Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Ravelstein

3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 · rating details · 1,443 ratings · 123 reviews

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously-and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelst...more

Paperback, 233 pages

Published May 1st 2001 by Penguin Books (first published 2000)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Canadian Fiction

83rd out of 370 books — 264 voters

Favorite Novels About Professors or Academics

60th out of 195 books — 235 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,280)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 11, 2013 Mauro added it

The wikipedia says it’s a roman à clef – and that the key to it is that Ravelstein is, indeed, Allan Bloom, who was a very intimate friend of Saul B.

Bellow was eighty-five when he wrote it, and it was his last book (he died five years later, in 2005). It is evidently mature and deep – his insights are precious as usually. Only now they are clearly the product of an overworked brain. You can almost hear this coming like a jumbled train of thought from a bright, intellectual, happily tired old ma...more The wikipedia says it’s a roman à clef – and that the key to it is that Ravelstein is, indeed, Allan Bloom, who was a very intimate friend of Saul B.

Bellow was eighty-five when he wrote it, and it was his last book (he died five years later, in 2005). It is evidently mature and deep – his insights are precious as usually. Only now they are clearly the product of an overworked brain. You can almost hear this coming like a jumbled train of thought from a bright, intellectual, happily tired old man, who knows he is repeating himself and likes it:

“I was familiar with Ravelstein's ideas of marriage. People are beaten at last with their solitary longings and intolerable isolation. They need the right, the missing portion to complete themselves, and since they can't realistically hope to find that they must accept a companionable substitute. Recognizing that they can't win, they settle. The marriage of true minds seldom occurs. Love that bears it out even to the edge of doom is not a modern project. But there was, for Ravelstein, nothing to compete with this achievement of the soul. Scholars deny that Sonnet 116 is about the love of men and women but insist that Shakespeare is writing about friendship. The best we can hope for in modernity is not love but a sexual attachment – a bourgeois solution, in bohemian dress. I mention bohemianism because we need to feel that we are liberated. Ravelstein taught that in the modern condition we are in a weak state. The strong state—and this he learned from Socrates—comes to us through nature. At the core of the soul is Eros. Eros is overwhelmingly attracted to the sun. I've probably spoken of this before. If I speak of it again it's because I am never done with Ravelstein and he was never done with Socrates, for whom Eros was at the center of the soul, where the sun nourishes and expands it.”

Ravelstein – or Bloom – receives his justly deserved homage. But he is also an excuse for Bellow to expose his own thoughts about life, death, love, friendship.

The book is, indeed, a roman à clef. But the necessary key is not that it is about Bloom – what one really should know is that it is the last breath of a great writer and a warming memoir of his last years.(less)

like 1 like · see review

Jan 27, 2009 Lobstergirl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, vacation-reads, fiction

Is Saul Bellow the best novelist of the 20th century? I don't know, but I loved this fictionalized account of his friendship with fellow academic Allan Bloom.

Bellow describes his fictionalized wife Vela: “She had to be seen as a beautiful woman. But it was beauty-parade beauty, and required preparation at a West Point or Hapsburg hussar level.”

like 1 like · see review

Jan 06, 2009 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

The novel is best when Bellow's Chick ruminates on memories and tells anecdotes about Ravelstein, a wonderfully intimidating and human character.

Ravelstein is a novel that will likely prompt a bit of research on a great many topics, and readers should expect to come away with considerable, if superficial, incidental learning. At times Bellow can sound off-puttingly affected. For example,Chick and Ravelstein prefer to bask in their knowledge of more precise French and German idioms, and Bellow l...more

like 1 like · see review

Apr 15, 2013 Yvonne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ravelstein consists of Chick’s rambling memories of the last years of Ravelstein’s life, and the significant place that Ravelstein held in his life—and marriages. However, Bellow introduces other minor characters, such as Morris Herbst, who “had a singular connection” with Ravelstein, takes up seven pages. We even get to know about his heart transplant—who cares? Yes, they are brushstrokes that make up the larger portrait of Ravelstein’s personality, but too distracting, take me back to the main...more Ravelstein consists of Chick’s rambling memories of the last years of Ravelstein’s life, and the significant place that Ravelstein held in his life—and marriages. However, Bellow introduces other minor characters, such as Morris Herbst, who “had a singular connection” with Ravelstein, takes up seven pages. We even get to know about his heart transplant—who cares? Yes, they are brushstrokes that make up the larger portrait of Ravelstein’s personality, but too distracting, take me back to the main plot and characters.
The setting for most of the novel, a Midwestern University, remains a mystery. There are sojourns to Paris and New Hampshire, Boston and Saint Martin. The period is also omitted, you assume by the fact that Ravelstein died of AIDS and Michael Jackson was popular, that it’s the late 80’s or early 90’s.
I found myself disliking Ravelstein, the character, as a person. His excesses, his urging his students to “rid themselves of their parents,” planning their futures; his meddling into Chick’s marriage by disparaging Vela. Although he is supposed to think deeply about his friends, his actions showed him to be an egomaniac. We don’t even know how he feels about Nikki, the person closest to him, we only get Nikki’s devotion to him.
I didn't connect with either of the main characters. Ravelstein, for all his brilliance, seemed cold and afar. He could be “freaky” on social occasions. (Love the idea of an 84-year-old author using that descriptive word). I felt sympathy only when he declines physically and it on the threshold of death, becoming more human. His endless consumerism: Lanvin, Sulka, Gelot the hatmaker, Hermes, Ermenegildo Zegna, a Jeremyn Street shirtmaker, Lalique, Mont Blanc pen, $20,000 wristwatch, Dunhill lighters, $10,000 speakers, Pratesi linens, Versace, Ultimo, Gucci and BMW is reckless and excessive, UNLESS he knew by then he was a condemned man, thus totally understandable. That was not clear to me.
As for the women, Vela, tough as nails, has not one redeeming quality except her physical beauty and brain. Rosamund, on the other hand is the only character who is real, whose feelings you’re allowed to see, thus the only one that I could connect to.
There were too many times that I felt that the author was trying to impress the reader with his erudition through the endless list of intellectuals and celebrities that surround Ravelstein or his intellect, among them-Balzac, Plato, Goethe, Diderot, Rameau, R.H.Tawney, Bertrand Russell, Rakmiel, T.S.Elliot, R.Kogon, Sartre, Machiavelli, Hobbes Pascal, Winston Churchill, Felix Davarr, Thucydides, Caesar, Marc Anthony, Nijinsky, Albert Speer, Michael Jordan, Phillip Gorman etc. Also annoying are the endless French terms, affectations spoken by Ravelstein and Chick.
Chick says he “somehow found myself stuck always in the cautionary role, speaking up for the commonest sort of common sense to people who took pride in brushing off prudence.” He adds, “Ravelstein was aware of this flaw of mine.” The questions this book raises are: Is this a book about an equal friendship or is Chick the caretaker? Does he have a case of hero worship? Is a true friendship between a gay and a straight man possible? Between a man and a woman? As the raconteur of Ravelstein’s legacy, Chick does not come across as a likeable person, again, we don’t know about HIM, his career, his goals, why he married his wives, how he feels about them, the most we get is a feeling of gratitude towards Rosamund, after Ravelstein is gone from their lives and she saves his life.
“The rule for the dead is that they should be forgotten. After burial there is a universal gradual progress toward oblivion. But with Ravelstein this didn't altogether work.”
Bellow achieved his goal of making Ravelstein immortal.
(less)

like · see review

Mar 05, 2013 Bob Wake rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

[Reviewed in 2000]

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Saul Bellow at 84 has written a novel as graceful and funny as Ravelstein. But who could have predicted that he would also stir up a hornets’ nest of controversy? The character of Abe Ravelstein is based on Bellow’s late friend and colleague, Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, the 1987 best-seller that became a lightning rod for the culture wars of the Reagan era. What hasn’t heretofore been public knowledge is that B...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 28, 2012 Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

As a fan and popcorn spectator of the culture wars raging around me back in the late 1990s in college, I read this because I've always been fascinated by Allan Bloom as a character and a philosopher. Ravelstein, a thinly veiled roman a clef, did not disappoint.

I've found myself rereading Ravelstein various times over the years, lately with an open wikipedia tab to follow up various allusions.

Bellow, Phillip Roth, and John Updike, seem to hold some kind of special place in recent (decades) americ...more

like 1 like · see review

Jun 26, 2012 Troy Parfitt rated it 3 of 5 stars

I took this book up because I had heard Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens declare their admiration for Saul Bellow. Indeed, for Amis, Bellow seems to have become a sort of mentor or father figure. I read Seize the Day a decade ago, but it did not resonate. I had really wanted to read Humboldt's Gift, but then I stumbled on Ravelstein and thought, `Why not?'

I quickly realized Ravelstein must have been Allan Bloom, made famous for his Closing of the American Mind, to which Bellow penned the pre...more

like · see review

Feb 04, 2012 Jason Hillenburg rated it 4 of 5 stars

The last novel Bellow published in his lifetime, Ravelstein is a thinly veiled portrait of Bellow's friend, teacher and author of The Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom. It chronicles their friendship and Bloom's final years suffering from the debilitating effects of HIV. Critically hailed as a miraculous return to form by many when it was published, the novel does contain many hallmarks of Bellow's art. The immense intelligence presiding over the novel, the self-deprecating wit, and his p...more The last novel Bellow published in his lifetime, Ravelstein is a thinly veiled portrait of Bellow's friend, teacher and author of The Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom. It chronicles their friendship and Bloom's final years suffering from the debilitating effects of HIV. Critically hailed as a miraculous return to form by many when it was published, the novel does contain many hallmarks of Bellow's art. The immense intelligence presiding over the novel, the self-deprecating wit, and his powers of observation are at full force and the prose rhythms gracefully alternate between eloquence and vividly idiomatic brushstrokes that add color. As well, Bellow's withering honesty spares no one and his observations ring with the convictions of a man with nothing to lose.

However, the first half of the novel is almost fatally discursive, rephrasing descriptions of Ravelstein's dress, predilection for high-end gossip, and other assorted appetites. Bellow's powers as a novelist have me convinced by page 40 that the Ravelstein character is truly an unique creature, but Bellow continues to belabor his point for another 50-60 pages before launching into his narrative in earnest. This is a thinly plotted novel, propelled by its narrative voice, and without a traditional structure propping up his observations, Bellow lacks focus.

However, the second half of the novel moves at a brisker pace and, having established Ravelstein's character, Bellow remembers to give us a story instead of extended reminiscences. His characterizations are sketched rather than laid on with a trowel and we learn much more about Chick, the narrator and Bellow's stand-in, and Ravelstein's relationship through crackling dialogue that rarely missteps.

In conclusion, this is a worthy addition to Bellow's oeuvre, a final display of his enormous ability to delineate human nature. While it is wayward and a bit self-indulgent, Bellow invests the work with passion and intellect in equal measure. Recommended.

(less)

like · see review

Dec 19, 2011 Corey Pung rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ravelstein is loosely based on Saul Bellow’s real-life friendship with famed 20th century philosopher Allan Bloom (writer of The Closing of the American Mind, not to be confused with literary scholar Harold Bloom). Bellow had remained friends with Bloom for many years, from teaching at the same college to visiting Bloom in the final stages of his battle with AIDs. Ravelstein is very much the product of that experience. It is also the last book Bellow completed in his lifetime. He published it wh...more Ravelstein is loosely based on Saul Bellow’s real-life friendship with famed 20th century philosopher Allan Bloom (writer of The Closing of the American Mind, not to be confused with literary scholar Harold Bloom). Bellow had remained friends with Bloom for many years, from teaching at the same college to visiting Bloom in the final stages of his battle with AIDs. Ravelstein is very much the product of that experience. It is also the last book Bellow completed in his lifetime. He published it when he was eighty-five years old, and it holds up remarkably well.

For centuries, writing a fictional portrayal of a real person could be considered a serious offense, one that could get a a person incarcerated or worse. In the new millenia, you’d think we’d be more relaxed about this sort of thing, but when Bellow’s lovely little book came out, it sparked a controversy. Typically, when a writer does decide to write of a real person, they use to their advantage the roman a clef, that is, perhaps utilizes a few pseudonyms and altered facts to hide the identity of the person they’re writing of. In Ravelstein’s case, people saw through the roman a clef quickly, and were just as quick to criticize this book for its depiction of Bloom.

I was surprised to see so many bad reviews online. They put me off from reading Ravelstein for more than a year after I bought it. When I finally read it (I decided my goal this year was to read every novel by Bellow) I found nothing in it that was particularly damaging to Bloom’s posterity. If Bloom is Ravelstein, then Bloom was a genius and a gentleman. I think what people didn’t like about Bloom’s depiction was that he was described in his full humanity, sometimes delivering brillaint polemics, and other times bickering about little things. He’s able to contemplate the finer things one minute and give in to his baser impulses the next. I think fans of Bloom’s wanted a stone icon, and what Bellow gave them was a man.

If you'd like to read my full review, go to: http://coreysbook.wordpress.com/2011/...(less)

like · see review

Dec 01, 2010 Michael Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, memoir

Part memoir, part fiction, Ravelstein is the story of life at the peak of the intellectuality in what looks like the 1980s. There is no real topic for this book, just a constant tinkering with modern ideas and their interpretation: the commoditization of ideas, the role of the modern man, the matrimony, the displacement that comes with success, the decay of the human body in spite of advancements in medicine (read also To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life by Herve Guibert), the new trivial. Ra...more

like 1 like · see review

Jan 22, 2009 Mark rated it 1 of 5 stars

After reading some of the other reviews here, I now know this is based on an actual person. I suspected it was, but couldn't get myself to care enough about the characters or the story to find out. I tried hard to finish the book, but then realized I was just waiting for my next requested books be become available at the library.

I guess if I knew about Allen Bloom or his work, maybe this would help support some interest. The author seems to want us to take on faith that Ravelstein is a riveting,...more

like 3 likes · see review

Nov 20, 2008 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks

I listened to this on audio on a car trip. I really enjoyed the story. The title character is compelling and contradictory in a way that kept my interest. Later, I found out he was based on Allan Bloom, who wrote "The Closing of the American Mind." Which is a problem. In my politically correct youth of the early '90s, Bloom was universally reviled for being some kind of conservative apologist. Now I suppose I have to go back and revisit his book and possibly revise my prejudices. How tiresome!

like 1 like · see review

Apr 13, 2010 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Of course we're good and fed up with personality profiles, or defects. One reason why violence is so popular may be that psychiatric insights have worn us out and we get satisfaction from seeing them blown away with automatic weapons, or exploding in cars, or being garroted or stuffed by taxidermists. We're so sick of having to think about everybody's problems -- Grand Guignol mock-destruction isn't good enough for the bastards."

The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation a...more

like · see review

Apr 23, 2009 Kyle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Others are thrown by what they label (lazily, I think) the "stream of consciousness" style of writing. What's actually taking place is a forward moving narrative coupled with the reflections it inspires a la "Henderson, the Rain King", etc. My biggest criticism is that the great charm of the first section disappeared. To be fair, outside circumstances have put my mind in a million places at the time of reading this, so maybe I'm not in the best place to judge. Also, this may be the sort of book...more

like 2 likes · see review

Feb 02, 2011 Patrick rated it 2 of 5 stars

The book is about an elderly author who writes about his dying HIV + professorial friend and their conversations especially about mortality. This is a roman a clef book about Bellow, the writer and his dear friend Bloom with Wolfowitz featuring as Philip Gorman. I give this book a 2.5 since I do not think I would care so much about the characters if I did not know it was a roman a clef but I give it a 0.5 bump for some interesting well written thought-provoking quotes. One of the interesting ide...more

like · see review

Jan 08, 2011 Northpapers rated it 2 of 5 stars

Allan Bloom wrote a bestseller titled The Closing of the American Mind. I had not read this book when I began to read Ravelstein by Saul Bellow. Nor did I really know who Allan Bloom was, or even that the lead character in Bellow's novel was based on the real and famous professor Allan Bloom.

Nor did I know what Bellow was talking about in a good half of his allusions during the course of the book.

As I read it, I pondered the following questions: Is a novel without a plot still a novel? Or is it...more

like 2 likes · see review

Oct 03, 2011 Shane rated it 3 of 5 stars

If this book is a thinly veiled account of Bellow’s relationship with fellow academic Allan Bloom, I wonder why Bellow did not write it as such, and instead relied on the novel form. The novel disappoints, for it flatlines on story and character (even though Ravelstein is a multifaceted personality), whereas a biography or memoir of the real duo would have been more impactful.

Ravelstein and Chick (Bloom and Bellow respectively, as I made out) are a modern day Socrates and Plato. Ravelstein is a...more If this book is a thinly veiled account of Bellow’s relationship with fellow academic Allan Bloom, I wonder why Bellow did not write it as such, and instead relied on the novel form. The novel disappoints, for it flatlines on story and character (even though Ravelstein is a multifaceted personality), whereas a biography or memoir of the real duo would have been more impactful.

Ravelstein and Chick (Bloom and Bellow respectively, as I made out) are a modern day Socrates and Plato. Ravelstein is a flamboyant philosopher king who hit the jackpot with one bestseller and is now dying of AIDS. He urges his protégée Chick, an accomplished writer, to write his memoir. The protégée resists, believing that once he has written the book, there will be no more reason to live. Chick, who is older than his mentor, has a young wife, Rosamund, one of Ravelstein’s former student’s, and is therefore reluctant to give up the ghost yet.

And so we are entertained to a series of Socratic dialogues in which the two academics debate every topical subject under the sun while in Paris and later in Chicago. Brush up on your understanding of Keynes, Greek Philosophy, Jewish history and the Classics (art, literature and music) if you want a deeper appreciation of this book. Ravelstein not only dominates his students in thought, he dissects their personal lives and relationships. The lengthy discussion where the master disassembles Chick’s first marriage to the beautiful and talented Vela, starts to get rather uncomfortable for Chick, and for this reader too.

The philosophical nuggets are the best parts of the book. Lines like, “artists fall in love, but love is not their primary gift,” and “nature and solitude are depressing to educated people getting old,” are priceless. But I take issue with Chick’s literary prowess when he arbitrarily introduces a character as “Rakhmiel was neither a large man nor a healthy one, but he was physically conspicuous just the same – compact and dense, high handed, tyrannical, fixated and opinionated.” Wow, “show don’t tell” does not apply to this master, it seems!

And then, as to be expected, Ravelstein dies, but only past the midpoint of the book, and the story veers over to Chick’s brush with death by accidentally eating toxic fish while on holiday in the Caribbean. There are oodles of hospital scenes and hallucinations that follow, and sleepless nights suffered by the loyal Rosamund, until Chick is well again but never to regain his former self. Chick also never completes Ravelstein’s memoir and the novel fades away into nothingness leaving only the parallel with Socrates and Plato who also succumbed to the poisons of their age.

I think only someone of Bellow’s stature would attempt a book like this, but stature notwithstanding, in not sticking to the rudimentary structure of a novel, it fails to hold. The final image of a weakened Chick day-dreaming of his erstwhile colleague in full flight left me wondering whether Ravelstein and Chick and their two incomplete story segments were like the severed human looking eternally for his other half, ostensibly the subject of Ravelstein’s bestseller, which we also did not get a chance to sample.
(less)

like 1 like · see review

Dec 11, 2010 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anybody, but especially anyone interested in the classics, philosophy, or academics in general

"Ravelstein" revolves around the friendship of Abe Ravelstein, a teacher and philosopher at a well-known Midwestern university, and Chick, a writer who narrates the novel. Ravelstein is a towering intellectual figure who takes pride in influencing the movers and shakers of the world. He enjoys the finest of everything and consequently spends his life living well beyond his means. At one point Chick suggests to Ravelstein that he (Ravelstein) should write a book about his ideas about the ideas th...more "Ravelstein" revolves around the friendship of Abe Ravelstein, a teacher and philosopher at a well-known Midwestern university, and Chick, a writer who narrates the novel. Ravelstein is a towering intellectual figure who takes pride in influencing the movers and shakers of the world. He enjoys the finest of everything and consequently spends his life living well beyond his means. At one point Chick suggests to Ravelstein that he (Ravelstein) should write a book about his ideas about the ideas that enliven, or destroy, the human race. Surprisingly, Ravelstein does, and becomes a roaring success and a millionaire. In return, Ravelstein requests that Chick write Ravelstein's memoir after he has died, as Ravelstein is gradually succumbing to AIDS. During the course of the book the two travel to Paris and celebrate their friendship by long discussions of love, history, philosophy, mortality, "the Jewish question," and friends old and new. Things take a more serious turn as Ravelstein dies and Chick himself nearly does. Overall it is a affectionate, humorous, sometimes bleak ode to friendship and life.

This was one of those books that grabbed me on the first page and did not let go. I found myself excited for my lunch breaks at work and to quiet evenings at home so I could get back to it. I'm not sure what I expected. I think because Saul Bellow is one of those authors whom I studied in college and really enjoyed, I expected this to be more, I don't know, intellectually intimidating or something. For some reason I thought it would be a difficult read. This was not the case at all - it was a delicious read. Bellow's style of writing is accessible and clear, and his way of telling this story makes clear his real feelings about the subject. Going into the book I had no idea it was a roman a clef (a novel describing real life behind a thin veil of fiction) based on the real life friendship of Saul Bellow and Allan Bloom, a philosopher and classicist who taught alongside Bellow at the University of Chicago.

Regardless, this is a book I'd recommend to anybody even if you've never read Bellow before. It will entertain you, possibly make you laugh, and almost certainly get you thinking about subjects you wouldn't normally contemplate. I found myself downloading an electronic copy of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" after reading "Ravelstein."
(less)

like · see review

Sep 01, 2010 Laura Harmon rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's hard to say how I feel about this book, in part because it is so caught up in the University of Chicago scene, and having gone there, it's hard to say how I feel about that too. There were parts of this book that I loved only because I identified with them on a personal level (like describing the parakeet colonies in Hyde Park). But the whole focus of the book, to give a portrait of Bloom's personality as a superstar professor, left me kind of turned off. I've had experience with professors...more

like · see review

Nov 27, 2011 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jeff by: Jane Alice

Shelves: 2011

Simplistic plot(less) summary?! Quasi-academic/writer Chick is entrusted / obliged to write a memoir of his friend Abe Ravelstein, a political philosopher with a late-in-life blockbuster of a bestselling book. Following Ravelstein's advice, Chick creates the memoir in what Ravelstein calls Chick's "after-supper-reminiscence manner," as if Chick has "had a few glasses of wine" and is feeling "laid back and making remarks." Throughout, Chick's voice and personality spar with Ravelstein's celebrity

...more

like · see review

Dec 09, 2008 Rich rated it 2 of 5 stars

A sadly mediocre book. Bellow, at times, is on the verge of doing or saying something important, but seems to always step past those opportunities.

The book is a fictionalized memoir of Bellow's friend Allan Bloom, who is portrayed in this book as the fictional professor Ravelstein. The most redeeming feature of the book is that it juxtaposes Bloom's criticism of American culture with the love and passion for trivial things, such as designer clothing and stereo equipment. Ravelstein comes across...more

like · see review

Mar 28, 2012 Danae rated it 5 of 5 stars

Ravelstein lives his life in academia but fulfills it through the progeny he has set out on the world stage. He is lusty, opinionated, irreverent. When his old pal Chick encourages him to write about his philosophy, the book becomes an unlikely best seller and is quoted by academics and politicians alike. For a while, Ravelstein's life gets fast tracked until personal tragedy catches up.
Bellow wrote this roman a clef in honor of his late friend and colleague, Alan Bloom. A tender read of a belov...more

like · see review

Jun 08, 2010 Herzog rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary

Saul Bellow is among my favorite novelists (see nom de plume). I eagerly anticipated Ravelstein and read it when it first came out 10 years ago. I just finished rereading it and came away disappointed. I agree that the best parts of the book are Chick's descriptions of Ravelstein and his mannerisms. The other characters in the book mostly make cameo appearances with a few exceptions like Vela. I thought that the final 25% of the book was especially week dealing with Chick's illness in the Caribb...more

like · see review

Sep 20, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Ravelstein is Saul Bellow’s last novel published in 2000, when he was 85. It has a certain affinity with Philip Roth’s Everyman in that it is preoccupied with old age, sex, and death. The narrator comes across a cranky and cantankerous using outdated slang and descriptions of modern life. Ravelstein is an undisguised Allan Bloom, who comes off as a pompous blow hard. All in all, I found it a bit disappointing since it doesn’t have the vigor of earlier work like Augie March nor the poetry and pat...more

like · see review

Dec 07, 2012 Alan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've read all of Bellow, the best American novelist during my lifetime, though Updike became, in his last books, a close second--and a better reviewer.
I do not say this simply because Bellow's best friend at the U MN was my Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger: a charming photo of them on a sofa smoking and laughing, with their wives framing it, was printed in Rolling Stone in the 50s. Go to Facebook, Jim Jam, to see the photo. (In the pic I think Leonard was just cracking one of his myriad jokes, probab...more

like · see review

Dec 28, 2012 Διόνυσος Ψευδάνωρ rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own-mine, lit-contemporary, straussian

Saul Bellow's Ravelstein is a colorful portrait of his friend, the late Allan Bloom, one of the most prominent students of Leo Strauss. My interest in Bellow's novel was generated by my interest in the so-called Straussian "school," but I knew very little about Ravelstein prior to actually sitting down to read it. In the end, I was surprised to learn about Allan Bloom's insanely sumptuous private life, one that extended even to the time prior to the financial windfall that accompanied the succes...more Saul Bellow's Ravelstein is a colorful portrait of his friend, the late Allan Bloom, one of the most prominent students of Leo Strauss. My interest in Bellow's novel was generated by my interest in the so-called Straussian "school," but I knew very little about Ravelstein prior to actually sitting down to read it. In the end, I was surprised to learn about Allan Bloom's insanely sumptuous private life, one that extended even to the time prior to the financial windfall that accompanied the success of The Closing of the American Mind, the impetus behind which "Chick" (presumably Bellow himself) takes significant credit for. A professor of philosophy who needs Armani suits was a strange disappointment for me. Another strange disappointment for me was that, though I feel compelled to distance Bloom's private life from his intellectual one—the latter only being fairly judged without unnecessary recourse to the former—this book offers very few insights into Bloom's intellectual life (and those few are only of the most general, even trivial kind), a fact which the narrator openly confesses to being unfit to convey. My final evaluation of Bloom, after having read this book, is of a figure with genuinely tragic features, especially during the waning weeks of his life that this novel focuses on. A separate disappointment of the book—in contrast to the few expectations I had developed about the book prior to reading it—was the surprising amount of space devoted not to Ravelstein, not to Bloom, but to the narrator, to Bellow. Nevertheless, the novel is well-written and frequently engaging, despite my unfair expectations being unfulfilled. Bloom, whom I've always viewed as something of an intellectual giant from the books of his that I've read, is transformed by Bellow into someone almost petty, or even shallow, though I expect that Bellow's intent was perhaps just the opposite. My final judgment of Bloom, should I ever come to one, will be self-consciously based primarily on the books he wrote himself. (less)

like · see review

Mar 13, 2009 Ignacio rated it 3 of 5 stars

Es lo primero que leo del autor y al parecer no es su novela más popular, pero sí la última. Suele ocurrir que buenos autores se relajen una vez que se han consagrado como tales, dándose el lujo de escribir lo que quieren y cómo quieren. Tendré en cuenta que el Nobel de literatura lo recibió en 1976 y esta novela la publicó el año 2000, cinco años antes de su muerte.
No está muy rigurosamente bien escrito, pero da la impresión de mucha honestidad. Quizás se debe a que el narrador protagonista es...more

like · see review

Jan 18, 2009 Helen rated it 4 of 5 stars

It was difficult to decipher this book. In fact, it took me a lot of effort to work through it.
Abe Ravelstein (Allan Bloom) was a fascinating character. He delved in his paradoxes, and it could have been really easy to dislike him if Bellow did not represent the amazing amount of humanity Ravelstein had.
He criticized the way the modern world was going and yet he loved gossip and was an avid-consumer on the most expensive of products.
He was highly opinionated and had a huge dislike for nature a...more

like · see review

Sep 04, 2011 Ronald Wise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A story of the relationship between the successful college professor Abe Ravelstein and his close friend Chick. Many interesting references to philosophers and other thinkers throughout history. Through tangential research of my own, I learned that the distinction between biography and fiction are blurry with this book. Some reviewers have speculated that this story is a veiled account of Bellow's relationship with his late friend Allan Bloom at the University of Chicago.

like · see review

Oct 30, 2007 Doc Opp rated it 2 of 5 stars

People who know me are aware of my proclivity for random tangents in the middle of conversations. But even I am able to keep on point better than Bellow, who's stream of consciousness meandering left me unsure what the plot of the book was even after finishing. If pressed, I'd say the book was a series of random anecdotes about a fictional character that don't follow any particular timeline or make any particular point. It was also quite repetitive, the same stories were told over and over, and...more

like 1 like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 75 76 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
What Saul Bellow book should I read?	8	30	Aug 29, 2012 06:30pm

combine
Other Editions (29)

More editions...

Genres

Literature

12 users

Novels

11 users

Contemporary

5 users

Literary Fiction

4 users

Literature > American

3 users

Book Club

3 users

Classics

2 users

Nobel Prize

2 users

Literature > Jewish

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

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)

More about Saul Bellow...

Books by Saul Bellow

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Ravelstein

3 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Ravelstein

“The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.
(Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)” — 8 people liked it

“A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.” — 8 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Ravelstein
avg rating	preview: Ravelstein Goodreads rating: 3.58 (1443 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324245.Ravelstein?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347612423l/324245.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324245.Ravelstein?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Ravelstein by Saul Bellow[/url]

Ravelstein

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website