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The Adventures of Augie March

Saul Bellow,

Christopher Hitchens (Introduction)

3.84 · Rating details · 16,690 ratings · 1,039 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

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Paperback, 586 pages

Published October 3rd 2006 by Penguin Classics (first published September 18th 1953)

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Apr 29, 2019 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing

”I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber 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 a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”

When I worked in a bookstore in Phoenix, there was this judge who frequently ...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews-5-stars, read-2013, reviews, bellow

Original Review:

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 concern me so muc ...more

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Feb 11, 2015 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: coming-of-age, paris, mexico, illinois, 1001-books, france, chicago

Who am I to deny recognition of what others call “the Great American Novel”? Augie is launched on the world like a modern day Huckleberry Finn crossed with Tom Jones. But Augie’s arc does not quite have their level of comic edge, the moral quandaries of Huck or pursuit of women like Tom. Scrambling like a chameleon from one odd job or scheme to another he passes from one mentor to another, then breaks free but never quite grows up. He was a great inspiration for me, always aspiring to better him ...more

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Sep 27, 2008 Jimmy rated it liked it · 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 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. ...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I wonder how picaresque a life of any individual may look from the outside.
A little man in a big world, all alone and lost in a crowd – how to find one’s walk of life and what way to choose?

Friends, human pals, men and brethren, there is no brief, digest, or shorthand way to say where it leads. Crusoe, alone with nature, under heaven, had a busy, complicated time of it with the unhuman itself, and I am in a crowd that yields results with much more difficulty and reluctance and am part of it mys

...more

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Jul 30, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-20th-c, novels, fiction, nobel-lit

This book seems to be an underrated classic. From its opening lines, it takes along the heady projectory of Augie March in Chicago and elsewhere - not quite a Horatio Alger but perhaps a less burlesque Ignatius J Reilly whose author must have had Bellow's book in mind when he wrote a Confederacy of Dunces. Augie is a fantastic Everyman who draws us in to his attempts at finding himself. I found particularly that the first climax in Mexico was very moving. The voice that Bellow found here is rich ...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: prose-prose-prose, reviewed, 1-read-on-hand, r-goodreads, 4-star, antidote-think-twice-all, antidote-think-twice-read, person-of-everything, nobel-prize-people, r-2013

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've been 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. ...more

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Dec 12, 2016 Tony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian, u-s-lit

I am an American, Altoona born--not Chicago, but just as somber. At an impressionable age I waited until class was over, then walked up, Bellow's Seize the Day in hand, and asked Professor Mitchell for a moment of his time; Mr. Mitchell, with his wispy hair and pale skin, always the same blue suit, a librarian of a man, conceived before acid-free paper. I said, "The names, the names in this novel; every one is the name of a theorist in psychology. Surely that means something!" And Mr. Mitchell ...more

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Nov 17, 2016 Edward rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, nobel-winners, 2016

I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber 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 a not so innocent.

What an opening sentence, which manages to prefigure the entire novel - the frenetic energy of it, diverting this way and that, moving enigmatically from one idea to the next by an inscrutable trajectory. It is clear that Augie will make the record in his own way, and from the moment of introduction he proceeds to submerge the unprepared reader in a deluge of detail, a life story related as a life is lived: one event following the one before, this one followed then by another, then the next, relentlessly and with unceasing energy, the often banal minutiae of accumulated friends, lovers, enemies, successes, failures, hopes and anguishes - some are pivotal in Augie's life, but many simply pass through, never to be seen again, leaving barely a trace. The process is haphazard and tedious, relying solely on yet driven inexorably by the exuberance (an adjective overused in describing this book, but one that is nonetheless apt) and brilliance of the writing.

This is the impression formed within the first one hundred pages, and yet the novel persists exactly in this vein for a further four hundred or more. However at some point what has felt like a barrage begins to pass through you in the same way that life passes through you, simply as a series of occurrences, experienced in succession, with one standing at the focus trying to make sense of it all. A life has no narrative arc; no clear culmination: when a story ends, life goes on and perhaps another story will begin.

The Adventures of Augie March is grounded in a specific time and place that has been lost to history, and so much of the immediacy and currency of this novel has been correspondingly diminished. And yet the experience of Augie March somehow manages to transcend the somber Chicago of the depression and stand for something universal - it is the story of finding oneself, of trying to become, and of never really knowing if you got there, or if you ever will. ...more

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Jul 03, 2015 Paul Bryant added it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned, novels

I went to Italy once. Siena. The cathedral. Huh. 14th century popes with a licorish allsort fetish and way too much money. Okay, it was, you know, impressive. You could tell those popes wanted to be Alexander McQueen and they were all 6 centuries too early.

What, I hear you cry, does this have to do with Augie March, the mid 20th century Chicago likely lad? Only that I tiptoed out of the book and the cathedral with the same sour feeling. Sour and sore. I was beat. It was all too much. It was ove I went to Italy once. Siena. The cathedral. Huh. 14th century popes with a licorish allsort fetish and way too much money. Okay, it was, you know, impressive. You could tell those popes wanted to be Alexander McQueen and they were all 6 centuries too early.

What, I hear you cry, does this have to do with Augie March, the mid 20th century Chicago likely lad? Only that I tiptoed out of the book and the cathedral with the same sour feeling. Sour and sore. I was beat. It was all too much. It was overpowering. I was done in, ears ringing. There was no volume control on either. They both need to be diluted. Well, for my weak taste, anyhow. All a bit much. Shouty. In your face. Neither were ever introduced to the idea of subtlety. Here’s a thing. I found an ebook of Augie March on youtube. They do that. I’da thought they’da got sued but no. I gave it a whirl then I gave it up. But at least I knew what the problem was.

Augie March is of course quite brilliant, but it was a kind of brilliance which felt like force-feeding the pore old reader. Bellow eyes up his readers like French farmers eye up the geese they’re going to get the foix gras out of. Okay, here we go, cram cram cram. The vocabulary is up in the higher nineties. Every last possible detail about everything in Augie’s life goes right down there on the page. It was like being trapped on an endless train journey with a classic bore who doesn’t know what details to leave out of a story and also doesn’t know what the point of his story is. But the bore is clearly some kind of borderline genius. On and on. And of course he assumes that everything about his life is interesting to everyone. Your classic bore behaviour. And it’s delivered in this first person monotone, the register never changes. Then this, then that. What was in the underwear drawer. What was on the toast.

Now, we have had these infinite-detail impressive big novels-of-life-itself before. From my swag bag of novels I would pull out Main Street by Sinclair Lewis and What I Lived For by Joyce Carol Oates and A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul, not to mention Richard Price’s gargantuan inch-by-inch explorations of a handful of urban days and nights in his three huge police procedurals – I mean, Ulysses itself is one of these every-tiny-thing is-going-in masterblasters. I mention ones that I love. So you see I was very disappointed to find that although it’s quite clear this book is a masterpiece it just wasn’t …

for instance, young Augie goes to work as a general dogsbody for a disabled geezer called Einhorn, who is yeah a curious enough character & he & his dubious family take over Augie’s waking hours so the whole book then becomes about them and it just gets real dull real quick and stays dull too. This Einhorn is kind of interesting but not so we want to know the arse-end of every aspect of the five universes of Einhornity, which is what we get.

And yet – there are unspeakably great paragraphs here and there. Great great sentences that belong up on some wall.

But I’m making a mental note to try this one again in my next life.

Five star book, one star reader, therefore no rating
...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it, america-fuck-yeah, 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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Nov 21, 2014 E. G. rated it really liked it

Shelves: north-america, own, fiction, 4-star

Introduction: The Great American Augie, by Christopher Hitchens

--The Adventures of Augie March

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Jul 06, 2015 Steven Godin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, america-canada

An adventurous all-american masterpiece of epic proportions?...well at least that's what I had hoped for with five stars flashing before my eyes before even reading the first page!, so where did it all go wrong?, predominantly because it tries to hard to be many different things at once with even the smallest interactions between characters broken up or halted to reflect on the human predicament, relationships or moments from the past, which on the whole I don't have a problem with from time to An adventurous all-american masterpiece of epic proportions?...well at least that's what I had hoped for with five stars flashing before my eyes before even reading the first page!, so where did it all go wrong?, predominantly because it tries to hard to be many different things at once with even the smallest interactions between characters broken up or halted to reflect on the human predicament, relationships or moments from the past, which on the whole I don't have a problem with from time to time but at over five hundred pages this would continue throughout and become tedious leaving it about 100 pages too long, affecting any story development leading to an overall frustrating novel that did not flow and was hard work to complete. Of course there is a flip side to this as the level of ambition, depth and quality of writing has to be admired, and it was, with the historical aspect of the depression in a major city being heartfelt and believable during the early stages, this I think was Bellow's great skill in setting the scene for what was to follow.

So then Augie March a rather unfortunate young fellow growing up in Chicago during the great depression who like many other people at this time struggled and this results in him having to borrow, steal, cheat, and charm his way in life while still in education, taking on a number of rather obscure and lousy jobs to support his poor family who some are of ill health including his simple brother George and Grandma, he would get to met a vast number of characters from all different backgrounds and many become fond of him. But this kid has a determination and resilience that slowly starts to show as his reputation grows the occupations improve and along with his other brother Simon the money flows more frequently. Then the attraction to the opposite sex starts to takes hold with the odd fling here and there, but it's when spending time away with an employer that he truly falls in love with one of two sisters, the problem being it's the other sister Thea who falls for Augie and they would some time later met up and become a couple. Then a trip to Mexico to hunt lizard with a trained Eagle called Caligula would slowly signal the end end of another chapter in his life and move on to pastures new in this grand odyssey of a soul searching to find his place in the world.

In terms of scope it's huge and like I said this is both good and troublesome with a great outline for a story but executed in the wrong way, this could have been up there with the likes of 'Lonesome dove' or 'East of Eden' but just doesn't have the lasting power to keep you interested and a book of this scale simply needs that. Although it had some great moments and was very well written my disappointment is difficult to hide. Still I am glad to have got through it and may have appreciated this more if read later in life. ...more

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Sep 07, 2019 Jim rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian-authors, fiction, 1001-bymrbyd

Well, this set my reading back a couple of months. Every once in a while I have to tackle something like this to remind myself why I like to stick to non-fiction just as much as possible. But this one was on the prestigious list of the 1001 books you must read before you d-i-e, so I thought I would tackle it.

I hated it. I feel guilty saying that, and maybe a little bit stupid since so many have rated it so highly. Bellow is a good writer when he's not baffling you with some clumsy sentence struc ...more

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Feb 11, 2008 julieta rated it it was amazing

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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Mar 11, 2011 Drew rated it really liked it

Shelves: time-magazine-top-100, national-book-award, modern-library-top-100, nobelles-lettres

Looks like I'll have to change my final opinion of Saul Bellow, the same way I did with Cormac McCarthy. I read Henderson the Rain King and Dangling Man last year, and couldn't stand either of them. They were both a chore, even though Dangling Man was only 150 or so pages. Then I read Ravelstein, and although it was more enjoyable, it didn't seem likely to stick with me. I knew I had to give him one more shot at least, since everyone seems to like him so much, and The Adventures of Augie March s ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Jason Pettus rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classic, personal-favorite, late-modernism, memoir, immigrants, chicago, character-heavy

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

It's said by some that Chicago might have the most vibrant literary community in the entire United States right now; and if that's indeed true, it'd be due in part to the remarkably popular "One Book One Chicago" (OBOC) program run by the Chicago Public Library (CPL), one of the many things that makes it s ...more

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Oct 10, 2017 robin friedman rated it it was amazing

Augie March

"I am an American, Chicago-born, that somber city ...and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted, sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles."

This, the opening paragraph of Bellow's large, sprawling, and exuberant n Augie March

"I am an American, Chicago-born, that somber city ...and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted, sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles."

This, the opening paragraph of Bellow's large, sprawling, and exuberant novel, "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953) announces its themes at the outset. We have the narrator's, Augie March's, own voice, both pugnacious and reflective. First and foremost, Augie March is "an American". His story will be a reflection on the American experience, especially as it involves large cities and the Chicago where Augie March grew up. Augie, looking ahead to the story he is about to tell, describes himself as free-wheeling, and learning about things as his life impulsively proceeds. Augie is also a lover of books and learning, as witnessed by his allusion to the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who taught that "a man's character is his fate." Augie will learn and expand upon this lesson as he goes along and also will learn about many other books and ideas.

Augie's story is centered in Chicago. It begins just before the Depression, when Augie is a young boy and continues through WW II and its aftermath in the 1940's when Augie is married and living as a black marketeer in Paris, wondering where life will take him next. In between, Augie tells a long yarn full of adventure, turns and twists, difficulties, and women. Augie is also a highly reflective individual, and the boisterousness of his story is accompanied by thoughts on the course of his life and its significance.

Augie has two brothers, the ambitious and successful older brother Simon and the feeble-minded George. Augie's father abandoned the family at an early age. Augie and his brothers are raised by "Grandma Lausch" who in fact is unrelated to him and by his quiet and unassuming mother. Simon is intelligent and alive to the main chance. He graduates first in his high school, marries well, and becomes a highly successful entrepreneur.

Augie's life takes a different course and is harder to define. He partly goes where life takes him and he partly makes his own opportunities. As an adolescent he becomes involved with an entrepreneurial swindler named Einhorn who becomes the first of Augie's many protectors. He takes up with a rich family in Evanston, Ill, who offer him security and who wish to adopt him. But Augie goes his own way. He has many jobs, some honest, some not, reads voraciously even though he never graduates from college, has numerous love affairs, serious, and casual, and somehow works himself through a life of ups and downs. He becomes a labor organizer, travels to Mexico training an eagle with an eccentric woman whom he loves, enlists in the Merchant Marine, where he spends days on the open sea with a crazy mate before he is rescued, and ultimately marries Stella, an actress and one of the many women from his past. With his marriage to Stella, Augie finds he learns the meaning of love, for all his shortcomings and those of his wife.

Augie learns to see himself as an individual, neither determined by his circumstances nor fully independent of them. He becomes a life-long thinker who learns from books as well as from his own experience. He tries to learn to shape himself, to the extent he can, and to take his experiences and be happy. His story is a massive commentary on being an American and on the meaning of Heraclitus's dictum that "character is fate", the themes announced as the book begins. The book rejects the themes of alienation and of being an outsider that were and remain a feature of American intellectual life and that were prominent in Bellow's first novel, "Dangling Man." Alienation gives way to activity, a commitment to the promise and value of American life, and a sense that literature, philosophy, and learning can help to better the human condition.

"The Adventures of Augie March" was the first of three of Bellow's novels that received the National Book Award. It is a rewarding but difficult read that pulls in many directions, street-wise tough and intellectually demanding, simultaneously. Bellow captures the voice of the streets of Jewish Chicago, with long, involuted sentences, passion, humor, and swagger. The book is long and diffuse and at times it flags. In its robust and energetic portrayal of a person, a city, and a nation, and in its devotion to literature and thought, "Augie March" remains an inspiring story.

Robin Friedman ...more

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Apr 22, 2011 Adam Floridia rated it really liked it

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 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).

...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Mateo rated it liked 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, various, precis 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 Yorker magazines 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 simply 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.
...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, aere-perennius, 100-modern-library

I knew from the first couple paragraphs of this novel that it was fantastic, amazing, like a well-built Italian or German sports car. However, once Bellow jumps into Augie's flight to Mexico with Thea (where they try to to catch Mexican lizards with an wussy eagle) it was equivalent to discovering that the sports car you are driving actually has 6 gears. Anyway, this is one of those books where sentences seem likely to escape the gravity of English, the characters are as big as planets, and the ...more

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Dec 28, 2009 Ruthiella rated it it was ok

Shelves: 20th-cent-100-best

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

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Jan 14, 2021 Clif Hostetler added it

Shelves: novel

Augie March is a young Chicago man graduating from high school in the late 1920s and hustling a living through the 1930s depression. As his adventures continue through to the end of WWII he spends time in Mexico, in New York, in the Merchant Marine, in a raft in the Atlantic, and finally in Paris.

The life of Augie is incredibly varied moving from job to job, which is surprising considering that this is occurring during the time of the Great Depression. He also moves from relationship to relatio Augie March is a young Chicago man graduating from high school in the late 1920s and hustling a living through the 1930s depression. As his adventures continue through to the end of WWII he spends time in Mexico, in New York, in the Merchant Marine, in a raft in the Atlantic, and finally in Paris.

The life of Augie is incredibly varied moving from job to job, which is surprising considering that this is occurring during the time of the Great Depression. He also moves from relationship to relationship, both women and employers, many of whom are wealthy. And as if the wide varieties of jobs and relationships weren’t enough, he moves from place to place eventually going to Mexico and Paris.

Augie narrates the story in first person expanding on the descriptions of people and places in excruciating detail. Ironically he describes everybody but himself. What we come of understand about him comes through the events and people who have influence upon him. Augie informs the reader that this is his intent.

All the influences were lined up waiting for me. I was born, and there they were to form me, which is why I tell you more of them than of myself. (4.1)

An elderly boarder in his family’s home describes him as easy to manipulate, which the subsequent story confirms.

…you’re too easy to tickle … Promise you a joke, a laugh, a piece of candy, or a lick of ice-cream, and you’ll leave everything and run.” (3.8)

His success with young women and his ability to win the confidence of rich people—one couple offered to adopt him—indicate that he apparently is blessed with a combination of charisma and good looks. We certainly know he has an extensive vocabulary from the endless flow of words coming from the descriptions of his adventures filling up six hundred pages (22 hours of audio) with text.

Of course we know that these words are provided by the author Saul Bellow, and since he is also from Chicago and from the same approximate age as Augie, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the story is autobiographic. The writing skills on display in this book are impressive.

The story itself has no apparent arc of achievement other than the fact the Augie grows older, eventually gets married, and ends up in the export/import business in post-war Europe. But along the way the story reads much as a bumper-car joy ride leading in no particular direction. The end of the book has nothing that appears to be a conclusion. The book's publisher must have unexpectedly grabbed the manuscript away from the author saying, "No more words!"

_____________
The following is a copy of a short review of The Adventures of Augie March taken from PageADay's 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die calendar for Wednesday, October 28, 2020:

“I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber 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 a not so innocent.”

The title of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March evokes Huckleberry Finn, and the voice that tells it—like the one Mark Twain created for Huck—is alive with the energies of speech. From the outset, Augie March grabs our ear and yanks it exuberantly. Ever restless, Bellow’s irrepressible hero roams from Chicago to Mexico and on into postwar Europe—“Look at me, going everywhere!” He taunts himself—where he’s wheeling and dealing at story’s end, still searching “for the right thing to do, for a fate good enough.” It sounds like an American story in more ways that one. ...more

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Dec 21, 2020 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book reminded me of Dickens' "David Copperfield," a book I read for my English class back in high school in the Sixties. I remember we spent a lot of time discussing all the various characters, all richly described by Dickens, and all having their own particular eccentricities. Having just finished "The Adventures of Augie March" by Saul Bellow (1915-2005) and published in 1953, I felt that I had been inundated by a procession of characters, some of them strange, all of them richly describe ...more

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Aug 08, 2017 Czarny Pies rated it liked it

Shelves: american-literature, nobel-prize-winners

"The Adventures of Augie March" was once a great novel but its quality is eroding away. At the end of WWII, a wave of outstanding Jewish writers appeared in America. They included Herman Wouk, Leon Uris, Isaac Asimov, Ayn Rand, Joseph Heller, J. D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and finally Saul Bellow the winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for literature. These authors wrote about an America that was urban rather than rural and no longer Anglo-Protestant. Of the works they pr ...more

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May 31, 2012 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nobel-winners, favorites, the-great-american-novel

This is the American epic. In the lineage of The Odyssey and The Aeneid and Argonautica, Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is a modern struggle against, or for, fate. It is an paean of life's potential, of endurance. Augie's struggle is not to get ahead, but to take the helm of his fate, to direct it toward better waters, to live the way he wants, the way he feels is right for him, and the ways of life for other men be damned. He is often showered with opportunities, grande advantages which This is the American epic. In the lineage of The Odyssey and The Aeneid and Argonautica, Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is a modern struggle against, or for, fate. It is an paean of life's potential, of endurance. Augie's struggle is not to get ahead, but to take the helm of his fate, to direct it toward better waters, to live the way he wants, the way he feels is right for him, and the ways of life for other men be damned. He is often showered with opportunities, grande advantages which he shies away from and abandons. Though he wants his "better fate" he too feels ill-suited for those opportunities.

I had looked all my life for the right thing to do, for a fate good enough, that I had opposed people in what they wanted to make of me...

Unlike Odysseus, unlike other great men, Augie is not searching for a prize, but search for a path. He is constantly at the fabled fork in the road, and he must constantly say "this road, not this road" and whether it is the better road, none can say. The power and exuberance of life in The Adventures of Augie March is amazing, rivaling Whitman in sheer emotive power and poignancy. There is no linear plot, Augie is an American vagrant, a sort of itinerant philosopher, and his cast of strange characters and wily diversions is united by the persistence of his wild love of life, his determination and smiling face through disaster.

Augie's "fate" is not quite of the same flavor as the Greco-Roman recipe, it is a sort of trajectory rather than a woven web. Augie acknowledges his role in determining his fate, and in this his fate is "Determined" rather than "Pre-determined." Unlike his brother Simon, who pursues and achieves monetary wealth, social power, the ostensible "American dream" - Augie's "fate good enough" is something different, which levers more heavily on the abstract, the intangible. He veers from success, whether as conscious fear of the spotlight, or a shudder of moral conviction, and in many ways seems from the outside to be a failure, a flop. In the scheme of Augie's life the disasters outweigh the triumphs, but the story rings with the timbre of a life well-lived, a fate good enough. Disappointed in business and adventure and love, and seemingly the victor of nothing, Augie's equipoise in the face of Life is the great human victory.

You must take a chance on what you are. And you can't sit still. I know this double poser, that if you make a move you may lose, but if you sit still you may decay.

As an American people we are torn between these opposing forces: ambition and fear, comfort or potential success. There are many risks in life, and few in our lives are likely to rival Augie's ill-concluded iguana hunts in Mexico, with a donkey-hoof to the head - so take the risks! It is important to approach life with all it's possibilities, and so long as one maintains that open-view, one will never be trapped in a fatidic fall. In business, in love, in life: be reverent of knowledge, be strong in conviction, be right in your ambitions, and when you stray: return, and when you set down: don't sit too long. Maybe you lose one million times, but in life as in gymnastics, one must learn to fall.

And of course I had some restlessness to be taken up into something greater than myself. I could not shine the star of great individuality that by absorbed stoking, became a sun of the world over a throng to whom it glitters - whom it doesn't necessarily warm but only showers down a Plutarch radiance. Being necessary, yes, that would be fine and wonderful; but being Phoebus's boy? I couldn't even dream of it.

The allures of greatness, of success, of wealth and power, are revealed to be empty accomplishments which only stoke the fires of Macbethian ambition: an impotent head-hunt for the unnamed, the unimagined and undervalued. Money is transient, it passes, as life does, but it has no fate, it is slippery and ill-won and ill-distributed: it imparts no value. Power too is illusory, a self-delusion wrapped up in one's self-appreciation and imagined reputation. Power makes man an island: Prospero on the lonely island, defending his muck and taking revenge and enslaving his adoptive son, for the sake of maintaining his hocuspocus Power. Family, friends, love and attitude triumph. It is a success to view the world as it is, to love it for what it is, not to bend it, to paint it over with your illusions, sweep fears under rugs, and bolster up pride to disguise your insecurities. Success in life is not what you had hoped your life would look like, but what you life does look like. It is not re-making yourself, but discovering yourself in a world which tries always to mask you.

Look at me, going everywhere! Why, I am a sort of Columbus of those near-at-hand and believe you can come to them in this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every gaze. I may well be a flop at this line of endeavor. Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn't prove there was no America.

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Apr 09, 2010 K.D. Absolutely rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: 101 Books for Men; National Book Award, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 edition)

Shelves: guy-lit, picaresque, bildungsroman, 1001-non-core

The Adventures of Augie March (first published in 1953) is the 3rd novel of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature awardee, Saul Bellow. The year before that he also won the Pulitzer award for his 8th novel, Humbolt's Gift. He is the only writer who has won the National Book Award three times: The Adventures of Augie March (1954), Herzhog (1965) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1971).

Last year, I read Herzhog and I gave it a 4 star (I really liked it).

I spent 5 days reading this. It's an easy read but th The Adventures of Augie March (first published in 1953) is the 3rd novel of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Literature awardee, Saul Bellow. The year before that he also won the Pulitzer award for his 8th novel, Humbolt's Gift. He is the only writer who has won the National Book Award three times: The Adventures of Augie March (1954), Herzhog (1965) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1971).

Last year, I read Herzhog and I gave it a 4 star (I really liked it).

I spent 5 days reading this. It's an easy read but the plot is a bit confusing for me. There are too many characters and most of them are not fully developed. Most of them just come into the story without Mr. Bellow giving the proper introduction. I had to consult constantly consult Sparknotes and Wikipedia to assist me in understanding the character and catching up with the flow of the story.

It tells us the story of Augie March from the time that he was 12 y/o to adulthood. He grew up in a fatherless family with his mother, Rebecca, his elder brother Simon and his younger brother Georgie. Simon is the brightest among the three and George is the mentally handicapped. Augie is the middle average child. However, he does not exhibit the usual middle-child syndrome, i.e., he does not need to fight for his mother's attention because his mother has no time to give to her sons. The setting of the story was in the 30's primarily in Chicago (as there are also other settings later in the story such as Europe) during the Great Depression. Being fatherless, her mother worked hard to support her 3 sons. They even have a border, Grandma Lausch who first influenced the two young men on what life is all about: "Nobody asks you to love the whole world, only to be honest"; and "Respect is better than love"

The novel is described to be picaresque Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") which is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. As indicated by its name, this style of novel originated in Spain, where it was possibly influenced by Arabic literature (specifically the maqama genre, which also featured the episodic exploits of a rogue character), flourished in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and continues to influence modern literature (Source: Wiki). That's why Adventures of Augie March can be compared to Don Quixote and it is also said to be the modern Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The story is inspiring and I think plausible. There are many symbolisms (my favorite is Thea's eagle) that again shows the virtuosity of Mr. Bellow. It also proves that life is not a bowl of cherry; that we all need to strive for happiness and rise against all odds if we want to live a fulfilling rewarding life. As they say, at the end of our lives, it is not how far one has achieved but it is what one has gone through to be there. That is very true in Augie's case. All the hardships he encountered looking for a good job during the Great Depression and the loves he lost and gained.

Herzhog is a lot better with its well-developed characters and contained plot. Augie March, maybe because it is supposed to be the adventure of, has more characters and almost seemingly shapeless plot. That explains the lower rating by 1 star. ...more

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Dec 03, 2020 Mattia Ravasi added it

Video review

The Adventures of Mimi Villars, now that's what I wanted to read. ...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Ensiform rated it it was amazing

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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May 03, 2014 Chrissie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: downpour, classics, fiction, usa, france, mexico, 2014-read

ETA: When I wrote my review last night, I was terribly disappointed with the ending, the result being I didn’t want to write ANYTHING about the damn book. Yeah, I am an emotional person who gets involved in the books I read. There is much I didn’t but should have mentioned.

Bellow’s writing is descriptive, filled with details of how people and places look. The dialogs capture the people’s lifestyles very well. You understand who you are dealing with. I personally feel I looked at a family which i ETA: When I wrote my review last night, I was terribly disappointed with the ending, the result being I didn’t want to write ANYTHING about the damn book. Yeah, I am an emotional person who gets involved in the books I read. There is much I didn’t but should have mentioned.

Bellow’s writing is descriptive, filled with details of how people and places look. The dialogs capture the people’s lifestyles very well. You understand who you are dealing with. I personally feel I looked at a family which is not familiar to me. A loving family from the lower classes, but rough and coarse. To say it plainly – most of them are crooks and swindlers. What is interesting is that Augie does get an education and when he writes his story he has a vocabulary that is incongruous to the surroundings and the class of people he is describing, and this feels all wrong – until you realize that it is written later in his life. I knew before he did that it just was not going to work with him melting into the North Shore community of Chicago. I have lived in Chicago, and Bellow well portrays the different areas and their inhabitants.

There are several points of this novel that are in fact autobiographical. Bellow admired Trotsky and was going to meet him in Mexico. He joined the Merchant Marines in the Second World War. He too lived through the Depression, as Augie did. So my question is to what extent Bellow agrees with Augie’s philosophy on how life should be lived! And that is what I have trouble with – the ending and where it leaves you, what it says about Augie’s future and life philosophy. I left the book so very disappointed.

********************************

I had to listen to 1/3 of the book to begin to like it. The end totally fizzles out. I have no idea what the author was trying to say with this book.

Parts I DID like though. Augie moves through life floating from one thing to another, pulled in disparate directions by those around him. I liked when he was pulled into working for a union. I had hopes for him then. I liked when he meets up with a woman who hunted with eagles and caught snakes. Gosh, these parts were fascinating. I was there doing it with them in Mexico. But then again the story moves on.

The narration was EXCELLENT. Augie’s personality becomes a thing you recognize; he becomes a person you know. Each character speaks differently, but some are better than others. There is a guy who stutters, and here the narration was so good you could listen to the lines several times. Very, very funny! (Yeah, and there is humor in the book.) Grover Gardner, the narrator also does an excellent job with the different languages - French, Italian, Spanish.

What can I say about Augie? Well, I do wish the guy luck. I wish he would take a stand and go for what he wants....
...more

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About Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

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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 Marines during World War II.

Mr. Bellow's first novel, Dangling Man, was p 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 Marines 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". 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, Mr. 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. ...more