withered apple seed.

Tell me if I am not glad!

Sammler is an extremely important book. Stylistically, it is a rich tapestry, inventive and original, yet with its own flaws (naturally, as it is Bellow's work!). It is full of heart, with great lava flows of mood and motion that sweep the reader along. Intellectually, it is highly original, often brilliant, insightful, and at times reactionary, sad, tragic, revolutionary, and hopeful. It is Bellow, a novelist of ideas, as I attempted to describe in my review of Herzog.

But more significantly, Sammler is important because it represents Bellow coming into his own. Augie is not truly Bellow; it seems to have been written by someone else, perhaps someone in Iowa. Herzog is Bellow, but it is uncertain, very flawed (indeed), and still immature. However, it is the embryo of late 20th-century urban New York Bellow. Seize the Day is a flawless little gem, but it is just an "exercise," a novella, a conscious effort by a writer to learn to write, to really write, after the pretentions of Augie and the missed opportunities of Herzog. In contrast, Sammler is Bellow in full bloom!

Almost...

It is a wonderful and exuberant book, one in which absurdity and tragedy are transmuted into... what? Acceptance? Certainly not into melodrama, and not into comedy. After all, it is Bellow.

The third novel by Saul Bellow that won the National Book Award (in 1971) is rich in bitter reflections on the human condition, on madness, etc., having a pronounced eschatological character. The finality of the human "species" is thus one of the central themes of the book, and it is not clear whether the species in question will get a second chance, whether it will have access to rebirth, as was the case with the eponymous hero of the book, Mr. Artur Sammler, who was shot and buried by the Nazis but, miraculously, managed to save himself (unlike his wife and after he killed a Nazi in turn). Now Mr. Sammler lives in America, where he is rather a kept man.

Therefore, the theme of death is fundamental here and refers not only to the fact that many of Mr. Sammler's acquaintances, in their seventies, are dead - "Everywhere you looked or tried to look, you came across the deceased. It took some getting used to" - or that his "nephew" and benefactor, the gynecologist Dr. Elya Gruner, is dying, but also to our planet in general, which is both home and cemetery to all of us. It seemed that humanity had reached in the '70s the moment when it would abandon this planet at least partially and move its home and cemetery to other planets.

But madness is also present at every step in the book, Artur Sammler being a true specialist in this sense. Here's how he structures his reflections:

"Is our species crazy?

Plenty of evidence.

Everything, of course, seems to be man's invention. Including madness. Which may be yet another creation of that tormented inventiveness. At the present level of human evolution, there were propositions (and Sammler was partial to them) according to which choices were reduced to sanctity and madness. We are crazy only if we are not saints, saints only as long as we plan above madness. The gravitational attraction of madness pulling the saint towards collapse. A few might understand that the power to do your duty daily and promptly is what gives birth to saints and heroes. Not many. The majority have the fancy of leaps towards higher states, feeling only crazy enough to qualify."

The plot of the novel is, as Bellow has accustomed us, almost nonexistent, the threads from which it is composed unraveling step by step towards a more or less expected end: Mr. Sammler follows on the bus a black man who steals from women's purses, makes a complaint to the police, but the police don't take him into account, and this will have strange consequences; Artur's daughter, the vagabond Shula, who collects garbage from dumps and is obsessed with the idea that her father, who worked for 20 years in London "as a correspondent for Warsaw newspapers and magazines" and knew H. G. Wells well, will not have his merits recognized, steals the manuscript titled The Future of the Moon by the Hindu scientist Govinda Lal, a fact that may or may not have dramatic consequences; one of Mr. Sammler's former students, the young Lionel Feffer, asks him to hold a seminar at Columbia University about the British scene of the '30s, and Sammler tells the students about the Cosmopolis project for a World State, in which he was also included, but something unpleasant happens there; Wallace, Dr. Gruner's son, is obsessed with the idea that his father has hidden in the house the money that came from his connection with the mafia (he performed illegal abortions when asked) and acts like a madman; also, the hallucinating story of Chaim Rumkowski, the "crazy Jewish king of Łódź", is included. It's not too much, but neither little, the novel has many tricks, but it's not the best book by the American writer. Pleasant reading!

This is a slow and contemplative novel that was published in 1970.

It centers around Sammler, an elderly Jewish war refugee residing in New York City in the late 1960s. Sammler has witnessed history unfold, having lived through the intellectual idealism of the 1930s, only to see it crumble into the horrors of the world war murder machines. Miraculously, he survived the war but was badly scarred. Now, decades later, in the great city of New York, he witnesses it tearing itself apart in a frenzy of nihilism and self-loathing. In this sense, the story is prescient, as the cultural maladies that emerged from our meccas are, 50 years on, affecting us all.

For example, in Sammler's New York, we see the "woke" masses of that era trashing culture, while the tech juggernauts take control. The children are setting fire to libraries and donning Persian trousers, growing their sideburns as a symbol of their supposed "wholeness."

I must admit, this is a slow novel, and I don't think I could have read it at a younger age. It's a great book, but my recommendation is not without conditions. You have to be in the right place in life to be ready, willing, and able to fully understand and appreciate it.

Some authors offer practical solutions to our problems, like Huxley. But I appreciate Bellow for simply illuminating the messy human dilemma without dictating how to fix it. He challenges us to pause, think, and maybe continue with a bit more wisdom. That's what I seek in a serious novel.

As a personal and perhaps silly footnote, I prefer paperback books for their convenience and portability. And I like a cover illustration that sets the right mood for me to engage with the contents. It's not about judging a book by its cover; it just has to be subjectively "right" for me. I'm irked that intellectual books often have intellectual covers. I want something more lively, maybe with a touch of action or lust. In this case, the Penguin edition with its street signs pointing to "Here," "There," and "Everywhere" works well enough to pique my interest.