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Humboldt's Gift

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 3,437 ratings · 217 reviews

The novel, for which Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humbold...more

Paperback, 487 pages

Published June 1st 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published 1975)

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Dec 06, 2011 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20-ce, us, fiction, candidate-to-reread

I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow got the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons these days, but I think in the case of Bellow they got it right. Right from the start the storytelling is brilliant and it never flags. Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a love of literature, wri...more I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow got the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons these days, but I think in the case of Bellow they got it right. Right from the start the storytelling is brilliant and it never flags. Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a love of literature, writes to his hero poet Von Humboldt Fleisher from his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is invited to visit the great man in Greenwich Village. Citrine comes to New York just as Humboldt is hitting his sole crest of popularity because of his book of ballads. Humboldt, however, soon loses it all. Drinking and medicating himself in a manner that can only be called suicidal. No wonder he's perpetually blocked now. In the meantime, Charlie Citrine, his protege, writes a hit Broadway play which is made into a hit Hollywood movie. Citrine is swimming in money. And Citrine's success can only be viewed by Humboldt in his madness as a betrayal. Humboldt comes to loathe Citrine whom he accuses of using his life as the basis for the main character of his play Von Trenck. When Citrine wins the Chevalier de Légion d'honneur from the French government, Humboldt hits the ceiling. "Shoveleer!," he writes, "Your name is lesion."

Charlie Citrine is one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from late 20th century American literature. What I admire so much about this book is its unflagging narrative thrust. Line by line it satisfies the reader on an almost physical level. The humor is laugh out loud. The erudition makes me giddy. Just how is it possible for Bellow to incorporate so much knowledge about literature into the book and not end up with some deadly boring piece of tripe? It's miraculous. Citrine is always talking about his reading (Rudolf Steiner, Santayana, Gide, Aristotle, on and on) which is deftly incorporated so as to reflect upon his own tribulations and those of the other characters. This is quite a rogue's gallery, too, consisting of both the high and the low: mobsters; crooked judges; writers; literary chislers, harridan exes; lawyers; Rubenesque golddiggers, old Russian bath house guys; blue collar guys; virtually all ethnicities and predilections as only a great American city like Chicago can produce. I've read all of Bellow's novels and this I think is his best one. I even prefer it to Augie March, which is saying something. This is also a great novel for those who want to know how to write a great novel. With this text in hand and one's own considerable talent on tap, why, you can't miss. It's all right here in black and white. Read it, please, and let me know what you think. (less)

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Sep 03, 2007 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ficciones, shouldreread, favorites

Last night I dreamt that Saul Bellow was still alive, and that I met him. (Met him at the Chicago branch of something called the Hitler-Piedmont Bank--I know, I know, it was a dream, so it had to be a little fucked up.) I started to gush, but of all the phrases, characters and scenes of his that I admire, the only thing I praised was his description, in this novel, of Humboldt's mud-bespattered station wagon as looking like "a Flanders staff-car."

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Mar 06, 2013 Sternej rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my favorite Saul Bellow book. Like many of his books, in this one the main character is middle-aged Jewish man who's in a kind of mid life crisis. There's a lot of first person stream of consciousness exposition from Charlie Citrune, the main character. The plotting is almost secondary. If you don't enjoy book like that this won't be for you. Bellow's voice is very male centric so I don't know if this kind of lit appeals to women. The prose can be at times poetic and simply magnificent....more

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Aug 04, 2012 matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: america-f-k-yeah, fictions-of-the-big-it, favorites

I don't know what it is, but Bellow's books just go down easy for me. I can (and have) read them in one or two or five very long sittings, enjoying myself enough to just refuse to take my eyes off the page.

There's something about his protagonists- the nervy, learned, spunky, earthy, thoughtful and hyper-attentive 30-40 year old males which seems to resonate with me over and over again. I seriously thought about making a special category on my bookshelves for "old-drunk-wannabe-white" books (an...more
I don't know what it is, but Bellow's books just go down easy for me. I can (and have) read them in one or two or five very long sittings, enjoying myself enough to just refuse to take my eyes off the page.

There's something about his protagonists- the nervy, learned, spunky, earthy, thoughtful and hyper-attentive 30-40 year old males which seems to resonate with me over and over again. I seriously thought about making a special category on my bookshelves for "old-drunk-wannabe-white" books (and it IS a genre) but I suppose I'd rather not. Demeaning.

I enjoyed this chatty, fluid, easily-digested novel each and every time I picked it up. Bellow on the page (not sure what he'd be like in person, though I suspect it wouldn't be all that different) is an idea companion to read in a place that is somewhat noisy, a little folksy, with a bit of bustle. Local pizza shop at middday, while making phone calls (if you're into that perversity), on the train, that kind of thing.

Bellow is effortlessly introspective while being open, grand, educated and beautifully exact in his perceptions. He's essentially a chatty dude from Chi-town who got seduced by Greenwich Village in full swing and never looked back. We are all the better for it.

I especially had to pick this one up because it fictionalizes an already rather interesting and larger-than-life figure who I happen to adore already. That man would be Delmore Schwartz, author of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and several books of now-underrated excellent poetry. Schwartz is the eponymous Humboldt and the character is much like the actual man: obsessive, erudite, manic, manipulative, visionary, charismatic, self-destructive, energetic, eloquent, and fucked up beyond belief. All night gin-fuled stream of consciousness captivating monologues (don't twitch; Bellow himseld throws more than a few of these adjectival pockets together without punctuation in a near-Beat stylistic choice which always warms the cockles of my heart) which somehow include Plato, Dostoevsky, Harry Hopkins, Frank Sinatra, Emerson, Whitman, Henry Ford, the politics of Weimar Republic, Eisenhower, Beethoven, Stalin, Lenin, Finnegans Wake, litigation, Houdini, Thomas Mann, T.S. Eliot's sex life (!?), the Pentateuch, Yeats's visionary cycle of history, Gibbon, Chevrolet engines, Dante's bird imagery, Marx, Lenin, Mary Pickford, and a possible spot in the (never-to-be) administration of Adlai Stevenson in order to bring out an American cultural renaissance.

If lists of names and contexts and events juxtaposed in a steam of association works for you- if you'd buy this guy a beer or twelve- then this is the kind of book you'll dig. If not, well, you're pretty much like about half the people in this story, who seem to take a naieve if honest pleasure in upbraiding the narrator for his sentimental and seemingly stupid attachment to this volcanic freakshow. By the time the book starts, Humboldt is (obviously) a bit of a burnout, a has-been mixed with a never-was who has sufficiently fallen from grace to make the narrator himself have to duck behind a car when he spies his former intimate gnawing on a vendor's pretzel with extra mustard at three p.m. while standing on the sidewalk, seemingly the only food he'll have for the day.

But Charlie Citrine, writer of some reknown and fairly large income, just won't let the dream die, dammnit. Not even the fact of his own draining and costly divorce settlement or his own existential mid-life confusion or his spacey, wily, unsatisfying mistress or Humboldt's own massively jumbled legacy and final papers will let him put the matter to rest.

All I'll say is that the title obviously has more than a few symbolic levels but is, in fact, entirely literal in a very plot-based way. No big surprise there, and frankly I was getting disappointed because I thought I had called it from about 200 pages away and when a dunderhead like me catches whiffs of plot points it's probably time to knock the thing down a few pegs, aesthetically. But that disappointment, luckily, lifted. There is a gift, certainly, but it's not quite what you think even when it's pretty much what you'd assume. Bellow frames it beautifully, which is to say in a true-to-life way, in that what he is given is ironically separated from what it means and how it plays out in the Rube Goldberg wackiness of reality and chance. It's a weird but fitting denouement to a story that keeps you going in newer and better directions all through its surprising and unexpected bulk and literary heft.

If you're thinking of reading it, bump it up a couple notches and you'll be glad you did!(less)

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Feb 11, 2009 Denis rated it 1 of 5 stars

It's interesting how passionate I get when I dislike a book. Maybe I feel ripped off? My expectations were high and that no doubt plays into it.

The setup is interesting and has great potential. A man is on a quest to make sense of his life in a world that's lost its way. The theme: Culture, the arts, advanced learning and thinking, (the only raisons-d'être for man's existence don't you know) are being quashed by modern society and its trappings. From the get-go, there are quotes or mention of zi...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Con McVeety rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"...There are two graves left.You wouldn't want to buy mine, would you? I'm not going to lie around. I'm having myself cremated. I need action. I'd rather go into the atmosphere. Look for me in the weather reports."

"Moreover I was convinced that there was nothing in the material world to account for the more delicate desires and perceptions of human beings.

I met to write a full review but too much time has past to write a good one, this is just a book about an author that fears culture and arts...more

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Apr 13, 2008 Cordelia Becker rated it 3 of 5 stars

I got to read this book in the form of my Brother in Laws collections of "classics" A book with a read leather cover - gilt edge pages a satin ribbon and thick vellum paper. Since I almost alway read used paper backs that are nearly disintigrating as I read them. That was kind of a treat. I enjoyed the experience of reading a real book -- I think I covet my brother-in-law's collection of classics. Anyway about the book - all good but with some weird direction with a mafiosa but the book is basic...more

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Oct 14, 2011 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Within the first two pages, Bellow establishes the momentum for the piece: Humbolt’s rise and fall from fame, ditto Charlie (the main protagonist), acrimony in a previously excellent relationship, plus a shared passion for literature. All without reading like a shopping list. These pages alone earned Bellow the Pulitzer.
About half way through, however, my 21st century, action-addicted attention span kicked in. I got fed up with Charlies’ endless introspection. Charlie gets involved with a gangst...more

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May 05, 2013 Richard Bon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd be shocked if I ever enjoy any of Bellow's books as much as I did Humboldt's Gift, and stacked against Herzog and Seize the Day, I'd say it's my favorite.

Citrine is at once enviable, sad, and such a cleverly comical pushover. His career success, wealth (well, at least at the novel's outset), freedom, and intellect are on par with the highest societal levels, and yet he seems to have next to no relationship with his daughters, and for all of his intelligence, he's devoid of common sense in de...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Mike Robinson rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Humboldt's Gift" is a steady unresolved current of introspective reconciliation, punctured occasionally by a rock of solid plot. This is less a complaint than an observation. One's enjoyment of the novel depends heavily on the reader's intellectual and spiritual commonalities with the somberly bewildered narrator, Charlie Citrine, whose multi-dimensional qualities are drawn at the expense of others I might have expected from a personality such as his. As such, the nature of Bellow's novel, at l...more "Humboldt's Gift" is a steady unresolved current of introspective reconciliation, punctured occasionally by a rock of solid plot. This is less a complaint than an observation. One's enjoyment of the novel depends heavily on the reader's intellectual and spiritual commonalities with the somberly bewildered narrator, Charlie Citrine, whose multi-dimensional qualities are drawn at the expense of others I might have expected from a personality such as his. As such, the nature of Bellow's novel, at least the nature presented us, was, to me, uneven.

In glass-cut prose, where every sentence is a fine trinket, Bellow unfolds a world of tensions, and shows how such tensions have manifested uniquely in Citrine. "Humboldt's Gift" is, in fact, one man's long conversation with himself, fed by material from which he is trying desperately to detach through New Age-like principles. It is here where Bellow was either a success or a failure; Citrine *is* detached, yet we aren't entirely sure if he has achieved the spiritual disjunct sought or if he is spiraling further into a depressive self-loathing. Most money might be on the latter, but Bellow keeps it relatively vague. Despite hundreds of pages of his voice, we are not really plunged into Citrine. For a Pulitzer Prize winner with a clear knowledge of and respect for the powers of literature, he betrays a remarkable lack of passion for his craft. It seems his prior works were more accidental bodily functions than labors of blood and sweat.

One of the grand themes of "Humbolt" is the still-relevant (now even more so) tensions between the commercial artist and the Artist. Both sides are more or less personified in the novel: the former as the hapless gangster Cantabile, the latter as the titular Humbolt, Citrine's beloved but deeply flawed late mentor. While Citrine expounds often on art in America, quoting names along the way, these tensions aren't nearly as palpable in the novel as one might expect, particularly because, as mentioned prior, Citrine seems to no longer care much about his work. More could have been confronted head-on, with direct action, or direct thought. The title refers ostensibly to a physical gift, but one could posit that it belongs just as much to Humboldt's legacy of belief that art can literally save souls, save a country, save the world. I wish Citrine had realized this on a more conscious level.(less)

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Sep 06, 2011 Aaron Q rated it 5 of 5 stars

Humboldt's Gift explores questions of a being's meaning and personal accountability, in the materialistic USA, as opined by the narrator, Charlie Citrine. Written in a dramatic style that also reads like a philosophical treatise/soul-baring memoir hybrid treatise. Bellows' literary loom intersperses Mr. Citrine's nostalgic personal narrative with his meditative internal monologues and spirited dialogues in the context of a lifetime spanning from the depression era to dawn of the 70s energy crisi...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Christopher F. added it

Maybe I just read this at the wrong time of life. The only other Bellow I'd read were Herzog many many years ago, plus scattered short stories. More vivid in my mind is Brent Staples' brilliant University of Chicago memoir "Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White," in which Staples confesses, hilariously, to stalking, even terrorizing, Bellow after his novel "Ravelstein," with its portrayal of blacks that many found racist, appeared. And I must say, the African-Americans in "Humboldt's Gift...more Maybe I just read this at the wrong time of life. The only other Bellow I'd read were Herzog many many years ago, plus scattered short stories. More vivid in my mind is Brent Staples' brilliant University of Chicago memoir "Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White," in which Staples confesses, hilariously, to stalking, even terrorizing, Bellow after his novel "Ravelstein," with its portrayal of blacks that many found racist, appeared. And I must say, the African-Americans in "Humboldt's Gift" are portrayed in a way that is at times unsettlingly entomological, with constant attention to physical difference as a kind of spectacle. This, however, is part of a larger problem in the book—a book which I take to be intended as a soul-bearing meditation on how as an artist one negotiates between living as an intellectual on the one hand and on the other engaging with life in all its variety as a way of nurturing art. I have to say that this is not only a ridiculous dichotomy but one peculiar to the overintellectualized, self-satisfied atmosphere of the University of Chicago in general and of the Committee on Social Thought, which Bellow taught in, in particular. Bellow probably imagines that he is boldly exploring this inner struggle of his and that it is part of some grand story in Western civilization's exploration of the self; rather, with his stilted characterizations, his tone-deaf portrayal of "working class" people, and the larding of his text with tiresome classical allusions (plus a lot of Rudolf Steiner; what the fuck is up with that??), he reveals himself to be stuck in what he fancies he is transcending: the position of an intellectual dweeb pressing his nose against a window to the exciting real world. The temptation (perhaps unfair) is to compare Bellow to the other three overmasculinized post-war novelists with whom he is often classed: Mailer, Updike, and Roth. Having read far more of those three than of Bellow, I nonetheless assert that he is the poorest writer of any of them, and of the four he seems the most blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings as a person. God knows why he's the one that got the Nobel. As I said, maybe I just read this one at the wrong time of life, but I think I'm through with Bellow. Mailer, Updike, and Roth, though, I plan to keep on reading.(less)

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Nov 09, 2010 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about the overall literary quality of this book, but I'm glad I read it because Bellow is a good teacher, very good at mixing abstract thought (here death, the soul, and the possibility of a vital American poetry are the biggest concerns) with the plot, action, character, and the other stuff of life and novels. Really, Humboldt's Gift reads like a clinic on this novelistic skill, but more in the way of an exercise book than a masterpiece. The two writers I thought of most w...more I have mixed feelings about the overall literary quality of this book, but I'm glad I read it because Bellow is a good teacher, very good at mixing abstract thought (here death, the soul, and the possibility of a vital American poetry are the biggest concerns) with the plot, action, character, and the other stuff of life and novels. Really, Humboldt's Gift reads like a clinic on this novelistic skill, but more in the way of an exercise book than a masterpiece. The two writers I thought of most while reading (this is my first Bellow) were Roth and Nabokov. Nabokov for his wit and verbal dexterity, and Roth for his ability to carry you through a novel based on a character's ongoing thought processes. I'd say Bellow outdoes Roth here, just because he's able to get into a whole level of barely expressible ideas that Roth wouldn't dare attempt. He doesn't outdo Nabokov's language, but who does? Bellow's book does feel more human.

I almost gave the book up right around the middle during one of the intentionally mundane sections about the main character's divorce. I was glad I continued. It picked back up. I still have doubts about the protagonist's many meditations on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. It could work on a literary level to have an aging intellectual become fixated on crank spiritualist theory, because he's nearing the end and not ready to make peace with death. But I have a hard time reading it that way. I more see Bellow saying, Screw literary value, these ideas are fascinating me now for some reason, I'm not completely sure why, but I'm going to include them here as a record of who I was writing this book. Maybe I'm confusing author and (clearly autobiographical) protagonist.

The stuff I loved was about his old friend Humboldt, the one who really, for a while, understood what American poetry could be. These passages are eloquent, wistful, passionate arguments for the importance of art and culture, the way it gives meaning to everyone's life, the way it absolutely must be taken seriously by its practitioners, teachers, and supporters. I need books like this to stay in touch with those ideas and feelings. Maybe Bellow always feels it so clearly, or maybe writing this book was his way of staying in touch. Anyway, as far as this theme is concerned, the book is successful (though perhaps too long) and I recommend it.(less)

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Nov 16, 2009 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel is divided into sections of uneven length, each section probably best described as a chapter, unnumbered. The narrative is in the first person, told by the writer Charlie Citrine, the erstwhile friend and protégé of Von Humboldt Fleisher, a poet whose greatest fame occurred in the Thirties, after which the friendship shattered as Humboldt’s reputation declined and Charlie’s rose. The syntax, at the beginning, is simple declarative sentences, but it becomes far more florid during long...more This novel is divided into sections of uneven length, each section probably best described as a chapter, unnumbered. The narrative is in the first person, told by the writer Charlie Citrine, the erstwhile friend and protégé of Von Humboldt Fleisher, a poet whose greatest fame occurred in the Thirties, after which the friendship shattered as Humboldt’s reputation declined and Charlie’s rose. The syntax, at the beginning, is simple declarative sentences, but it becomes far more florid during long passages of Charlie’s internal monologues, which contain many literary and philosophical allusions. The tone is ironic and the vocabulary and idiom colloquial; Charlie may be a well-known writer, but he is clearly a bit rough around the edges, far from polished. The first destabilizing event occurs seven years before the present, when Charlie, in Chicago, discovers that Humboldt has died in New York and left him a legacy. Yet, instead of revealing what that legacy is, Charlie continues, partly through free indirect discourse, to reveal more of his life’s current complications - his legal entanglements with his ex-wife Denise, his uncertainties about his relationship with his current girlfriend Renata, his involvement with the two-bit hoodlum Rinaldo Candabile, who has cheated Charlie in a card game and, because Charlie has refused to pay up, has demolished Charlie’s beloved Mercedes with a baseball bat. The story is both funny and poignant, complication after complication piling up in the first fifty pages.

Bellow continues allowing Citrine to ruminate on all aspects of his existence, most of the narrative being extended interior monologue. Dialogue, when present, captures individual characters uniquely and skillfully. A highly realistic writer, Bellow descriptions are exquisite, his sense of place in Chicago being masterful. Page after page demonstrates Charlie growing as a rounded and complex character, sensitive, morose, articulate, literary, insecure. Rarely a paragraph passes without eliciting a chuckle from the reader, the writing being magnificent. And yet this humor - and the book is funny indeed - cannot conceal a persistent more gently somber thread, Charlie’s obsession with life’s meaning, with his own aging, and his ever-present awareness of death. Hence his preoccupation with, for example, anthroposophy. Many of his understandings, in fact, are not far from the very American phenomenon of Transcendentalism, but his philosophical and spiritual musings are never far from a very present earthiness.

It must be said, however, that some of Bellow’s stylistic characteristics are less interesting. His habit of omitting commas, for example: “In the early days the revolution was a work of inspiration. Workers peasants soldiers were in a state of excitement and poetry…Dowdiness shabbiness dullness dull goods boring buildings boring discomfort boring supervision a dull press dull education boring bureaucracy forced labor perpetual police presence penal presence, boring party congresses, et cetera.” This sometimes has a point and is at times intriguing, but too much of it can begin to seem like a literary affectation.

As the plot nears its end, one intuits that things are not going to work out as Charlie hopes; it would be inconsistent with the story if they were to do so. What philosophy will he marshal to deal with what must be faced? How will he pick himself up and move on?

During the reading of this novel, I sometimes felt as if I were back reading Herzog. The two novels had so many parallels that on occasion it seemed as if Bellow was just rewriting the same story, changing only a few details, and this felt disconcerting. On the other hand, some reviewers have objected to Citrine’s frequent long digressions in the narrative, whereas I found them both charming and interesting; they helped elucidate Citrine’s character and illuminate his emotional state.

As the novel moves to its conclusion, the pace and events become frenetic. Finally, the slapstick subsides, and the book ends on a poignant yet positive note. I’m glad I read it.
(less)

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Dec 23, 2008 David Aaron Hamburg rated it 3 of 5 stars

I dunno about this one, or for that matter about Saul Bellow. lord knows, I've tried. Started off with Augie March, but it seemed just slow and dated to me. Then gave Saul another shot with Herzog, which I thought was chock full of some of the best writing in modern American Lit, I have ever read. Still, there was something about the whole narrative that seemed depressing and shortly after finishing the book, I couldn't even remember what it was all about. Then I tried Henderson, but dropped it...more I dunno about this one, or for that matter about Saul Bellow. lord knows, I've tried. Started off with Augie March, but it seemed just slow and dated to me. Then gave Saul another shot with Herzog, which I thought was chock full of some of the best writing in modern American Lit, I have ever read. Still, there was something about the whole narrative that seemed depressing and shortly after finishing the book, I couldn't even remember what it was all about. Then I tried Henderson, but dropped it after about 100 pages. The whole story seemed so ridiculous; I just didn't buy this Bellow protagonist. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, or maybe it was a brilliant Book 'n Bellow review by Robert Adams (you can pick up that podcast on Big Ideas), but I felt that there was still more Bellow reading to do before I closed my chapter on him. Which brought me to Humboldt which I'm still trying to decide whether I liked it or not. The good stuff: Well, I'm one who loves Bellow's philosophical riffs, not to mention his masterful command of language. This book reminded me of Henry Miller, just a lot less interesting and fun. Of course our hero Charlie, is far from a bohemian,he reminded me more of a punch-drunk former heavy weight boxer who pissed away all his money. Not much sympathy here. And then there's Bellow's rant against all the bitchy women who done wronged him. Poor poor Sollie. Does anyone care? At least if it's a good story, I might, but what's the story here? Each supporting character is more more ridiculous and a bigger jerk than the next. Cantabile, Charlie's brother, Renata's mother...even Humboldt! And for some reason, like all the other Bellow books I read, Humboldt seemed strangely dated. Allow me to wrap this up with Charlie, our big hero. Could anyone really sympathize with him? he seems like such a passive jerk, allowing himself to get entangled in fiasco upon fiasco...I can't bear to go on, only to say that I've read enough of Bellow by now and don't intend on revisiting this Literary Giant.(less)

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Apr 15, 2008 Bridge rated it 2 of 5 stars

I almost gave up on this book because it was so annoying and I found no pleasure or interest whatsoever in any part of it including any of the characters, but I finished it for my brother. I guesss I'm glad I did, so that I can add it to my list and write a review having known that I did read the whole book and didn't miss anything in the last half that would change my opinion of the book. I didn't learn anything and was confused at times. This book was just not for me.

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Jul 06, 2012 Scott Axsom rated it 2 of 5 stars

GAAHH! I am through with this book! SOOOOO full of itself. Has Ralph Moody ruined me forever with regard to great literature?!?!? Only time will tell. In the meantime... on to "Lonesome Dove". (I'm still on a Pulitzer binge).

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Sep 06, 2012 Karyn Wergland rated it 5 of 5 stars

In search of a book with scope, I chose this one, and was not disappointed. Rather than a "small and perfect gem," this is a broad, sprawling story that spans decades, crosses continents, and and delves into the soul of the narrator. The profusion of language leaves the reader with a sense of abundance. The book has a voice that suggests the author could talk anyone into a corner, regardless of the level of discourse. Yet the author is in control of the story, no matter how many tangents, twists...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-reads

Okay so now I've finally read one of the late-twentieth century biggies -- now maybe I'll get more of the Humboldt references in the criticism I read. I was amused by the wit and loved the language, though not moved emotionally by the story itself. Of course the comic scenes were marvelously madcap and over-the-top, but 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 int...more Okay so now I've finally read one of the late-twentieth century biggies -- now maybe I'll get more of the Humboldt references in the criticism I read. I was amused by the wit and loved the language, though not moved emotionally by the story itself. Of course the comic scenes were marvelously madcap and over-the-top, but 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.(less)

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Jun 05, 2011 Ratan Sebastian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: current-recommendations

The obligatory quote to start of this review would be from Bellow's own Nobel prize acceptance speech where he, quoting Joseph Conrad, said, "He[the artist] appealed, said Conrad, "to that part of our being which is a gift, not an acquisition, to the capacity for delight and wonder... our sense of pity and pain, to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation - and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts... which binds...more The obligatory quote to start of this review would be from Bellow's own Nobel prize acceptance speech where he, quoting Joseph Conrad, said, "He[the artist] appealed, said Conrad, "to that part of our being which is a gift, not an acquisition, to the capacity for delight and wonder... our sense of pity and pain, to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation - and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts... which binds together all humanity - the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."". Keep in mind, Bellow delivered this speech the year after Humboldt's Gift was published. And I do not think I can do a better job at describing the protagonist of this novel, for that is exactly what it is. Another historical fact to be kept in mind is that the relationship between the protagonist in the novel and his mentor, the eponymous Von Humboldt Fleischer is based on the relationship between Bellow and his great american poet-mentor, Delmore Schwartz.

The plot summary for a novel such as this is not about the events that take place but about the characters that criss-cross the protagonists life. He, is Charles Citrine a boy from Chicago, who inspired by the poems of Von Humboldt Fleischer leaves his mid-west sanctuary(not in a physical sense of course) to plunge into the artistic bohemianism of The Village. Here he learns much from Humboldt becoming his dear friend and eventual blood-brother. Humboldt is the kind of poet who claims such lofty praise as "the first real innovation we've had since Pound and Elliot". But he is a manic-depressive whose great occupation is scheming the great artistic revolution against numbed, materialistic America. Needless to say, he fails and is relegated to the loony bin. Later when his protege hits jackpot with a Broadway play, he begins to scheme against him. On the other end of the spectrum is Ronald Cantabile, a C-list Chicago thug, who demands Citrine get of his high horse and grovel to meet material needs and wants along with the rest of America. Between these two forces, there are various other interesting characters who take on roles with varying degrees of thug and poet. As with Herzog, Citrine has a tendency to be hen-pecked into financial and mental bankruptcy by the women in his life: the extremely litigious ex-wife, the gold-digging girlfriend and her mother.

The Gift in the title, I think, refers to the gift mentioned in the opening quote. On Humboldt's death, the material possessions that he leaves Citrine does not come close to the spiritual beauty that he has shown him. This constant conflict between the material and the spiritual is a theme that this novel keeps coming back to. While Bellow staunchly warns against material pursuits for the artist, he seems facetious in his criticism of the great, material American Dream. His "latent feeling of fellowship with all creation" shows through the intellectual purity of Citrine. But, the idea of fellowship is taken even further through the character's study of anthroposophy ( Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development ). Unable to face the prospect of the death of his mind (soul), he grasps at Steiner's straws and postulates that upon death, one's soul re-enters the collective consciousness. This study is in stark contrast with the banality of his material life: taxes, alimony, meeting lawyers, paying bills, etc. Which is why his spirit exults when he meets Roger Cantabile, a breath of pure human primality.

About Humboldt himself, he like Schwartz was a great conversationalist who entertained his circle of intellectuals with long rambling speeches that would tie together "Yeats, Apollinaire, Lenin, Freud, Gertrude Stein, baseball statistics and Hollywood gossip". Schwartz, in one of his poems wrote: ""You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is true of all that is supremely desired and admired". Chercher avant de Trouver, is a constant motif is Charles Citrine's life as well. And the way he interprets that is by looking toward the spiritual to explain this apparent reversal of cause and effect. This leads us to a consistent message between the lives of Humboldt and his protege. Humboldt attempting some sort of political paradigm shift and Citrine attempting to answer questions about the nature of death and the after-life - both find themselves ostracized and persecuted by society and unable to function in a way that keeps food on the table. They are consumed by the mania of their respective tasks. And the last scene in the novel where the survivor of these two blood-brothers buries the other is this scene of catharsis for Charles Citrine since he finally realizes Hulmoldt's Gift, having now made peace with him.(less)

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Nov 29, 2007 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An interesting portrait of mid-20th century Chicago, and a host of strange characters therein, from artists and academics to crazed gangsters. Loaded with interesting philosophical concepts about the nature of human existence. The story, at times, tends to take the back seat to all of this, but, still, worth reading. The main thrust of the story concerns a writer, Charlie Citrine, who, with the aid of his late friend's legacy, is able to turn his life around.

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Feb 25, 2013 Mjackman rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is not the book for me. In this book, Bellow has an amazing talent for putting his characters into incredible situations, whether it's standing perilously on a girder 60 stories up on an unfinished skyscraper, careening through the dangerous streets of Chicago after being all but kidnapped by a gangster, being handcuffed by the police and taken to booking. The only thing is, for every half-page of action, he then retreats into the character's head, and suddenly we're headlong into memories,...more

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Jun 28, 2009 Randy rated it 4 of 5 stars

A literary critic listed Bellow's novel, Humboldt's Gift, number three on his top one hundred choices for the best novels of the 20th century. A quick bike ride to our local library, electronically signing out the book, and back home, followed by a comfortable chair in our backyard and the anticipation of absorbing one of the "greats" was quickly morphed into a struggling read. While Bellow's writing is a combination of Updike's facility of words, Chabon's language magic, and Dickens' introspect...more

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May 27, 2009 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book, probably when it came out in the 70ies, and because I didn’t remember it at all, decided to read it again. It was certainly about a 70ies world—no cell phones and predatory divorce lawyers seemed a new phenomenon—but the basic theme is much older, and if anything more relevant today. Struck me that it had a lot in common with Peter Cary’s Theft which I read recently, namely, the position of the artist in a grossly materialistic society.

The main character—and narrator (Bellow cr...more I read this book, probably when it came out in the 70ies, and because I didn’t remember it at all, decided to read it again. It was certainly about a 70ies world—no cell phones and predatory divorce lawyers seemed a new phenomenon—but the basic theme is much older, and if anything more relevant today. Struck me that it had a lot in common with Peter Cary’s Theft which I read recently, namely, the position of the artist in a grossly materialistic society.

The main character—and narrator (Bellow created some great narrators didn’t he?) is Charlie Citrine who, as a kid out of college went to New York to meet and serve his “master”, Von Humboldt Fleisher, the well-known poet (said to be Delmore Schwartz who was an early success as a poet but ended in alcoholism and mental illness and died, like Humboldt in a seedy hotel. Like Humboldt his work was philosophical, meditative and Jewish) who really stands for the prototypical late 20th century serious poet-and what the modern “real world” does to that poet.

Humboldt gets Charlie a job at Princeton but becomes a schemer who can no longer write, while Charlie wins a Pulitzer for his play and becomes a Chevalier of France. Humboldt had earlier insisted that they exchange signed checks with each other, for emergencies, a sign of their brotherhood. But when Charlie is up and Humboldt down, the poet writes a big check on his “brother’s” account. The first of those who raid Charlie’s wealth by scheming. Humboldt and Charlie drift apart, though Charlie keeps track of his friend and feels guilty when Humboldt is found dead in the hotel room.
In the atmosphere of this modern industrial world, represented by the Chicago that is the milieu of the modern artist, Charlie, fascinated by gangsters, investment schemes, violence, fast women, hangs on to his belief that there’s an afterlife and builds on Humboldt’s philosophy. His car is trashed on the street by a gangster; his wife divorces him and her lawyer knows all the tricks to leave him skinned. His mistress absconds, leaving Charlie to babysit her kid while she goes on her honeymoon—marries a Chicago undertaker rich from his chain of funeral homes. Charlie is left with nothing in a pension in Madrid until he’s “rescued” by one of his scheming friends who’s discovered a film made from a scenario Charlie had told him about: one he and Humboldt dreamed up at Princeton, wrote down and documented. And which Humboldt had will to Charlie and his uncle. Charlie reluctantly agrees to prosecute but doesn’t go back to Chicago with his modest gain.

If anything the forces of materialism and greed that defeated the artist in the 70ies are greater now than then.(less)

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Jun 21, 2011 David Lentz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Transcendental. Profound. Scholarly. Challenging. Invigorating. Agile. A literary treasure. Citrine lives and breathes with the perspective of a real writer surging against great existential issues like Walt Whitman's ultimate question. Humboldt is brilliant, pitiful, hilarious and, ultimately, victorious from the grave. The gangster, Cantabile, is Citrine's cosmic foil: the Dionysius of Nietzsche to Citrine's Apollo. This is potentially a life-altering work: it can change your outlook on life a...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Ted Krever rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've added this one to stand in for several Bellow's I love. Henderson, Herzog and Humboldt - the best of the bunch, to my mind.
Bellow is a special writer. Certainly one of the greatest voices in modern literature and someone who could be seen equally as a son of Dreiser and Twain (not an easy combination).
This one involves a beloved comrade and rival, a materialistic wife, a low-grade gangster and a story about a movie producer and his mistress. None of that matters. If you respond to Bellow's...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Caitlin rated it 3 of 5 stars

I know this is a Pulitzer Prize winning book, but I have to admit that I didn't get into it until about half way through. I ended up really enjoying it, but the first part seemed pointless and it dragged in the middle. It is the last third of the book where everything really came together. Charlie Citrine is a middle aged man going through a wretched divorce and is essentially alienated from his children. He is a mildly successful author, with a couple of biographies and a play which was then tu...more I know this is a Pulitzer Prize winning book, but I have to admit that I didn't get into it until about half way through. I ended up really enjoying it, but the first part seemed pointless and it dragged in the middle. It is the last third of the book where everything really came together. Charlie Citrine is a middle aged man going through a wretched divorce and is essentially alienated from his children. He is a mildly successful author, with a couple of biographies and a play which was then turned into a pretty successful movie. But of late he wasn't publishing anything and his ex-wife is bleeding him dry. He is dating a young, vibrant beauty named Renata, whom he cares for but is not ready to marry. He has deep feelings for a poet friend of his, Humboldt, who has died. This man was his mentor and later his friend, and finally they are estranged. Humboldt wrote beautiful, impressive poetry and immediately became a respected writer, but then he did nothing. He succumbed to manic- depressive episodes and ended up in asylums, while the world forgot about him. Jealous of Citrine's success Humboldt rips him off of a lot of money at a time where Citrine was experiencing the loss of his lover. In the current time of the novel Citrine is a deeply unsatisfied guy who isn't producing new material, going broke because of his ex-wife and his girlfriend's high lifestyle, and is getting older. He is struggling for some meaning in life and studies the supernatural and metaphysics. This brings him some enlightenment but annoys Renata and all of his friends. Citrine feels that he is going nowhere, that he is spiritually and literally stagnant. Then Humboldt gives his gift. It is the entire point of the novel so I won't give it away, but it really jump starts Citrine and gives his life a sense of direction it has sorely needed. Citrine was struggling to find his place in life and picked his hometown of Chicago to do it in, even though he at one time was successful for the cosmopolitan Manhattan. This book was written in 1975 and I really felt the loss of not knowing firsthand what Chicago was like back then. I think Bellow does a good job building the atmosphere with descriptions of the city, and with the personalities of Renata, the gangster "friend" Cantible, and his con artist friend Thaxter. Citrine suffered from the sense that Americana suffocates the soul and one's spirituality, which led him to the study of metaphysics and philosophy. Especially in the last part of the book there are a lot of meaningful conversations that really hold the book together and make the first part of the book worth reading. I ultimately liked it, but I think I enjoyed the reading of Bellow's "Seize the Day" better.(less)

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Jun 09, 2009 Mariah rated it 5 of 5 stars

What can be more wonderful than a book that talks about real life: the lawyers who take your last centima,an Europe at a close fusion with Chicago, beautiful lovers, fortunes lost,than regained,a frustrated wife and dead people very present in day-to-day life?A lesson of "Anything can happen," told in an interesting inanimate manner, that you never lets you go and you remember from page to page that tomorrow you can happen to you to fall on the other side (to die, to be exact).Courage to tell ab...more

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Aug 17, 2011 August rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: plus-half-a-star, own

Athygli vert að endurnýja kynni mín af skrifum Bellows. Skrifandi núna einhverjum 4-5 mánuðum eftir að ég kláraði bókina þá er það fyrst og fremst húmorinn sem situr eftir. Sjálfum finnst mér Bellow sjá Citrine sem skoplega persónu. Og Citrine sjálfur er holdgervingur sjálfskoðunar og sjálfsgagnrýni og virðist m.a.s. hafa húmor fyrir eigin sérvísku.

Sumum gagnrýnendum finnst það truflandi hversu fyrirferðamikil bókvíska Bellows er í verkum hans, og segja það oft ekki vera annað en sýndarmennska,...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've probably read better novels, but I've certainly never read a better novelist. That might seem not to make sense--the test of a good novelist is to write good novels, right? Yes and no. One might be a philosopher or a poet or might have a Muse that brings him brilliant idea after brilliant idea and write a great novel despite not really mastering the novel as an art form, mastering its mechanics. One who can do that would be a great novelist in the sense I mean here.

It was this kind of mast...more

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About Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was pu...more Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago, received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944, and his second, The Victim, in 1947. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began The Adventures of Augie March,, which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. Later books include Seize The Day (1956), Henderson The Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964), Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Humboldt's Gift (1975), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Both Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet were awarded the National Book Award for fiction. Mr. Bellow's first non-fiction work, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, published on October 25,1976, is his personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975.

In 1965 Mr. Bellow was awarded the International Literary Prize for Herzog, becoming the first American to receive the prize. In January 1968 the Republic of France awarded him the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by that nation to non-citizens, and in March 1968 he received the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish literature", and in November 1976 he was awarded the America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award was made to a literary personage.

A playwright as well as a novelist, Saul Bellow was the author of The Last Analysis and of three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He contributed fiction to Partisan Review, Playboy, Harper's Bazaar, The New Yorker, Esquire, and to literary quarterlies. His criticism appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Horizon, Encounter, The New Republic, The New Leader, and elsewhere. During the 1967 Arab-lsraeli conflict, he served as a war correspondent for Newsday. He taught at Bard College, Princeton University, and the University of Minnesota, and was a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.(less)

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“Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.” — 20 people liked it

“She's very pretty but she's honey from the icebox, if you know what I mean. Cold sweets won't spread.” — 19 people liked it

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