Major novelists Bellow si Mailer

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Contemporary American Literature Course 1_1

2nd Year American Studies

3rd Year English minor

Spring Semester 2012Prof.dr. Rodica Mihaila

Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

Saul Bellow born in Canada of parents recently emigrated from Russia

-grows up in Chicago during the 30s (escapes the naturalism of the era)

-brings a strong sense of the traditional European novel Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievski

-a novelist of ideas (read widely in philosophy, history, sociology & anthropology)

- his novels describe the city urban American life :gangsters

madmen

carnavalesque of the urban scene

- themes: the archetypal Am. themes:

1. IDENTITY (Jewish American) - - displacement ( exile, failure to get assimilated, acculturation (no cosmopolitanism )

2. The American Dream --success, power, wealth> sex & health

3. Humanism human compassion (rejects the Waste Land outlook Confident in spiritual rebirth see Tommy Wilhelm in the end)

- moral triumph (traditional regeneration)- characters: Jewish, conscious of their ancient heritage

-the middle-age American Jew seeking a new consciousness of himself

-sensitive, romantic humanists (Herzog and Humbold) trying to come to terms with a cynical reality

-central quest: - how man may still survive as a creature fully possessed of his humanity

Rejects the Wasteland outlook. Believes in spiritual rebirth (Henderson, Tommy Wilhelm (citat Seize sfirsit)-

-is typically comic: the seeking hero (inner innocence) suffering, laughing, always physically or spirituality on the move assumes the role of the neo-picaresque

- language: elements of the Yiddish oral tradition

- conscience in the midst of flux

- narrative technique: -the cofessional mode of autobiography, journal or letter

- use of humour to humanize failure

- the grotesque-TO HUMANIZE FAILURE -blurring of genres (hybridization, mixture of genres( Henderson)

- the neo picaresque mode

Works:

-Dangling Man (1949) Kafka & Dostoievski

-The Victim (1947)

- The Adventures of Angie March (1953)

- Seize the Day (1956)

- Henderson the Rain King (1958) a romance, a quest through Africa

- Herzog (1964) a quasi-epistolary novel

- Mr. Sammlers Planet (1970)

- Humboldts Gift (1975) Pulitzer Prize

- Deans December (1982)

- Him with His Foot in His Mouth & Other Stories (1984)

Something to Remember Me By (1991)

Ravenstein (2000)

Collected Stories (2001)Oxford Companion

Bellows work

In the first 2 novels = Kafka - like atmosphere

Dangling Man (1944) - psychological study of a demoralized dangling man without purpose, waiting to be drafted into the army

The Victim (1947) - the agonizing, equivocal relation Jew and gentile. The intense psychological battle between the Jew Asa Leventhal and his "double" the "victim" literature existentialist. The technique of the double from Dostoievski's The eternal Husband.

The Adventure of A.M. (1953) - won a National Book Award.

- treats the picaresque adventures of a young Chicago Jew

Seize the Day (1956)- dark comedy, a "loser" spiritually reborn at the end of the

novel

Henderson the Rain King (1959) A hybrid of genres. Dark comedy. Picaresque narrative. Lyrical meditation. Tragi-comedy. Romance

Eugene Henderson an intense midlle-age Conneticut millionaire whose inner urge for fulfillment of self (I want, I want) drives him to primitive Africa

- a hybrid of genres

- dark comedy

- picaresque narrative

- lyrical meditation

- tragi-comedy

- romance

- a symbolic tragi-comedy - fantastic experience

- spiritual rebirth depends upon employing the powers of the imagination

Herzog (1964) - revelation of the life of a midle-aged Jewish intellectual - involvement with - 2 wives + other women

- his children

- a friend who betrays him

-his career of teaching and writing

- he is led through neuroses almost to suicide

- end:"pretty well satisfied to be, to be just as it is willed"

Herzog and Humbold = 2 darkly comic novels depicting the struggle of his sensitive romantic humanists to come to terms with cynical reality. They finally reject the wasteland outlook.

Mr. Sammler's Planet (1969) - a fictive critique of modern society as seen by a survivor of a Nazi concetration camp (theme of the Holocaust) Humboldt's Gift (1975) - depicts a crisis in the life of the narrator that is resolved by his friend, the poet Humboldt / Charlie Citrine-cannibalism - a recurrent metaphor Humboldt's Gift (1975) - Pulitzer - the saga of Charlie Citrine bright, ambitious, wisher literary success from Chicago comes to Greenwhich Village

- friend of the visionary poet Von Humboldt Fleisher (Delmore Schwartz dies alone, poor & mad, but continues to affect the life of D)

- wisdom & folly

Citrine wins 2 Pulitzers - for a play

- for a biography

an honorary award from the French government

- financial difficulties in rel. with his greedy divorced wife

his voluptuous girl-friend (Renata)

Ronald (Rinaldo) Contabile - his wife writes a dissertation on Fleisher

pursues him from information

- saved by money from the popular film whose script written by Humboldt & Charlie is a comedy about cannibalism - a recurrent metaphor in Bellow's novels

Other works by Bellow:The Dean's December (1982) - protagonsit - autobiographic Albert Corde - dean of

men at a Chicago college Minna - astronomer

Him with his foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984)

More Die of Hearthbreak (1987)

A Theft (1989)

The Bellarosa Connection (1989)

Something to Remember Me By (1991)

Ravenstein 2000

Collected stories (2001)