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14th out of 114 books
—
30 voters
The Dean's December
by
Saul Bellow
Albert Corde, dean of a Chicago college, is unprepared for the violent response to his expose of city corruption. Accused of betraying his city, as well as being a racist, he journeys to Bucharest, where his mother-in-law lies dying, only to find corruption rife in the Communist capital. Switching back and forth between the two cities, The Dean's December represents Bellow...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
May 1st 1998
by Penguin Classics
(first published January 1st 1982)
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Il dicembre del professore/decano/giornalista Corde viaggia su due binari paralleli, uno verso Bucarest, l’altro verso Chicago. Treni che non si incontrano mai, ma che effettuano le medesime fermate: l’incontro con la morte, la corruzione, il desiderio di sublimazione tramite la poesia, la necessità di ritornare alla verità vera, svegliandosi da quell’anestesia indottaci, come diceva Mcluhan, dai media con il loro ago ipodermico.
È un dicembre di continue tensioni: tra le sozzure di una Chicago c...more
È un dicembre di continue tensioni: tra le sozzure di una Chicago c...more
Aug 11, 2010
Tyler
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone
Recommended to Tyler by:
Author's Reputation
Bellow’s reputation as a remarkable prose stylist shows here in the way he uses detail to foreshadow. The heightened use of contrast, too, sets the book apart from his other novels; the story itself follows the same template used for Bellow's other novels – the lives of the urban, upper class and educated. What's different this time is a striking aspect of the protagonist here: an ability to express the utter devastation of life in the American underclass. The unflinching exploration of class in...more
Now I understand why teachers dissuade overuse of parenthetical notes.
I have come to really dislike the protagonist -- I cannot think of another text that has ever affected me in that way --, as well as Bellow's overuse of the words "feminine," "female," and "lady" to describe anything a woman does. "Female generosity" on page 143, "feminine poise" on page 107, "lady phrases" on 92, "feminized tobacco flavor" on page 90, "female bittersweet fragrance" on page 87, "feminine claims" and "broad fe...more
I have come to really dislike the protagonist -- I cannot think of another text that has ever affected me in that way --, as well as Bellow's overuse of the words "feminine," "female," and "lady" to describe anything a woman does. "Female generosity" on page 143, "feminine poise" on page 107, "lady phrases" on 92, "feminized tobacco flavor" on page 90, "female bittersweet fragrance" on page 87, "feminine claims" and "broad fe...more
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This is my favourite novel by Bellow.
I've read it while I was at the university instead of studying to pass brilliantly one of the fundamental exams on semiotic we had.
I think I've done a good choice.
Bellow abandons Chicago and the US for a while in The Dean's December making a vivid and powerful portrait of Romania during the most difficult years of its isolation behind the Iron Curtain. It doesn't seem a description which aims to criticize or demonize communism. This novel looks like an object...more
I've read it while I was at the university instead of studying to pass brilliantly one of the fundamental exams on semiotic we had.
I think I've done a good choice.
Bellow abandons Chicago and the US for a while in The Dean's December making a vivid and powerful portrait of Romania during the most difficult years of its isolation behind the Iron Curtain. It doesn't seem a description which aims to criticize or demonize communism. This novel looks like an object...more
This is the story of Albert Corde, a college dean whose Roumanian astronomer wife, Minna, defected to the West with the encouragement and help of her intellectual mother, Dr. Valeria Raresh. Now Dr. Raresh has suffered a stroke, and the Cordes are in Bucharest where the secret police and a bitter bureaucracy is denying them the right to visit to her in the hospital. The depictions of these intellectual women are sublime, especially coming from an author who neglected his female characters in the...more
This is the most powerful of Bellow's novels I've read to date. An aging journalist turned college dean, caught up in situations which emphasize the personal ramifications of the social political storms raging at home and the unforgiving communist bureaucracy of his wife's homeland of Rumania. Haunted by hostile politically correct reactions to his recent freelance articles, Albert Corde maintains a caring and moral course while questioning his own motivations. A chance encounter with a childhoo...more
The Dean's December is set back in the early '80's when (I guess - need to check the dates) Communist control in Eastern Europe was still in place. The book centers on a middle aged, intellectual Dean who accompanies his wife to Bucharest to be with her mother for her final days of life. The book is mostly conversations and thoughts that the Dean has over the month of December - with the narrative pivoting between events in Bucharest and some chaos that the Dean has left behind in his native Chi...more
I read and enjoyed this novel after reading Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak, which I preferred. However, The Dean's December was definitely worth reading. Not surprisingly, the novel basically covers a December in the life of an unaccomplished Chicago college dean. It involves the dean's life in Chicago and also a trip he and his wife took to Rumania for the last days of his wife's mother. The Dean's December concerns, among other things, ruminations on death, partnership, and academia. It invol...more
Opening - CORDE, WHO LED THE LIFE of an executive in America - wasn't a college dean a kind of executive? - found himself six or seven thousand miles from his base, in Bucharest, in winter, shut up in an old-fashioned apartment.
I have been assiduously sipping some of this after meals as a strong stomach is needed. Bellow seems to have loaded up a whole magazine of punctuation into his sawn off iQuill and peppered the text. It is everywhere, and doing damage to the flow of the story.
An interesti...more
I have been assiduously sipping some of this after meals as a strong stomach is needed. Bellow seems to have loaded up a whole magazine of punctuation into his sawn off iQuill and peppered the text. It is everywhere, and doing damage to the flow of the story.
An interesti...more
1 like · like · see review
Albert Corde is not exactly a self-made man; he comes from a wealthy Chicago family - as his old friend, Dewey Spangler, couldn't fail to notice, Corde's father drove a Packard. But even if Corde isn't a self-made man, he did make himself into a world-reknowned journalist. And then he unmade himself. Deciding he'd had enough of current events, he returned to Chicago and took on a position as a professor, and later Dean of Students, at a local university. He married a brilliant astronomer and set...more
Sep 11, 2011
Laurent Szklarz
added it
i ve read several of the author's books and i ve kept a fond memory of them. everything i cant say about this one. i ve read this book is the first one after he got the nobel prize. pity. he should have sticked to what he got the nobel for. this book is way too long, to messy, gets all over the places and overall boring and not really interesting
description of romania behind the iron curtain: good. creepy analysis of urban chicago in the 70s: bad. plus the dean is so unloveable.
Printre alte lucruri, un nene care gandeste prea mult face o paralela extrem de subiectiva intre Bucurestiul si Chicago-ul anilor 70. Concluzia: si estul, si vestul, si in general cam toata planeta se cam duc dracului.
A little dry but a quick read; if you're a fan of Bellow and have 3 hours to kill, I'd check it out.
This was the second Saul Bellow book I read. I don't remember much about it, which is probably a bad sign.
This is the weakest of Bellow's novels that I have read. It really isn't a novel at all. The Dean is called in about the criminal death of one of his students. The book is more of a dialog or extended reflection than a story.
Mar 20, 2008
deLille
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
People looking for a quiet, introspective book
Recommended to deLille by:
I forgot his name!
Shelves:
political
I first started trying to read this book in 1983 when a guy I was dating recommended it to me. I read the first chapter or two -- and fell fast asleep. This book sat on my shelf for the next twenty-five years, and I finally picked it up over Christmas break. Still a slow... slow... slow... paced book, but I think that is the point. The author did a good job at capturing the stifling, restrictive, oppressive mood of what the Dean was enduring, and the feeling of being trapped.
I did like this book, but I think I preferred "The Victim." This one just didn't pull me in as much, didn't grab my interest in the same way. I'm not sure why. The characters were good. The storyline was well put together and the way that the two main lines are interwoven was masterfully done. I got a bit sick of the pedantic talk from time to time, but it was in keeping with the character. Regardless, I just didn't get as into it as I hoped I would.
I think this is the first book I have given less than three stars to. Oh, Saul Bellow is so smart, look how smart he is! Sympathize with his alter ego, a totally unsympathetic character! Life is so hard when your mother in law is dying in Communist Romania! Life is so hard when you've stirred up a load of trouble in Chicago! It's especially hard when you hate Chicago, which I think Bellow, who grew up there, did when he wrote this book. I'm not a fan.
Saul Bellow is a bad-a$$ writer precisely because he can take a storyline a little done by new millennium standards and make it soo very amazingly readable. I don't think I liked either the storyline or the characters and yet I had to respect the writer while reading it. His way of describing and explaining people, their nuances, and the such.
The characters are real and the entire story very believable. Bravo!
The characters are real and the entire story very believable. Bravo!
Possibly the only writer I dislike more than Ian McEwan
I still don't know if I like Saul Bellow or not, but I read him anyway because I like identifying with characters. This one is about a guy from Chicago whose wife is Romanian. I'm from Chicago and my girlfriend is Slovenian. So that's pretty much why I liked this book. And no, Slovenia is not where they made "Hostel", that was Slovakia. And it's not where they filmed "Borat" either, that was actually Romania.
I'm sad to say that I didn't enjoy this book. Saul Bellow is one of my favorite authors but I was very disappointed how the book progressed (it was very boring with no "oomph" like in his books Herzog and The Adventures of Augie March). I am looking forward to reading Henderson the Rain King in the near future though.
Saul is an excellent writer and approaches many sensitive subjects in this novel. I was often unsure where he was going regarding race relations, but upon finishing decided it was a reflection of the main character's real confusion. I think the novel still pertains to many urban realities that people face today.
I may have liked this more had I not read it on the heels of Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm. After Algren, this book was very old fashioned and slow. I found the character of Albert Corde unlikable and I got to a point where I just didn't care what happened to him.
1 like · like · see review
Sep 23, 2008
Paul Grimsley
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
People wanting to get into Bellow, people wanting to learn how to write lean effective prose
Shelves:
classics
This is gentle and somewhat sedate but every thing that happens in it resonates -- I suppose some people must play a billion notes to enthrall you and some can play a few carefully placed harmonies and seduce you with their fictional worlds.
Apr 01, 2008
Enigel
added it
It would be unfair to give it a rating since all I remember about it is that I've read it, which probably means it didn't impress me much one way or the other. I do remember that my country was mentioned...
i can't really remember - but i thought the desciptions of being (away from home in chicago) in eastern europe were pretty cool. i did not have much sympathy for the main guy, though.
liking it; learning about the condition of being an 'american', how it is to be foreign, and cold winters in Rumania
not my favorite work by bellow, but great nonetheless. i'm in awe of this man's writing.
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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
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“For God's sake,' the dog is saying, 'open the universe a little more!”
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“There’s the big advantage of backwardness. By the time the latest ideas reach Chicago, they’re worn thin and easy to see through. You don’t have to bother with them and it saves lots of trouble.”
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