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Aug 28, 2011

julieta rated it:

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 n More...

1 comment like (11 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2011

Adam rated it:

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 s More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 12, 2010

Jimmy rated it:

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March is one of three things; it's either Saul Bellow's most verbose novel, a piece of fiction that almost stands as an historical document of Chicago during the Great Depression, or one of the best contemporary examples of the picaresque novel.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 More...

4 comments like (13 people liked it)

Oct 24, 2011

Ian rated it:

In Pursuit of Exuberance

I 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...

14 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Dan rated it:

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

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2011

King Dinösaur rated it:

Whew! Well, I slogged through the first 100 or so pages of this book, hating on Mr. Bellow but determined to find something of worth in here since his "Henderson and the Rain King" is so near and dear to my heart. Then, right when it started to pick up my personal life got complicated, restricting my reading time (and this book is almost 600 pages in length) so it's taken me an inordinate amount of time to read. Now I'm in the process of absorbing and pondering its meaning, so I don More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2007

Robert rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Ivy's Mom rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Mo rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2011

Nishta rated it:

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 beca More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 19, 2011

Tim rated it:

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 dep More...

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Jun 26, 2010

Nic rated it:

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 More...

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Apr 21, 2010

Jon rated it:

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, e More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2010

Bob rated it:

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 More...

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Apr 06, 2010

carl rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2009

Brayden rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 10, 2009

Eromsted rated it:

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 u More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 11, 2009

Mateo rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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 super More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 29, 2011

Liz rated it:

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, whe More...

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Jul 04, 2011

Anne.NobelReader rated it:

As with many modern books, when the time comes to rate The Adventures of Augie March I'm afraid I could be grossly overrating it, or underrating it.

What is one to do when finding in a novel all the elements of the masterpiece, however, several annoyances to make of this a very overrated novel?

So, anyways, what Saul Bellow was trying to get through to us readers in his exaggeratedly verbose novel is that people, and eagles, will be themselves (hopefully), that editing is More...

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Apr 02, 2010

Mark rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2012

Veronica rated it:

While perusing The Adventures of Augie March, I found myself fondly recalling The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, however, apart from its Chicago setting, Augie and Studs were two very different characters and these were two very different novels.

We meet the young Augie as a young boy living in Chicago with his visually challenged mother, overbearing grandmother, mentally challenged brother and older and domineering brother. The journey begins in Chicago and its outskirts, heads south to Mexic More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 21, 2011

David rated it:

This novel is unquestionably one of the great masterpieces of our time. Saul Bellow paints portraits of characters like Rembrandt. He has a brilliant technique for divulging not only the physical nuances of his characters but also gets deep into the essence of their souls. He has an astute grasp of motivation and spins a complex tale with an ease that astounds. Even the most unusual twists of fate seem natural and authentic. Augie is a man "in search of a worthwhile fate." After strugg More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 28, 2009

Ruthiella rated it:

536 pages of very small type, I might add. What a chore reading this book was! I began reading it in 2008 and finished over a year later... and this was my third attempt. Bellows uses every adjective in the dictionary. Never heard of Belshazzar or Pasiphaë? Me neither, but Bellows has, and he inserts every historical, mythological, biblical and classical reference, every Yiddish, Latin and French phrase, as well as every long word in English he knows, as if to say, “Hey, look how smart I am!”. O More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2011

David rated it:

This is a great and surprising book that tracks a Chicago man from Newsies-esque nogoodnik to existential philosopher; from the great lakes to Mexico to the middle of the Atlantic (the Canary Islands?) and back.

Through the novel, Augie (my sophomore year literature teacher told me that the title refers to The August March of Man) follows love so desperately, bruthishly, and honestly that it's hard not to like him even when he's repulsive.

By the second half of the book, the ma More...

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Mar 28, 2009

marg rated it:

To say I read this isn't fair, I didn't finish it at all. Had to read it for snooty Heights club - you know how there are books you hate and you;re not sure if it's you or the book? I mean you read Joyce and you're just like, what am I missing?? Here I have to respect Bellow because he won lots of neat prizes, not the least of which the Nobel, and so who am I to not be able to get through it? PLus it's humbling - ie, real smart people read books like this, or Hemingway or Faulkner and actually More...

1 comment like

Jan 02, 2011

Chuck rated it:

I have enjoyed Bellow's work ever since I read Henderson the Rain King back in the 70's. The Adventures of Augie March is not as fanciful but is still an adventure. Bellow has a way of making his characters memorable. Whether you like them or not, and I end up liking almost all of them, they come off as real human beings who get into the strangest of situations.

Augie March is a fictional biography. It's about a poor kid growing up in Chicago and his adventures growing into adulth More...

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Dec 06, 2009

Harold rated it:

This picaresque novel about Chicago-Born Augie March, from his youth in Chicago to his seemingly-doomed marriage, is rich in language, characters, episodes and ideas. I cannot say that I find it a "great" book, but there are so many bits of greatness in it that, considering the current banal literary landscape, it is impossible not to give it a five-star rating.

"Augie" was not a journey without its flaws, for this reader. After one reading, I would say that it More...

9 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 20, 2011

Michael rated it:

This is neither gritty realism like Studs Lonigan or wild fantasy like Invisible Man. In being in the middle it looses the effect of both. Its realism isn't real enough and its craziness isn't crazy enough. I mean hunting with an eagle, it's not that powerful of a symbol to me compared to the paint factory in Invisible Man.
As a philosophical commentary it falls flat after I read A Man Without Qualities. It strikes a lot of the same themes but without the intellectual depth. Is this pu More...

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