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The Adventures of Augie March

by Saul Bellow, Christopher Hitchens (Introduction)

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 6,625 ratings · 468 reviews

Augie comes on stage with one of literature’s most famous opening lines. “I am an American, Chicago born, and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted.” It’s the “Call me Ishmael” of mid-20th-century American fiction. (For the record, Bellow was born in Canada.) Or it would be if Ishmael had be...more

Paperback, 586 pages

Published October 3rd 2006 by Penguin Classics (first published 1953)

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May 18, 2013 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-06-12, 1000-guardian, nobel-prize-people, on-hand, prose-prose-prose, barthelme, reviewed, 4-star

4.5/5

In the end you can't save your soul and life by thought. But if you think, the least of the consolation prizes is the world.

I may be American, but I am not Chicago born. Nor am I male, or of the generation that grew up in the roar of the twenties and came into adulthood soon after the crash. My life, and more importantly my perspective on said life, would be much different creatures than the ones I currently clamber around on. I think, though, they would be much like Augie's, on an axis to the unknown that is neither guaranteed to exist nor enviable in its existence.

For what I value above all else is a sense of justified living, some measure of verifiable existence that is not constrained any more than what the soul can bear. By soul I suppose I mean mind, but in this age that word is as vague and unreliable as its theological precursor, albeit with less inherent worth in its connotations. Also, the soul is more easily imagined as something that can be acted upon, strung along wires and ripped clean out of the body on more than one occasion recounted in ancient texts and popular fiction. You can lose your mind, as the saying goes, but not everyone can step back and observe the chattering box of their ego, superego, and id. They think they can, but it's one thing to observe the effects of ideologies on others, and a much more convoluted and unpleasant process to disconnect the self and measure the personality. For where are the boundaries, the limits, the safety nets and sign posts? So I will stick with the word soul, and make use of its improved flexibility.

Augie can see these effects, whether by the immense amount of life experience or by the scraps of formal education that he's managed to gather. He doesn't have any words for what he's seeing, the driving force of civilization on the individual, the socioeconomic machine grinding the niches and slotting the personas, piece by piece, human being by human being. But he can sense them. It is true that he is highly suspect to being carried away by forces of personality, ones who have wound themselves so tightly into their respective places that they corkscrew all of the littler beings around them into a tight cyclone of centralized activity. The difference with Augie is that when he nears the center, he does not get stuck in the cogs and crannies. Instead, he lets loose, and the centripetal acceleration carries him far, far away, until he is caught up by yet another great typhoon and loses himself in the whirling midst.

Is that considered failure? To see what happens to those who 'specialize' in the grand scheme of things, and be frightened by it? To experience the failure of something that was of the utmost certainty, and forever more shy away from the best laid plans of mice and men? To live, to learn, to love, and have each and every path point towards a nonexistent final solution, falsely promise a conclusive fate?

The world is not ready for the Augies. The world is not ready for a rambling persona with little sophistication and great empathetic intelligence, someone sensitive to the delicate meters of the psyche and obstinate in the defense of their soul. Someone who cannot put into words the ever shifting balance of relief and discontent with their existence, seemingly carried on the backs of others while in truth pulling against an ever strengthening tide. Someone who rides the rails into a jail cell, names an eagle Caligula, forsakes the steady career at all turns and quotes Plato during their mental crises. A never-do-well and good-hearted philosopher, welcomed into homes while on the constant search for their own, who cannot describe their desire to others in a society-sanctioned manner but feels the constant pull of it on their soul.

I headed downtown right away. It was still early in the evening, glittering with electric, with ice; and trembling in the factories, those nearly all windows, over the prairies that had returned over demolitions with winter grass pricking the snow and thrashed and frozen together into beards by the wind. The cold simmer of the lake also, blue; the steady skating of rails too, down to the dark.

Down into the dark, down into the laden senses, conveyed in a romantic style among the concrete jungle, a precious mental note of beauty amongst the tough old exteriors of cold and grit. There's no saving here. There's the thought. And, therein, lies the world.(less)

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May 18, 2013 Ian Graye rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviews, bellow

Re-reading now. Review to come...

In Pursuit of Exuberance

I first read this in the mid-to-late 70's.

For a long time, I would have rated Bellow as one of my favourite three to five authors and Augie as one of my top three novels.

I haven't re-read it, but intend to. I am working from long distant memories now, but what I loved about it was the sense of exuberance and dynamism. At that time, it meant a lot to me to find evidence that intellect and vitality could be combined in one person.

It doesn't...more

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Mar 21, 2013 [P] rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bitchin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2...

I've listened to the above song about 30 times a day for the past week; I’ve been walking around shock-eyed and lump-throated, with it playing in my head, even when I wasn’t actually listening to it. It has possessed me, to a large extent. As I come to write this review I wanted to begin by exploring why that is the case, because it has cast a mournful shadow over my reading of Bellow’s novel. The song isn’t new to me; I recall my dad playing it Saturday m...more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__VQX2...

I've listened to the above song about 30 times a day for the past week; I’ve been walking around shock-eyed and lump-throated, with it playing in my head, even when I wasn’t actually listening to it. It has possessed me, to a large extent. As I come to write this review I wanted to begin by exploring why that is the case, because it has cast a mournful shadow over my reading of Bellow’s novel. The song isn’t new to me; I recall my dad playing it Saturday mornings on his record player, so one could say that as a child it was something that I probably woke up to more than once. But this doesn’t answer the question of why now, why has it been obsessing me so much recently? There has to be, I believe, something, some connection in my mind, between the song and the book, because I started reading The Adventures of Augie March and within 24 hours this song was rattling around inside me. The first lines are, for me, important; those are the words I latched onto:

We've only just begun to live
White lace and promises
A kiss for luck and we’re on our way

I feel a charge just writing those out. The song is about life, in the grandest and yet most mundane way, it is about the beginning of your journey as a human being. For someone who feels powerfully the sense of life winding down, of years being counted off, even at this young age, this reference to the start of your life-adventure was probably always going to hit me in the gut. It’s those words ‘a kiss for luck’…ah God, those kill me, and the way she sings them, with a yearning sadness; well, you’ve got no heart if that doesn’t move you. A kiss for luck, yes, because you’ll need that luck, we all do. And now I’m probably sentimentalizing. I don’t care. Augie, too, is a pretty sentimental kind of guy. And so the connections are becoming clearer to me: Augie March is a novel about that journey, his journey, his life-adventure, from childhood to marriage and middle-age, and there is the same quality to Bellow’s writing, more particularly Augie’s voice, as there is in the song, that of a strangely sweet, open-hearted, kind of melancholy.

I’m pretty weird. I think that is obvious to most. Eccentric is the word that is most often used, applied. I was, when younger, quite precocious. I was made a fuss of at school, particularly by the English teachers, who saw in me, perhaps, in a dreary atmosphere of anti-learning, a little light, someone who they could touch and help ‘blossom.’ I can’t remember the name of the lady who taught me English in my final couple of years [when I actually attended classes, that is, as I missed a lot], but I do recall how she encouraged me to write poems and stories for her, outside of the curriculum, and how she’d keep me at the end of the lesson to talk about the ones I’d given her. She told me I could make something of myself in this area, but my thought was ‘what does she know about it?’ Around six months after leaving school I was pulled from a college class and told there was a phone call for me. Upon picking up the telephone at the reception desk I was informed that one of my stories had been published, that I had won a prize and it was to be presented to me by some semi-famous poet. I thanked them and put down the receiver. My English teacher was behind this. I mentally shrugged. I didn’t pick up my prize; I didn’t want to be fussed over or recognized as someone with some talent or potential; I simply wanted to be left alone to trundle on at my own pace. This was the first time someone had put themselves out for me, had tried to help me make something of myself, it was the first of a number of opportunities that have opened up before me. There have been several since. The most recent was an ex-girlfriend’s father, an obscenely wealthy man who, being a top London lawyer himself, saw similar potential in me to make it in that game and wanted to pay for the training and would eventually have helped me secure a good job. Yes, several times people have apparently seen something in me and wanted to help me, to give me a chance at something, something that might take my life in an exciting direction, that might lead to money and success and on each occasion I have shrugged it off. Was it too much effort, or pride, or not wanting to be beholden to someone, or a lack of ambition?

With women my attitude has been equally [un]happy-go-lucky, but this has, ironically, meant that while for my career I wasn’t prepared to lift a finger, for a woman I’ve been prepared to go wherever the relationship has taken me. I would say of myself that I don’t consider consequences, I don’t seem to fully comprehend, or even care about, the consequences of my actions, that by passing up career opportunities I’m hurting my future self, nor do I seem to comprehend that if I follow a girl, a clearly unpredictable and unreliable young model no less, to London on a whim that I’m probably doing the same thing. C'est la vie.

This ought to go some way to explaining why I related so strongly to Augie, because this almost stubbornly laidback attitude is what characterizes him. He, as I have been on occasion, is presented with opportunities, ways of making his fortune or making a better life for himself, first by Einhorn, then subsequently the Renlings, Thea etc, and he always shies away from them, or pulls back. He is someone who everyone else assumes is meant for greater things, or better things at least, than he perhaps wants for himself. His face, an innocent and engaging countenance by all accounts, also draws people to him, makes them want to help him. I know all about this, I have a look of a little boy who has lost his mama in a supermarket and frequently have to bat away motherly or fatherly attention. He does, however, allow women to lead him along, to play on his heartstrings, and subsequently ends up in a number of ridiculous situations with them, such as training an eagle in Mexico. The eagle training episode, by the way, is the only slight misstep in the novel, for me. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it is perhaps the funniest part of the book, but it felt a little tacked-on, as though Bellow had this great idea, this amusing idea, and didn’t want to waste it, or wait to use it in another book, and so forced it in here.

Augie is a working class boy, who grows up in straightened circumstances, and this worked me over in grand style; yes, the parts dealing with his family life held me down and pummelled me. His mother is a single parent, and single parent stories always get to me. That she goes blind, is put in a home, and bullied, to a certain extent, by her eldest son Simon, was painful. Simon was actually the most interesting character in the novel. He, unlike Augie, is driven and ambitious and possessed of a dominating personality. There were times, in fact, when I would have preferred the story to stick with him, or would have loved for Bellow to have also written Simon’s story, from his perspective. Simon, on the surface, lives the dream, he, out of the depression, makes his fortune, via some cynical manipulation and old-fashioned hard work. His tale is one of a young boy dragging himself up through both honest and dishonest means, until he becomes a successful but aggressive, bloated, and suicidal monster. God, yes, this is a wonderful book.

I’d like to conclude by saying something about the prose. Bellow writes here like a heavyweight, like one of the best of the best. I’ve read a number of his novels, and I like or love all of them, but in none of those did he write as masterfully as he does in Augie March. I described the style somewhere else as a kind of American baroque, and I stand by that. I’ve come across very few American novels with prose like this, prose so detailed, so sumptuous; it reminded me most of Latin American masterpieces like Lima’s Paradiso or Carpentier’s The Lost Steps. (less)

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Oct 12, 2012 Jimmy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Saul Bellow's the Adventures of Augie March is one of three things; it's either Saul Bellow's most verbose novel, a piece of fiction that almost stands as an historical document of Chicago during the Great Depression, or one of the best contemporary examples of the picaresque novel. Either way it's good and bad, and lovely and sprawling, and a testament to Bellow's fascination with the life that emanated from Chicago in the fifties.

Augie, the protagonist of the story, is a tramp to say the least...more Saul Bellow's the Adventures of Augie March is one of three things; it's either Saul Bellow's most verbose novel, a piece of fiction that almost stands as an historical document of Chicago during the Great Depression, or one of the best contemporary examples of the picaresque novel. Either way it's good and bad, and lovely and sprawling, and a testament to Bellow's fascination with the life that emanated from Chicago in the fifties.

Augie, the protagonist of the story, is a tramp to say the least; the archetypal schlemil, drifting his way through life, partially making an attempt to please his family, yet at the same time basically trying to enjoy himself. Bellow's portrayal of this character is at times painful to read, and at the same time ridiculously sympathetic. There should be an emphasis on the term "character" here because Augie exemplifies what seems lost and maybe completely absent from the sort of post-war fiction that would follow novels such as Augie March, as well as that transitional novel of timeless greatness that is the Recognitions. He's a man who (tactfully juxtaposed by Bellow with his seemingly more level-headed brother Simon) can't seem to succeed, or rather simply doesn't want to. It's not that Augie is necessarily precocious or so determinately street clever, but it's because Augie's concept of the American dream is so freewheeling, and such an experimental riff on what it supposedly should be, that he can't seem to commit himself to one thing.

Throughout the story we follow Augie as he at first earnestly, and eventually in a listless manner, pursues a series of jobs that never seem to offer enough of a sense of fulfillment. He's often shamed by his grandmother, clearly usurping the role of his feeble mother, to the point where his connection with his family eventually becomes a restraint; one that holds him back from doing whatever it is that he seems to want to do in life. This existential paradox, contained within the historical context of depression-era Chicago, is what essentially breathes life into this picaresque tale of self-discovery and struggle. However, the reader has to eventually wonder where these questions are to take them in understanding Bellow's commentary on the aimless nature of Augie's time and place.

Augie March is undoubtedly Bellow's longest and most stylistically liberal piece of fiction. A superficial page count alone, outweighs the rest of his novels. And its style is more beat-language oriented than anything else that he's ever written. One can't help but be struck by the excessive lengthiness of his prose here, not to mention the clearly subjective tone and ostensibly autobiographical essence of the story. It hurts this wonderful book in a serious way. Finding Augie endearing is almost inescapable or obvious, but finding the narrative that Bellow feels the need to draw out to an almost irrelevant degree is much less appealing. This is because, in so many ways, Bellow ends up sounding redundant in narrating examples in which Augie fails and succeeds. For a novel so full of adventurous vignettes, some of them seem less important than others. And toward the end, the reader can't help but clearly ascertain the heavy-handed emphasis of Augie's inability to adapt to the real world; most certainly a Quixotic type character, and it's unlikely that Bellow, writing what can only be construed as a novel in the picaresque fashion, had Cervantes in mind when molding Augie March. But length has never proved to be a detriment to an intentional narrative. Bellow's intentions are successful, and are conveyed in the most beautiful ways at times, but overall the story is basically indulgent, taking its time with passages of storytelling that basically overstay their welcome.

And yet, and yet, this is still someone who we appreciate because he is destined to fail. And failure is possibly even an inappropriate assessment of Augie. Maybe it's the sort of blind romanticism than was unavoidable for a character of Augie's individuality and charisma to have, more importantly, maybe it's just his nature to choose a path that, while exhilarating and just so full of life, inevitably leads him down roads that simply do no promise much of a future that looks ahead further than tomorrow or the next day. Whatever it is about this man, and even if Bellow goes to painful lengths to explain who Augie is, there's something about him that is such an exemplary version of the American spirit, to our shared concept of individual freedom, that we'd all be sore losers to say that it's unfeasible for any of us to see some static expression of hope and possibility in Augie March that we don't see in ourselves.(less)

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Jun 13, 2012 Adam Floridia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: discovered-thanks-to-goodreads, being-a-human

Only vaguely familiar with the name Saul Bellow, I can thank goodreads for, yet again, helping me discover a great book. Seeing it on one of my friend’s 5-star lists, I decided to give Augie March a read, especially after seeing that another friend had written something so highly of the author.

The first few pages reinforced exactly what Eric claimed: not since Nabokov have I been blown away by language like this. Nabokov’s sentences are long, often meandering, intensely vivid and smooth. Bellows...more Only vaguely familiar with the name Saul Bellow, I can thank goodreads for, yet again, helping me discover a great book. Seeing it on one of my friend’s 5-star lists, I decided to give Augie March a read, especially after seeing that another friend had written something so highly of the author.

The first few pages reinforced exactly what Eric claimed: not since Nabokov have I been blown away by language like this. Nabokov’s sentences are long, often meandering, intensely vivid and smooth. Bellows are long and intensely vivid but, to repeat one of my early impressions, “tornad-ic” in that the appositives and clauses are so uniquely organized. Every time a new character is introduced, Bellow unleashes a cyclone of description—no indirect characterization here!—that perfectly and completely renders the character, but in sentences with staccato syntax that work like a mosaic. I definitely had to adjust my reading to take it all in. A few examples will suffice:

o “Mostly for the satisfaction of dexterity, though Stashu invented the game of stripping in the cellar and putting on girl’s things swiped from clotheslines. Then he too showed up in a gang that caught me one cold afternoon of very little snow while I was sitting on a crate frozen into the mud, eating Nabisco wafers, my throat full of the sweet dust. Foremost, there was a thug of a kid, about thirteen but undersized, hard and grieved-looking” (11).

o “Their families were trying to get them out, but in the meantime they had been shipped to Nicaragua and were fighting Sandino and the rebels. She grieved terribly, as if he were dead already. And as she had great size and terrific energy of constitution she produced all kinds of excesses. Even physical ones: moles, blebs, hairs, bumps in her forehead, huge concentration in her neck; she had spiraling reddish hair springing with no negligible beauty and definiteness springing from her scalp, tangling as it widened out, cut duck-tail fashion in the back and scrawled out high above her ears. Originally strong, her voice was crippled by weeping and asthma, and the whites of her eyes coppery from the same causes, a burning, morose face, piteous, and her spirit untamed by thoughts or the remote considerations that can reconcile people to awfuler luck than she had” (16).

Those are both from the beginning only because they are the first two I came across—I certainly could have opened the book at random and found other examples.

As for the story, it just recounts the life of Augie March, “an Americn, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—[who] goes at things as [he] has taught himself, freestyle, and will make the record in [his] own way, first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent” (first sentence).

Early on Augie admits, “I didn’t have a singleness of purpose but was more diffuse” (30), later adding “All the influences were lined up for me. I was born, and there they were to form me, which is why I tell you more of them than of myself” (45). What follows is a very entertaining account of all of the adventures (more like life-paths) that Augie ends up on. I make sure to use the passive “ends up on” because random, strange, criminal, classy, (and more) bump into Augie and then carry him along for the ride. At one point, a friend tells him “You can’t let your life be decided for you by any old thing that comes up” (297). Seems like good advice, but advice that Augie is just not fated to follow.

As extra-ordinary as some of those paths on which Augie finds himself are, Bellow manages to imbue an essential ingredient of great books: the reader can relate to this. I’ve never been a falconer, but I could relate to getting totally into something new because a girlfriend enjoys it. I’ve never tried to transport illegal immigrants, but I can certainly recall doing really, really dumb/illegal things because friends suggested them. I never worked for a millionaire thanks to a friend, but I did get my first job at Taco Bell only because a friend worked there.

In addition to being a very enjoyable read—I really did like Augie—this book got me thinking about how much the people in our lives have a profound influence on the course of our life.

A favorite quotation:
Metaphor for being well-read: "I still had the craving I had given in to all summer long when I had lived on books, to have the reach to grasp both ends of the frame and turn the big image-taking glass to any scene of the world" (274).

(less)

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Feb 11, 2008 julieta rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, young-americans

The true adventure story is one that not only takes you through a man's life and everything that happens to him, but of his own discovery of who he is and what he wants to be in the world. This book by Bellow is just that. I had only read herzog by him, a very long time ago, but did not get it at all..maybe the time was not right because with the adventures of augie march my experience was completely different, I connected from the first moment, and loved every minute of it. Augie insists on not...more

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May 12, 2013 Con McVeety rated it 3 of 5 stars

Saul Bellow was one of the greatest writers of American Contemorary fiction to ever write. It's just with this one I never was fully enagaged or emersed.The way Bellow wrote it was with great skill and intellect, he understood Man's place in time between the Great Depression and World War Two. Not being able to love this book or get more out of it is more on me then Bellow's writing. There would be no Jonathan Franzen or Jeffery Eugenides had Saul Bellow never written.I really enjoyed the eagle...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Donna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"I am an American, Chicago born..." that's Augie and me too. What is that special connection one has with a book set in your own city describing neighborhoods and landmarks so familiar you can see them? Augie comments on the pillars holding up the El on Lake Street and I have driven that route and the pigeons nest just as he describes them. The restaurants and theaters he visits during the Depression survived long enough that I visited them in my own youth. Though I came to it 40 years later, I...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Bettie marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: jewish, one-penny-wonder, paper-read, spring-2014, published-1953

Ordered this to aug(ie)ment my March reads, however it took soo long to arrive that I'll save it for next year.

Opening: I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that sombre city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes not so innocent.

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Feb 13, 2008 matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, america-f-k-yeah, favorites, modern-library-100

Martin Amis, one of Bellow's acolytes, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, said simply this. After you finish Bellow at his best- and this is without question one of his absolute best- you don't even think you can write a novel...ever.

That's how good this is. I was ecstatic when I finished it.

Streamlined, wonderfully paced, exuberantly told.

Augie is one of the best characters you could ever hope to come across. Full of life, totally unpretentious, endlessly inventive adventerous, curious and human...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Dan Foster rated it 4 of 5 stars

A must read, for Americans Chicago-born and otherwise.

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Mar 23, 2013 Ensiform rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The saga of a fatherless boy, brought up by his timid mother and overbearing grandmother, as he grows to a man, trying to make his way in Depression-era Chicago (and later, in other countries). Augie believes that “a man’s character is his fate,” and thus that “this fate, or what he settles for, is also his character.” Therefore, always searching for “a fate good enough” – somehow “fitting into other people’s schemes” but never coming up with any of his own – he feels buffeted by the vicissitude...more

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Dec 21, 2007 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

This novel has been on my "to read" list for a long time, even before Martin Amis declared it "the Great American Novel" several years ago in Harpers. It's stuffed with dozens of vivid characters and incidents, and as a Chicagoan and Chicago fan I was especially taken with Bellow's descriptions of the city and its sometimes bizarre inhabitants in the 1930s and '40s. The narrative thread is essentially a variation on that classic theme: a young man's search for identity and a place in the world....more

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Jun 01, 2010 Kecia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, national_book_award, nobel_laureates, times_100_best, mexico

Dear Augie, This is not about you. It's about me. You are a fine book but I can only give you 3 stars. It's my own hang-up. I just don't like long books. There are so many other books sitting on my bookshelf waiting their turn and I want to experience them. The commintment of spending two weeks with you made me feel suffocated. I know those other books haven't won as many awards as you have but I need the freedom to read them. Please don't be hurt Augie. Really, it's not you, it's me. I know gen...more

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Oct 17, 2007 Mo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: hobolit

I was sick this week and stayed in bed for two days straight with all 586 lovely, lyrical, sad, brilliant pages of Augie March and his adventures. It took me about 75 pages to get into Bellow's very particular style---now I am hooked. Done for. This book contains so much that I am at a loss to describe it. One of my favorite little snippets (extremely pertinent to my current state of affairs): "I never blamed myself for throwing aside such things as didn't let themselves be read with fervor, for...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Subiaco Library rated it 3 of 5 stars

The adventures of Augie March - they don‘t write them like this anymore! And that is part of the joy and the frustration of The adventures of Augie March. Bellow‘s prose rushes at the reader, bursting at seams with intense imagery, ideas, classical allusions, street wise vernacular and witticisms from another era. One sentence can hold all of this and more. It‘s a challenging read and after 100 pages I felt like I‘d read two books already and I also felt like giving up. I‘m glad that didn‘t as t...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Jared Logan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic!

This is one of those big sprawling novels that follow the life of a single character from youth to adulthood. Bellow's prose is simultaneously poetic and plain-spoken. His characters are hilarious and sad and real. It's a 600 page book that never drags, never bores.

It's about a guy named Augie March growing up in Chicago in the 1920s and 30s. Over and over again I was struck by how much that era is similar to the age we're living in now. It was a time of economic upheaval, when a lot o...more

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May 14, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Originally published on my blog here in August 1999.

Like Henderson in Henderson the Rain King, Augie March is a misfit. Neither character is willing to accept the constraints imposed by the society around them. Henderson is a larger than life, socially simple-minded individual who cannot understand society's barriers, that behaving as he pleases makes him unacceptable, unfit for company. March, on the other hand, is a misfit because he has an unconventional ambition - he is looking for an "accep...more Originally published on my blog here in August 1999.

Like Henderson in Henderson the Rain King, Augie March is a misfit. Neither character is willing to accept the constraints imposed by the society around them. Henderson is a larger than life, socially simple-minded individual who cannot understand society's barriers, that behaving as he pleases makes him unacceptable, unfit for company. March, on the other hand, is a misfit because he has an unconventional ambition - he is looking for an "acceptable fate" - and is willing to walk away from anything that he feels is tying him down. Instead of just acting as he wants and accepting the consequences as Henderson does, he wants to establish his right to be himself.

March's problems occur principally because his ambition is too diffuse. He doesn't know what his acceptable fate will be, so seeking it is unlike the single-minded desire of his brother Simon to make money in any way he can. This aimlessness, together with what he describer as an "adoptive air" means that others keep on suggesting how he should live his life, how he should make his way in the world. So he ends up in a succession of bizarre jobs and relationships, all of which is short term because he turns out to be unable to be himself. He cannot bring himself to compromise his independence.

The reason that Bellow writes about people who don't fit into conventional society is to get his readers to think about the relationship between the individual and the community in which they live. This is particularly aimed at an American readership, for in the United States there has for some time been a very strong tension between ideals of liberty and individualism and the way in which people live their lives in the country which invented the production line. To fit into society both costs us something and brings us benefits, as there is no way that industrial civilisation could survive without the individual subordinating themselves to the whole. Bellow's purpose is to question how much compromise is desirable and how much is necessary, and what make us think about which parts of ourselves do we want to remain individual.(less)

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Aug 16, 2011 Nishta Mehra rated it 4 of 5 stars

I both listened to this book on audio & read it as text, and found both experiences satisfying and frustrating. The literal voice of the narrator in the audio was terrifically alive, but I found that, at times, I might have skimmed were I reading, but couldn't because I was listening. Also, this was my first encounter with Bellow and I was stunned at his turns of phrases...when reading the text, I would pore over certain lines and copy them down in my journal.

I took this book on because one...more

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Mar 19, 2011 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

The plot, if that’s the term, isn’t exactly linear, its parts aren’t always connected, and the language is angular, usually not flowing and sometimes awkward, which often works but sometimes doesn’t. I realize it’s partly an early Jewish-American cultural position, but the language in a work of literature has to stand on its own. Not that it’s a bad story or that there isn’t some excellent writing, but the former’s a pretty random sequence and the latter’s uneven. Still, there’s a strange depth...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Nic rated it 3 of 5 stars

I cannot recommend this novel, but I am so glad I read it. It's truly a slog, and in the first 200 pages, difficult to get a sense of where we're going, which characters are important, etc. It called to mind Dickens in that it is long, dense and filled with interesting characters, but it's a picaresque that lacked emotional impact at first.

Augie can be a madeningly passive character, lacking morality, emotionally blank. He's almost an idea more than a personality - a clean slate - an experiment...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Jon Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: someone interested in 20th century American lit

Recommended to Jon by: no one

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I read one Saul Bellow book when I was an undergraduate, Henderson the Rain King, which failed to make any lasting impression. When I thought of any of Bellow's work, I was reminded of Twain's definition of a classic which depicted my attitude towards him, his works are praised but who reads them? I came across Augie when I read the Time magazine list of the top 100 American books. One day, when I was in a remainder bookstore, I bought a copy of it cheap, esp. f...more I enjoyed this book a great deal. I read one Saul Bellow book when I was an undergraduate, Henderson the Rain King, which failed to make any lasting impression. When I thought of any of Bellow's work, I was reminded of Twain's definition of a classic which depicted my attitude towards him, his works are praised but who reads them? I came across Augie when I read the Time magazine list of the top 100 American books. One day, when I was in a remainder bookstore, I bought a copy of it cheap, esp. for a hardback. I gave it a shot, but I could not make it past the first thirty pages so it went back on the shelf for a number of years.
When I tried it again recently, I was intrigued by its comparisons to Huck Finn and I plowed into it with a new resolve. I'm glad I did for a number of reasons. I enjoyed the richness of Bellow's language, the expansive nature of the plot and the delightful cavalcade of characters. I think I liked Simon the best. I liked his anger and his headstrong ways, but his inner vulnerability and the complexity of his relationship with his mistress gave him the complexities to make him seem authentic.
At first, I was not too sure about the trip to Mexico, but as conditions began to deteriorate for Augie, the adventure became endearing. And that's just it with this book, endearing. I could relate to Augie's approach to the world and his inability to find a place in it. He just couldn't really get it together for neither love nor money. Augie was a classic character and such a mellow narrator. I couldn't help but be charmed by his nature and the follies of his attempts to follow his feelings whether it was to nursemaid an abortion or babysit an eagle or save a damsel in distress Augie's what the hey attitude served him and me well.
This book was so dense in its descriptions and action, not to mention its characterization that I will have to consider it for a long while and re-read it to swim more confidently in its deep waters, but I look forward to the return to Depression era Chicago.
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Apr 13, 2010 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bellow (or his character) cannot decide between nature and nurture; Chapter 1 starts, "I...go at things as I have taught myself, free-style...a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus", whereas Chapter 4 inclines toward the self as tabula rasa, which then becomes the product of environmental factors - "All the influences were lined up waiting for me. I was born, and they were there to form me which is why I tell you more of them than of myself".
Whatever the effect of nurture, it is plainly...more

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Apr 06, 2010 carl theaker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-library-100

Saul Bellow is one of those authors you know of from the previous generation of writers
but, at least in my case, had never read.

Augie is the first book I read on the Modern Library Top 100 list (that
I hadn't read previously to the list coming out). It's quite a long tale,
which worked out for me as I enjoyed it, always wondering what was going
to happen to Augie next, his brother, and the rest of his circle.

The setting is depression era Chicago, and in humble surroundings, as Augie
grows up...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Brayden rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book goes on my favorite books of all time list. It took me a while to catch the spirit of it but once I got into the rhythm of the storytelling, I was hooked. The story is about a young Jewish man, Augie March (of course), who is growing up in pre-Depression era Chicago, living with his forceful, stern grandmother, troubled mother, and two brothers. Rather than following a linear plot, the book relates a sequence of events of Augie turning into a man. The book is ultimately about discoveri...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Eromsted rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Adventures of Augie March is Bellow’s youthful attempt at the Great American Novel, perhaps even an Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the 20th Century. [Beyond the parallel title I thought I caught a few subtle allusions to Huck Finn in the text.:] However, Bellow had also clearly read the great modernists of the early 1900s. Augie March is something of a hybrid of tales of Americana and an intellectual study of the human condition. This combination is first visible in the language, a uniqu...more The Adventures of Augie March is Bellow’s youthful attempt at the Great American Novel, perhaps even an Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for the 20th Century. [Beyond the parallel title I thought I caught a few subtle allusions to Huck Finn in the text.:] However, Bellow had also clearly read the great modernists of the early 1900s. Augie March is something of a hybrid of tales of Americana and an intellectual study of the human condition. This combination is first visible in the language, a unique mélange of Chicago street slang and high literary erudition.
The novel’s opening is rather diffuse as Augie tells the story of his childhood as a poor Jewish boy in 1920s Chicago. However, the narrative is drawn into sharper focus by the advent of the great depression and the various reactions of the principle characters to this . Then follows a series of peregrinations which bring Augie into contact with all levels of American society. He is among other things: fiancé of an heiress (twice), a union organizer, a coal merchant and a book thief.
A trip to Mexico with Thea Fenchel (the second heiress) to train an eagle to catch giant iguana inaugurates the second, more introspective part of the novel. Two themes in particular caught my attention. First, the way in which people interpret their experiences in the world to match and support their pre-existing ideas. Many of the secondary character in the novel (especially Augie’s various love interests and his brother Simon) have a strong world-view, and everything that happens only seems to confirm them in their beliefs. Part of Augie’s internal crisis is his feeling that he lacks such a strong internal compass and is rather easily lead around by others. Toward the end of the novel, especially through Simon, we are lead to question the depth of this apparently strong front.
The other strong theme is in some ways the flip side of the last, the way in which the modern world organizes people into pre-existing social roles and that success is measured by the ability to meet the needs of society in these pre-defined positions. The other side of Augie’s self-doubt is his romantic attachment to some grander idea of personal achievement, which causes him to resist any permanent direction. I found it significant that when WWII arrived, Augie’s hostility to Nazism was driven by his image of the Nazi state as the ultimate regimented bureaucracy. This concern with the submersion of the individual in mass society is in many ways less a description of the reality of the 1930s in which the novel is set, than an augury of the world of the 1950s (think The Organization Man or The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit)
In the end, beyond these intellectual concerns, I was engaged by the book because I could identify with Augie (to the point of jealousy for his interminable string of good breaks) and because the writing created scenes and images which stay with me. This, to me, is the true mark of a great novel.(less)

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Aug 11, 2009 Mateo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Looking for the Great American Novel? According to the likes of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Christopher Hitchens, look no further than this book. (Why the book jacket would quote three Englishmen about the Great American Novel is a mystery not explained by the editors at Penguin Classics.) James Wood, in his almost ecstatic essay "Saul Bellow's Comic Style," called Bellow "probably the greatest writer of American prose of the 20th century--where greatest means most abundant, various, precis...more Looking for the Great American Novel? According to the likes of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and Christopher Hitchens, look no further than this book. (Why the book jacket would quote three Englishmen about the Great American Novel is a mystery not explained by the editors at Penguin Classics.) James Wood, in his almost ecstatic essay "Saul Bellow's Comic Style," called Bellow "probably the greatest writer of American prose of the 20th century--where greatest means most abundant, various, precise, rich, lyrical," and goes on to give numerous examples of that remarkable prose, many from Augie March.

I can understand why Woods et al. would say these things. For example, Augie's description of a woman as "a great work of ripple-assed luxury, with an immense mozzarella bust" is a line any author would kill for.

And yet.

For all its brilliance--or, perhaps, because of all that brilliance--I found this book wearying. Halfway through its 600 pages I found myself skimming paragraphs and checking ahead to see when chapters would end. Three-fourths of the way through and I was picking up old New Yorkers rather than Augie March, and the last 100 pages, every bit as brilliant as the first 100, were kind of a trudging slog through to an ending I didn't really care about. This is a big, gassy windbag of a novel, whose protagonist is a big, windy gasbag of a narrator, and eventually I began to long for narrative event unencumbered by sterling glossolalia and big-ticket allusions. (It would have helped if there were characters who were affecting rather than simple memorable; as with many fireworks novels, the main character is the author.) Yes, the writing is brilliant and extraordinary and often funny, but, to quote a one-sentence review by Ambrose Bierce of another novel: "The covers of this book are too far apart."

It's like Whitman. Now, I love Whitman, you love Whitman, we all admire his original and uniquely American voice, but if you're honest with yourself you'll admit that a half-page of Whitman is a sublime and revelatory experience, a page is an éclair of vernacular lyricism, two pages is like a too-large serving of an extra-rich cake, and five pages leaves you wondering if the lists will ever stop. Whitman, of course, is perhaps the most quintessentially American writer there is, so perhaps its those Whitmanesque qualities that makes Augie March such a good candidate for Great American Novel. If this really is the Great American Novel, though, it's too bad that the Great American Novel takes so long to finish.
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Apr 05, 2009 Michael added it

Note: I do not rate books numerically or celestially.

The Great American Novel? Well, let's see: The Adventures of Augie March is, of course, a novel; it is certainly great; and Bellow, though born to Canada, is about as American as they come. But what to do about that definite article? It is interesting to note that the other novel so often nominated for pride-of-place on that mystic mantel of American letters is the book to which Augie March is most obviously (and perhaps superficially) indebt...more Note: I do not rate books numerically or celestially.

The Great American Novel? Well, let's see: The Adventures of Augie March is, of course, a novel; it is certainly great; and Bellow, though born to Canada, is about as American as they come. But what to do about that definite article? It is interesting to note that the other novel so often nominated for pride-of-place on that mystic mantel of American letters is the book to which Augie March is most obviously (and perhaps superficially) indebted: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both books follow a gifted and charismatic hero through a series of "adventures" that run the gamut from low farce to high tragedy; both characters, set off from their surrounding societies by origin and ability, offer penetrating and affecting commentary on the good and bad, the honest and false, the godlike and worm-like motives that propel the men and women they encounter; both Huck and Augie grow as men poignantly and convincingly; and, consequently, both novels burst with life, each a vigorous appeal to and demonstration of American vitality: physically, spiritually, and intellectually.

And yet Augie March is a very different experience than its hoary predecessor. Perhaps the best way to get at this defining difference is to note that whereas TAHF is essentially rural in nature, TAAM is infused with a pervading cosmopolitanism. While Huck floats down the Mississippi passing pipe-puffs with Jim the slave, Augie crisscrosses Chicago - that somber city - and beyond to New York, Mexico, Paris, and Rome, all the while set upon by capitalist fat-cats and violent union toughs, fascists and communists (Trotsky himself makes a brief cameo!), gay dog-groomers and horny millionaires, whores and princesses (Augie March has yet to meet a young woman he won't bed), the poor and the rich, the madly eccentric and the madly brilliant, the just pain mad, the noble and the degenerate, the saved and the damned; in short, by every manner of man begotten by the city. The cast is large and motley (that is to say, urban), and it is one of the great qualities of the book that each character is deftly cropped and animated in living color, sometimes by means of only a sentence or two.

Though the cast is large and disparate, it is united in this: it yearns to assimilate Augie March, to break him down and remold him in its own image. This is the central conflict of the novel, the battle for Augie March's soul. Indeed, it is the conflict central to life in America in the 20th and 21st centuries. How do we define ourselves in a world of anonymity? In a world where dusty ideologies pass from one zealot to another like common colds, how do we inoculate ourselves, and how do we know we're immune? For Bellow's Augie March, an unwavering faith in the sacredness and potency of the individual human will is the panacea. The individual trumps all. To actualize our wants over a chorus of protest is the noblest thing we can do; to surrender our identity by capitulation to another will is scandalous. This, I think, is the moral to all of Augie's adventures, and Bellow, though he'd probably deny it, proves himself a first rate moralist in TAAM.

The hard part, of course, is knowing what exactly it is you want. How many labor their lives away self-deluded, sacrificing everything for a bit of fool's gold? Worse, how many labor their lives away striving for evil ends, thinking them good? As the novel comes to its ambiguous end, the implication seems to be that there are certain epistemological limits inherent to life, and these limits must simply be accepted. In the closing scenes of the book, Augie is crushed to discover certain untruths told to him by his wife. The trivial facts are not what sting, but the knowledge that even his wife will always be slightly alien, unpredictable, and unknowable. The only person Augie can ever really know and trust is himself, and the recognition of this axiom paradoxically sets him free to experience the astounding variety of life. Indeed, what is so beautiful about Bellow's individualism is that it is not reclusive, cynical, or limiting; to the contrary, it is liberating. Bellow shows us that a passive engagement with the world is really no engagement at all, and that the real pleasures of life - its love and laughter- can only be enjoyed by a sovereign soul. The Adventures of Augie March is so full of love and laughter, sadness and optimism, that in the end it is probably not suited to faithfully portray America and its literature. It is not, in other words, The Great American novel. One wishes it were. (less)

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Feb 25, 2013 Max rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century

The Great American Novel? Perhaps, but more aptly the great novel of the difficulty of being human. While the context is American, the insights into the human spirit are universal. Our protagonist is the wanderer searching for an identity, a proper place in the scheme of things and in the process loses exactly what he is trying to find. In trying to be independent he gets used by others. In trying to be genuine he is insincere.

The Adventures of Augie March strips away the façade to expose the il...more The Great American Novel? Perhaps, but more aptly the great novel of the difficulty of being human. While the context is American, the insights into the human spirit are universal. Our protagonist is the wanderer searching for an identity, a proper place in the scheme of things and in the process loses exactly what he is trying to find. In trying to be independent he gets used by others. In trying to be genuine he is insincere.

The Adventures of Augie March strips away the façade to expose the illusions we all create to cope. It shows us how our intentions are compromised and identity lost by our reactions to others, both reactions of opposition and reactions of compliance. Augie March resonates when we see into his soul and we see a bit of ourselves.

Take this passage, “with everyone going around so capable and purposeful in his own handsome case, can you let yourself limp in weak and feeble…No, you have to plot in your heart to come out differently…You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances…And this is what mere humanity always does. It’s made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit others to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make believe…That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and flowers of a version.”

The Adventures of Augie March can be a source of deep reflection, but it can also be light and fun. For example as counterpoint to the above quote, Augie later exclaims, “Oh, it’s very tiring to have your own opinions on everything”. The text is interspersed with such flippancy as one crazy adventure follows another.

Bellow’s rambling style gives the novel its freshness; however his style can also be demanding with lengthy passages of entangled thinking and embedded classical references. But don’t falter when faced with linguistic contortions, rather be like Augie, go with the flow and enjoy the wonderful ride.
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Jul 24, 2011 Liz rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-s-top-one-hundred

Okay, so my experience with this book started by trying to find it,Which wasn't really that hard. I asked for it at my library and it happened to be in the basement. Old and smelling of mold and dust,it wasn't taken out for exactly two years. Which peaked my interest even more. It is said, the best books are the ones rarely read.
I knew this book was written many years ago,(1953) so I went into reading it with a most open mind. I'm notorious for disliking anything beyond 30 years of age, whether...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 the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.” — 61 people liked it

“I mean you have been disappointed in love, but don't you know how many things there are to be disappointed in besides love? You are lucky to be still disappointed in love. Later it may be even more terrible.” — 18 people liked it

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