The Quick and Pithy of MY READING MIND...

Mr Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow

Bellow’s oeuvre has been a show of simmering rage just below a character’s surface. Perhaps a “personal recognition” of his own self? If not, then the observation of people in that world called America in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s … er, was there not a time when people weren’t furious at something or someone or some group? Anyway, this is Artur Sammler, whose peculiarity is having escaped the Holocaust (he won’t use survive, b/c “What did I survive?” – yes, good point).

I like Sammler. He should be appreciated by the reader, because he’s reasonable, if opinionated; caustic, if thoughtful. Bellow lets many of the others in the story play the fool we all know of our time. Zany characters they are: every one of them is bent, almost nuts. Sammler is sanity personified among such kind: the greedy, the depraved, the losers of intellectual ability.

Sound familiar?



-- Mark Beyer
author: “Max, the blind guy” and three other novels
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