Humboldt's Gift: A Novel

I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow won the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons

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these days, but I think in the case of Bellow Oslo got it right. From the start the storytelling is brilliant and it never flags. Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a love of literature, writes to his hero poet Von Humboldt Fleisher from his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is invited to visit the great man in Greenwich Village. Citrine comes to New York just as Humboldt is hitting his sole crest of popularity because of his book of ballads. Humboldt, however, soon loses it all; drinking and medicating himself in a manner that can only be called suicidal. No wonder he's perpetually blocked now. In the meantime, Charlie Citrine, his protege, writes a hit Broadway play which is made into a hit Hollywood movie. Citrine is swimming in money. And Citrine's success can only be viewed by Humboldt in his madness as a betrayal. Humboldt comes to loathe Citrine whom he accuses of using his life as the basis for the main character of his play Von Trenck. When Citrine wins the Chevalier de Légion d'honneur from the French government, Humboldt hits the ceiling. "Shoveleer!," he writes, "Your name is lesion."

Charlie Citrine is one of the most fascinating characters to emerge from late 20th century American literature. What I admire so much about this book is its unflagging narrative thrust. Line by line it satisfies the reader on an almost physical level. The humor is laugh out loud. The erudition makes me giddy. Just how is it possible for Bellow to incorporate so much knowledge about literature into the book and not end up with some deadly boring piece of tripe? It's miraculous. Citrine is always talking about his reading (Rudolf Steiner, Santayana, Gide, Aristotle, and so on) which is deftly incorporated so as to reflect upon his own tribulations and those of the other characters. This is quite a rogue's gallery, too, consisting of both the high and the low: mobsters; crooked judges; writers; literary chislers, harridan exes; lawyers; Rubenesque golddiggers, old Russian bath house guys; blue collar guys; virtually all ethnicities and predilections as only a great American city like Chicago can produce. I've read all of Bellow's novels and this I think is his best one. I even prefer it to Augie March, which is saying something. This is also a great novel for those who want to know how to write a great novel. With this text in hand and one's own considerable talent on tap, why, you can't miss. It's all right here in black and white. Read it, please, and let me know what you think.

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Book Review

Titles: Humboldt’ Gift and Herzog

Author: Saul Bellows

This is another of my attempts to acquaint myself with reputedly gifted authors. Saul Bellows enjoys a reputation or being one of the 20th century’s greatest novelists.

Without a doubt “Humboldt’s Gift” is well written and

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extremely erudite in its scope and content. Charlie Citrine, the main character and narrator tells of his relationship with and love for his patron and mentor Humboldt Fleisher.

Humboldt has earned great acclaim as a poet and literary figure. During his career he has earned frame and fortune. Charlie Citrine, a younger man, is drawn to the former and accepted as an acolyte. In time Humboldt’s appeal wanes at the same time Charlie’s star is in the ascendancy.

Realizing the turn of events makes Humbolt jealous, resentful, and increasingly bitter. In spite of the once closeness between the two men a schism results. Citrine is bedeviled by his success and prosperity. His marriage disintegrates and his vengeful, former spouse, manages to drive him nearly to poverty. All through the book Charlie wrestles with philosophical conjectures. His guru is a man named Steiner, who espouses a theory of “Philosophosphy” ???. Death and the hereafter are constantly on Charlie’s mind. Sex is another constant preoccupation.

After Humboldt’s death it turns out that he has bequeathed to his wife Kathleen and Charlie, something that turned out to be of great significance. Despite the books lengthy “Sturm und Drang” there is closure in the end. It is a long novel.

“Herzog” was written ten years earlier and is a lengthy preview of “Humbolt’s Gift“. Herzog is the main character and is also an intellectual who is cuckolded and spends the entire book agonizing over his fate and life’s vicissitudes. I founded it unsatisfying to wade through after reading Humbolt’s Gift“.

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I wrote this in 2005 after Saul Bellow died.

A wonderful surprise. Tried reading Augie March just out of college and couldn't get into it; then got the idea I didn't like Saul Bellow and so never read him. He died recently and reading all the things written about him got me interested.

So it's

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wonderful. He's a wonderful writer, descriptions, characters. And the main character, Charlie Citrine, with all his flaws, is quite lovable.

So I ordered Herzog.

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Very poetic writing style.... spurts of genius. Accurate, vivid portraits of human despair in his protaganist. Though stale here and there. Maybe a little too long.

I just couldn't finish this. I tried. I liked it in parts. There were some really funny moments. But is it bad that the other day I described myself as more of a Bellow-esque Jewish writer than a Roth-esque one and then it turns out that I can't finish his book? I did read Herzog in college. But I

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can't remember a think about it. Sigh.

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One of the most ambitious novels of 20th century combining philosophical musings with genuine comedy, massive in its sprawl and filled with Bellow's delicious turns-of-phrase.

“He was meddling, just meddling. Still, I took this to heart. For there was a lot of agony in Demmie. Some women wept as softly as a watering can in the garden. Demmie cried passionately, as only a woman who believes in sin can cry. When she cried you not only pitied her, you respected her

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strength of soul.”

There is an astonishingly short page on Wikipedia to this book that had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976 and is cited on that website as having “contributed to Bellow's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year”. Then follow two minor paragraphs devoted to plot and two sentences to its reception. This book is four-hundred and ninety-four pages and probably had me consulting the computer for references as many times. It’s dense. It’s funny. The two main characters suffer from honesty every bit as painful as their introspection is myopic. Or maybe not. Maybe somewhere in that anthroposophical ether that clouds Charlie Citrine like bad weather, despite his flight toward whatever exotic locale he secretes himself, whatever room or hotel or Russian bathhouse stall, stretched on a couch or crushed between dubious characters on a Thunderbird’s bench seat, Seraphim and Cherubim and Exousiai and Archai fist-fighting in the jet streams of his skull, there’s an acceptance of the limitations of the material world and yet a clear-eyed glimpse of a realm beyond. Even Humboldt’s posthumous “gift” is maybe more trouble than it’s worth. As, maybe, is all life. And that’s at least the fourth time I’ve waffled with that adverb.

Chicago may be the bedrock to this sprawling work, and it is populated with some of the tropes synonymous with that city: gangsters, architecture, restaurants, the old country in the New World. But the world of the mind is the real domain here; wedded to the basest of our human natures. And so we have poets in rural New Jersey trying to mow down their wives with Buicks, low-level thugs horning in on copyright lawyers, Chicagoan entrepreneurs hunting for beryllium in Nairobi, huckster journalists making a buck off their own abduction in South America; and none of these events seem grand enough to fill the space left from the conversations with his departed mentor and friend.

Maybe the gift is more than an object, an heirloom, a sealed letter from the past. It could be nothing more than that moment when he learned to live in the middle of the material and spiritual worlds. How fleeting that moment. And yet, the recollection can seem to last forever when stretched out on the couch, away from the clamor and clangor of Chicago, removed from the clash of new toys in old worlds, some far country yet unclaimed since it hasn’t even been marked on a map.

Or Charlie Citrine could just be a selfish prick. But at least he knows it. And he’s got the perfect escape. Like another Appleton native, Harry Houdini, who’d travelled to the biggest cities to break free from handcuffs, straightjackets and milk cans—all self-imposed. Except Citrine didn’t share the magician’s obsession for debunking spiritualists, preferring instead a peaceful absorption.

And, to be fair, I’ve not totally gotten my head around “anthroposophy”. Certainly, enough for the context of the novel. But, just like that hovering hierarchy of angels, it may demand more research and a second read.

“In the enchanting days we had had such marvelous talks, only touched a little by manic depression and paranoia. But now the light became dark and the dark turned darker.”

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"Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything."

Humboldt's Gift is a study of a man fighting the world and his inner demons by withdrawing from his life.

Charles Citrine is a successful author who seems to like and trust everybody. As a young man he had travelled across

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America to meet acclaimed author Von Humboldt Fleischer. They became close friends until Charles's own literary success ruined their relationship. Charles is a decent, generous man, but has a weakness for beautiful women. He has had a number of lovers; one woman is divorcing him, trying to impoverish him in the process, and another desperately wants him to marry her. Charles is in a sad condition but has friends willing to help him out.

Chapters have neither titles nor numbers and the narrative didn't really have a structure. The nature of Humboldt’s gift isn't clear until we have read most of the book and we then discover that it is a real and practical gift, a bequest from his old friend rather than an ironical term.

I found I couldn't empathise with Citrine at all. rather his non-participation, his constant contemplation of life rather than actually living merely left me frustrated. Personally, I found this an exhausting read that needed some serious editing. It was verbose in the extreme, littered with French phrases (un-translated) and obscure literary references that made me feel that Bellow rather than engaging with his readers was simply trying to demonstrate how much smarter than them he is.
Overall, not a great read at all for me.

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allusions and asides

The one and only fine novel where copyright is a central theme on the plot... Of course, this book has been seminal for many people, many future authors included

The novel tells the story of Charlie Citrine, a successful writer, who is reflecting on his own talents and life after his friend, Humbolt’s death. Citrine is involved with a young mistress who is leading him around by sexual promises, a wanta be gangster, the IRS and his exwife and her lawyers.

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Even his mistress abandons him. Charlie is alienated in Madrid when he discovered that Humboldt has left a gift. Saul Bellow is really writing about his friend, the poet Delmore Schwartz and the influence Schwartz had in his own life. Bellow writes about America and he especially likes to write about Chicago which he thought better represented America that New York City. This story is about a man of feeling and a deep thinker. Charlie is honorable and not greedy but there is greed all around him and it is destroying him Other themes are sex, capitalism, meaningless intellectualization, feminism and death. Bellow wanted to show the sense of crisis and despair and writes with great prose style and satire.

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Bellow gives us his unique perspective on growing up on an East Coast only people with his background can understand.

one of my fave books

Humboldt's Gift...not going to happen. There is something so ludicrously intellectual and detached in this writing. I get angry and then just quit.

So close to being a 5-star.

Fantastic, lyrical, excellent when both comic and tragic, plaintive and descriptive, and there are a few ugly spots which almost spoil the whole thing (the rant about divorce/women) and made me have to stop. Still a very good examination of the role of writing and

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consumerism in American culture, if you want me to retreat to my usual sterile descriptions.

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Wonderful characters, esp. Rinaldo Cantabile and great dialogues. Citrine's monologues get a bit tiresome at times.

A book that one can devour whole-heartedly. A tribute to poor Delmore Schwartz; a tribute to Chicago. Full of the wiliest of characters, bankers, gold-diggers, threatening crooks, shady lawyers, old Jewish Chicagoans, Rudolf Steiner's theosophy' and Bellow's own erudition of the western literary

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tradition. The storyline is wild but never flags. The humour is high class and often very funny. The love for his old colleague, Humboldt (Schwartz in real life), is repaid at the end to conclude a wonderful crazy story.

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