The reviews of this book seem to split the readers into people who vaguely identify with the fatuous intellectual and those who react and judge from a distance. I identify with him. Joseph is a Bellow protagonist who doesn't bluster larger than life like Henderson or isn't excessively snobby and removed, an alien from another generation like Sammler. He is a dabbling intellectual who judges doers from afar and is poisoned by the intersection of his own lack of initiative or concrete movement toward achievement, his lack of daily responsibilities, and the fact that the men around him are realizing their potential through sacrificing themselves. His reasoning is serpentine in its self delusion. As a person, he is half baked and at a crossroads. He obscures the fact that his choices are simple, to act and join the war effort, growing up through extinction, to obscure himself from the war and make his living some other way, possibly as a scholar, or to moulder on his wife's support. He distances himself from this wife, the one he tries to "mold" into a teachable image and the friends who alchemically reveal each others weaknesses at parties. The prospect of war and idleness erodes the "good man" image he cultivated in the past, revealing a primal rage and ugly traits. He is smart enough to judge and understand, but not talented or willful enough to create himself. His thoughts hum along disjointed and verbose, with their pithy, beautiful reflections of Chicago tableaus and their jottings of discursive ideas. The journal serves as a snippet, a snapshot in Joseph's life as it teeters on adulthood and/or extinction.

Joseph is a middling character, he has likeable and unlikeable traits. His intellectual musings don't have the heft of someone who successfully presents their thoughts to the public for a living. He has little right to judge those like Alf Steidler who actually showcase their ability to entertain, or his brother Amos who attempts to act in order to live and gain money for his family. Reviewers say he is solipsistic. I say that he has little connection to a wife he seems to have loved for what he could make out of her. One who he lives with, but seems not to love, like, or even hear anymore other than as a tottering feminine child who disturbs his thoughts. He is not compassionate to his friends and doesn't reach out to them with a quid pro quo to break his mental isolation.

Bellow, like Joseph, demonstrates potential in this first novel. To reflect humming thought, intellectual discourse, and reflections on culture at large while moving plot along. The beautiful sleight of hand and choice of detail in describing passing city images. Bellow allows the uncertain, changing thought process of the intellectual man to murkily reflect an understanding of culture during his time. My thought is chatty in this way, with ephemeral arguments, written and re-written as I gain experience. It takes little imagination or suspension of disbelief to fall into the thought processes of Bellow's more believable characters, particularly Joseph. I am just as solipsistic if not more, my thoughts and ideas rise, crest, and break on each other no less, and I am constantly reformatting my view on the world. Joseph's life is an unfinished, continued script like the book, which doesn't end in a satisfying way other than threatening extinction.

Gostei muito de conhecer o Joseph e a escrita de Saul Bellow.
Joseph é uma personagem complexa, com várias camadas, e o autor consegue, através da sua análise, dar-nos a conhecer a visão dos jovens da altura da 2ª grande guerra, com a sua vida em suspenso e com as consequências que daí advêm para todas as áreas da sua vida. Mesmo sem estar na guerra, a guerra tudo afecta. Interessante também perceber as condições de vida dos jovens nessa época negra da história mundial.
Obrigada @cat.classics e @n_soliloquios pela sugestão!

اولین کتابی بود که از این نویسنده خوندم و حقیقت اینه که نتونستم باهاش ارتباط برقرار کنم حتی با وجود اینکه کتاب جایزه نوبل 1976 رو هم دریافت کرده! تصمیم گیری درمورد سال بلو رو گذاشتم بعد از خوندن کتاب بعدیش؛ امیدوارم بتونه جزء نویسنده های مورد علاقم قرار بگیره :)) این کتاب منو یاد مورچه
آرژانتینی ِ ایتالو کالوینو و همینطور کارکترهای رمان جهالت ِ میلان کوندرا انداخت، حالا شنونده (خواننده) میتونه خودش درمورد این کتاب قضاوت کنه! :)

جمله مورد علاقم از این کتاب:
عشق موجب بیزاری از زندگی نمی شود. این ناتوانی ما در آزاد زیستن است

106th book of 2023.

3.5. Surprisingly good. I've read Bellow before (The Victim) but can't remember much of it, so clearly it didn't leave a lasting impression. I've been a Dangling Man myself: before my current job I struck a bout of laziness, self-loathing and driving to work with apathy bordering hatred. Bellow's 'hero' is waiting to be drafted into the army: he's in Chicago purgatory, the in-between. Most days he sits, reads the papers, smokes. Wanders. A plotless novel by any measure but enjoyable for the narrative voice, a book as journal-entries. Joseph dangling drives him insane. It has echoes of something like Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. A sorry ass wondering where he fits in the world. Purpose is vital to life. A loveable bastard and from what I've read, the precursor to Bellow's later, Herzog. Well, that now impatiently waits for me as I dangle in-between Bellow books.

L’insano desiderio d’essere ogni cosa e ognuno e ogni cosa per ognuno

Tanto tempo fa lessi un bell’articolo che definiva treppiedi ebraico la produzione di Roth, Malamud e Bellow. Se il primo l’avevo letto fin lì con scarsa soddisfazione, per The Assiatant del secondo avevo acceso tutte le stelle disponibili. Ho continuato a leggerli entrambi gradendo parecchio Pastorale e Indignazione, meno Una nuova vita. Non mi decidevo invece a leggere il supporto Nobel del treppiedi, per una sorta di riverenza mista a sfiducia

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Ho scelto l’Uomo in bilico per colmare la lacuna e devo dire che l’incipit mi aveva favorevolmente colpito

Ci fu un tempo in cui la gente aveva l’abitudine di rivolgersi frequentemente a se stessa e non si vergognava di registrare le proprie vicende interiori. Ma tenere un diario al giorno d’oggi è considerato una specie di debolezza verso se stessi, un vizio, soprattutto una cosa di cattivo gusto. Perché questa è un’epoca rude

L’epoca rude di cui parla Bellow è quella della seconda guerra mondiale, ma siamo in America e il conflitto rimbomba in lontananza. I colpi che si sentiranno nel libro saranno quelli vibrati da un uomo che licenziatosi, e trovatosi libero di poter trascorrere le proprie giornate a piacimento, si troverà schiacciato dall’ambiente in cui vive e dalle proprie elucubrazioni. Il testo è scritto sotto forma di diario e si apre il 15 dicembre 1942. Proprio come in un vero diario, ci sono giorni raccontati dettagliatamente, altri solo accennati ed altri ancora che danno l’occasione per partorire riflessioni sociologiche, filosofiche, antropologiche. In soldoni: all’angolo blu, in bilico sullo sgabello, con il peso di 220 libbre Il Nobel ebraico. Un quintale è anche il peso (massimo) del libro, che non scorre, nonostante alcuni capitoli siano più corti delle poesie di Iacchetti. Benchè lo abbia scritto in forma diaristica e dunque in prima persona, a Bellow pare interessare più il contesto sociale che il protagonista. Costui è definito da ciò che lo circonda, le sue riflessioni sembrano funzionali a metter in evidenza che cosa sia un uomo senza un lavoro negli anni quaranta in America. L’orgoglio di cui lo dota, la superbia con cui gli fa rifiutare l’aiuto economico del fratello, la dipendenza economica dalla moglie (impensabile nello stesso periodo da questa parte del mondo) sono più importanti delle discussioni filosofiche che intavola prima di tutto con sé stesso e poi con una serie di ex compagni di studio e bisboccia.

Credo d’aver avuto la certezza per qualche istante che il momento atteso fosse venuto e che fosse impossibile resistere oltre. Dovevo cedere. E riconobbi che il sospiro con cui avevo riempito i miei polmoni d’aria tiepida era anche un sospiro di sollievo alla mia decisione…

Questo è stato il punto in cui più di ogni altro mi sono sentito vicino a Joseph; quella decisione che arriva dopo una lunga battaglia fra una causa persa in partenza e un obbligo morale a cui non si sarà in grado di sottrarsi.
Il supporto Nobel del treppiedi è sicuramente la sua parte più pesante

Kitap çekici bir konu üstüne kurulmuş ve bazı parlak anları da var, ama derli toplu olarak diyeceği bir şey yok ve havada kalan bir sürü sahnesi yüzünden kendi sesini bulmakta zorlanıyor.

Saul Bellow, Nobel Laureate, is best known for his masterpieces The Adventures Of Augie March and Herzog. Of course, I've read neither of those. Not just because I'm a tosser who prefers the lesser known works of respected authors, but because I only had $3 on me when I wandered into Fowlers' Second-Hand Books, Lorne, and this book, at $2.50, was the only Bellow I could afford. I did in fact read Bellow's The Victim several years ago and I recall none of it; oh, there was a scene on a subway I think, or at a train station, but that's it. But I do remember I thought it was an okay book, and that Bellow was worth another shot. He was certainly worth a $2.50 shot.

Dangling Man is about a Canadian-American called Joseph. He has enlisted in the US Army (WWII) but due to some red-tape about his Canadian citizenship (though he's been in the US for most of his life) there's a hold up and he is forced to wait about eight months. Thing is but, he'd quit his job, and they couldn't take him back even as a casual, and so he's just stuck at home, waiting, waiting. His missus has a job, and she's become the bread winner. They live in a small rooming house (Chicago).

With nothing to do, and little money, he gets a kind of cabin fever and with no provocation he becomes a cantankerous bastard. Like an un-funny George Costanza, he ruins every social engagement (for everyone), party, even simple catch ups with friends, by being hopelessly argumentative and anti-social.

I know people like this. The type for who the question "How are you going?" can be answered with "What do you mean by that?"

Those with smarts, but no job, little money, no school to go to, no real reason to even get up in the morning... and weirdly lacking the drive to dig themselves out of the hole. Idle hands make ... With so much time to spare, they tend to over-think everything, see conspiracies where there are none, feel pressed, pressured, stressed, obsess over innocuous tasks that a busy person would take in their stride. I think it was in the movie Casablanca there was some line that ran: If you want something important done, ask someone who is already busy. I have found that to be anecdotally true. And the thing is, I dislike people who are both idle and cantankerous. I can take one or the other but not both. They bug me. And now I got stuck for 140 pages with one of them.

As for why he keeps causing scenes...

"It may be that I am tired of having to identify a day as 'the day I asked for a second cup of coffee', or 'the day the waitress refused to take back the burned toast', and so want to blaze it more sharply, regardless of the consequences..."

There have been many novels written by fictional social misfits in a kind of diary-form. It's almost like a rite of passage for white morose male authors. Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground is the best of them (because at least he does something, eventually), and I guess Kafka's The Trial is another that works. The very worst of them is Hell by Henri Barbusse which I read a couple of months ago (here's my rating: F. F for Freaking Shit'ouse.) Bellow's book is somewhere in the middle. He captured the spirit of an idle man very well, but he failed to elicit any sympathy from me. I just wanted Joseph to go to the fucking war. Oh, and on that, I wondered why he would even want to go to a war. He seemed too cynically erudite. But he worded it beautifully (in a way that sums up my feelings about US aggression towards, say, Taliban): "...as between their imperialism and ours, if a full choice were possible, I would take ours."

Also, in the end, he just wanted the regimentation. A reason to get up in the morning. Don't we all?

"'İşte yaşam bu!' diyorum. 'İğrenç saçma, budalaca ve hiçbir şey! Gerçek yaşam, sanat ve düşüncedir. Yaşamaya değer tek şey hayal gücüdür.'"

S-a întâmplat să îl descopăr pe Bellow chiar prin prima lui carte, Omul suspendat. Este un jurnal scris între 1942 și 1943, pe când acesta avea 29 de ani și aștepta să fie recrutat în armată. Fără loc de muncă și încurcat de mecanismul birocratic de încorporare, blocat între două lumi, cea monotonă de acasă (soția, vecinii, Chicago-ul în sine) și lumea ideilor și Principiilor, Joseph începe să releteze lucrurile mărunte din viața sa, toate „nimicurile” care se dovedesc a avea în spate puternice semnificații filosofice. Chiar gândurile sale constituie esența lucrării de față, evenimentele desfășurate pe parcursul celor 5 luni de scriere constituind doar ocazii pentru manifestarea ideilor proprii. Sunt multe pagini unde creionul meu a subliniat, m-am regăsit în multe din ceea ce am citit sau doar am rămas impresionată de unele concluzii. Bellow este un scriitor interesant, cu valori de mulți uitate și cu un stil de a scrie de care m-am îndrăgostit profund (trebuie să ajung cât de curând și la titlurile care l-au consacrat). Până atunci, rămân cu câteva citate de aici:

„Dacă îi interzici unuia să intre în vorbă cu altul, dacă îi interzici să mai comunice, înseamnă că i-ai interzis să gândească. Gândirea e un mod de comunicare. Partidul nu vrea să îl vadă gândind, ci să urmeze disciplina. […] Când un om îndeplinește un astfel de ordin, contribuie la abolirea libertății și la propagarea tiraniei.”

„Un om trebuie să își accepte limitele și nu se poate să cedeze impulsului dement de a fi orice și oricine și orice pentru oricine.”

„Puterea omului e prea mică și nu are rost ca el să încerce să se lupte ca să rezolve ce nu se poate rezolva. Natura noastră, natura minții noastre este slabă, și sufletul este singurul pe care ne putem sprijini.”

„Moartea este abolirea alegerii. Cu cât este mai limitată alegerea, cu atât este mai aprope moartea. Cea mai mare cruzime este să răpești așteptările fără însă a răpi și viața.”

„Înainte eram îndeajuns de importanți ca să se ducă o bătălie pentru sufletele noastre. Acum, fiecare dintre noi este responsabil pentru propria sa mântuire, care constă în măreția sa. Și această măreție, ea, este piatra pe care se ascut inimile noastre. Ne înconjoară minți strălucite, frumuseți strălucite, amanți străluciți, criminali străluciți. De la marea tristețe a unor Wertheri și Don Juani am trecut la imaginile suverane ale unor Napoleoni; de la acestea am trecut la acei ucigași care aveau dreptul să-și omoare victimele pentru că erau mai grozavi decât victimele. […] Din cauza acestor lucruri, urâm fără măsură și ne pedepim pe noi înșine și pe ceilalți fără măsură. Teama că rămânem în urmă ne urmărește și ne înnebunește. Teama zace în noi precum un nor. Ne construiesc un climat lăuntric sobru. Și, din când în când, se iscă o furtună, iar ura și durerea se revarsă ca o ploaie din nori.”

What happens if you are caught between two commitments?
If you have time to look at the world from an unoccupied position?
What will you see?
What will you discover of our common humanity?
Are you still engaged in the questions your generation asks, if you are not actively participating?
Can you understand the world better while you are inside it, or do you need to establish distance between yourself and everyday business to define its essence?
If it requires you to step out to see the patterns, but you are not part anymore, does that mean that you can’t be part of humanity and understand it at the same time? Catch 22?

“I have a right to be spoken to!” yells the protagonist at one point, utterly frustrated with the reaction of his environment to the fact that he resigns from his work in order to join the army, but remains in a vacuum while waiting for the official procedures to take place.

Thinking is a way of communicating, but it also separates the reality of one human being from another. Having a lot of time to think and observe is enlightening, and incredibly depressing.

The protagonist goes through alienation from different groups, first in his head, then in verbal outbursts, which constitute the last reactions in a long chain of causes and effects in his mind, but come as a complete surprise to his family and friends, who do not follow his preceding thoughts, and only judge the ultimate anger and frustration he shows. Family, friends, Communist party, social groups, all are reevaluated from the perspective of an outsider.

“Preferring embarrassment and pain to indifference”, the lonely man starts to pick fights within the family and in the local environment to feel part of it, to feel real.

Between the outbursts of desperation, some interesting discussions temporarily lighten his mood:

What is life? What is worthwhile? Is it meaningful to continue carrying out nonsensical tasks, justified by the prestige of a workplace in a 53 storey building? Or is the only important work in the world that of art and imagination… ?

The novel is written in the form of a diary moving between long philosophical reflections, in the spirit of “the wretched must suffer”, and short unimportant entries, filling in the banalities of life: “January 16th, fairly quiet day”, thus showing the swinging back and forth of feelings and thoughts.

As the alienation from the active world grows, the questions in the diary become more urgent:
“You can’t banish the world by decree if it is in you!”

Self reflection is part of the development as well, and recognition of the narrator’s own arrogance in categorising people according to those who have worthwhile ideas and those who don’t. Part of the issue is the anonymous urban trauma: lack of human spirit in the too overwhelming, crowded human, treeless world of the city, leading to longing for nature as a means to rediscover humanity.

In an act of hopelessness, the protagonist gives up his lonely freedom and speeds up the process to join the army, recognising a defeat in front of himself and the freedom he could not handle:

“I had not done well alone!”

On his last civilian day, he exclaims:

“I am no longer to be held accountable for myself, freedom cancelled.”

“Long live reglementation!”

Worthwhile read, very sad, I would have wished for him to cherish the rare opportunity to have time to think and be creative, but I guess the message is true in essence: Man cannot live with others, and not alone either. Happiness is a very thin line between the two opposites, and it is easy to lose balance, both inside and outside the hamster wheel of daily occupation!

A slim novel with huge ideas, and although a great foundation is laid down and much is left undone, underdone or unsaid (to the novel's detriment I must say), it's still a more than worthwhile read, especially considering the later heights Saul Bellow reached.

The protagonist Joseph, the eponymous 'Dangling Man' is, through a bureaucratic mix up caught between American army service during world war II and his life leading up to that. He has quit his job and is simply waiting with his wife in a small and suffocating tenement house for his draft date to come up. That's the basic story and essentially, this is all told in diary format, what happens is fairly linear, Joseph witnesses the fettering of his generation of intellectuals as they try, but mostly just meander, through their lives in an at war America.

Joseph's musings serve as the meat of the novel and for the most part I love them. He posits real and relevant questions regarding the place of man in the world regarding free will, the necessity and simultaneous painful burden of it, as well as backing up his claims and queries with wry observations about what the former 'masters' have come up with in terms of answers before his time, respectful but not above calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that though some things remain constant in the human experience, what remains equally constant is our inherent inability to cope with our surroundings, circumstances, other people, and even (and especially) ourselves.

The book is solipsistic however to the point of rendering of the other characters nearly irrelevant. Hell, in the last quarter of the book Joseph has two conversations with, not a person he knows, but rather what he perceives to be as the manifestation of his 'alternatives'. But that doesn't take too much away from the book as a whole, nor does the fact that the protagonist isn't particularly sympathetic...but then, none of the characters really are, but they are all rendered very humanly (with only slight exaggeratations for effect here and there and, due to the book's short lenght, unevenly).

A rock solid book with some moments of acute insight that will stay with you, Dangling Man shows itself for what it is, the potential for future revelation is there, but here it's not quite achieved. The final moments of the novel wherein (SPOILER..thought not really, you'll know it about half a page in where this story is going to conclude) Joseph resigns himself to military service with a somber sense of relief knowing that his life and the responsibility of it won't be his for a time, is humbling, if a bit incomplete and leaves the reader a bit unfulfilled. It's not that I don't agree with the argument, not at all it makes perfect sense, but Bellow doesn't prepare the reader enough here and the conclusion comes off as a rushed patch rather than any iron clad conclusion about man's freedom and the necessity and even benefits of giving it up.

But still, it's a quick but significantly deep read, check it out to see where one of the apparent greats cut his teeth.

"To be pushed upon oneself entirely put the very facts of simple existence in doubt..."

منتظر يك
twist
پاياني بودم كه بهش پنج بدم؛ نداشت، ندادم...

چرا خوندنش انقدر طول كشيد؟چون راوي خيلي غرغرو بود...

دو تا كار از بلو خوندم به علاوه ي يكي دو تا مقاله از يك مجموعه مقالات. چيزي كه به ذهنم مياد اينه كه آرامش هميشه از كاركترهاي بلو به دوره، شخصيت ها در شروع دوره پست مدرن، بعد از جنگ جهاني دوم، حسابي شاكي و طلبكار، نق نقو و مدعي و تا حد بسيار زيادي مقصرند. بخش زيادي از هر دو كتاب به پرداختن به آنچه در ذهن كاركتر ها ميگذره اختصاص داده شده و در حالي كه راوي اون كتاب داناي كل و سوم شخصه و اين يكي اول شخص هر دو تقريبا از يك قاعده پيروي ميكنن.
داستان گاهي خسته كننده ميشه و طرح داستاني كه براي جذابيت و كشش بهش نياز داره رو (خيلي از كتاب ها براي كششون احتياجي به اين طرح داستاني ندارند ولي اين يكي واقعا داره) از دست ميده. تصور كنيد يكي كارشو ول كرده كه به جنگ اعزام شه، خب؟! به خاطر يه سري مشكلات نميشه! اين آدم در چه وضعيتيه؟! از اين جا رونده و از اونجا مونده... صد و پنجاه صفحه در اين باب غر ميزنه!
نظر به اينكه اولين رمان بلو بوده همين سه و نيم چهار بسشه.

اي دريغا كه من مقدمه كوتسي دلبندمو گير نيوردم كه بخونم...