The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

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Original Title: The Adventures of Augie March

ISBN: 0143039571
ISBN13: 9780143039570
Autor: Saul Bellow/Christopher Hitchens (Introduction)
Rating: 4.7 of 5 stars (2978) counts
Original Format: Paperback, 586 pages
Download Format: PDF, DJVU, iBook, MP3.
Published: October 3rd 2006 / by Penguin Classics / (first published 1953)
Language: English
Genre(s):
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Classics- 290 users
Literature- 79 users
Novels- 70 users
Description:

Augie comes on stage with one of literatures 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. Its 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 been more like
Tom Jones with a philosophical disposition. With this teeming book Bellow returned a Dickensian
richness to the American novel. As he makes his way to a full brimming consciousness of himself,
Augie careens through numberless occupations and countless mentors and exemplars, all the
while enchanting us with the slapdash American music of his voice.

About Author:

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 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", and 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, Saul 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.

Other Editions:

- The Adventures of Augie March (Paperback)

- The Adventures of Augie March (Paperback)

- The Adventures of Augie March (Hardcover)

- The Adventures of Augie March (Paperback)

- The Adventures Of Augie March (Kindle Edition)

Books By Author:
- Herzog

- Henderson the Rain King

- Humboldt's Gift

- Seize the Day

 - Mr. Sammler's Planet

Books In The Series:

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Rewiews:

Oct 18, 2013

Ian "Marvin" Graye
Rated it: it was amazing
Shelves: reviews, reviews-5-stars, bellow, read-2013
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

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 much now that I have found a level of comfort with my inner dork.

2013 Re-Read:

Busy Thinking Doing Being

This is a novel by and about a thinking man.

In saying this, Im conscious of the inadequacy of the English language (or my command of it) to
make my statement gender neutral.
I dont want to say "thinking person" or "thinking human" or "thinking human being". These
phrases are too ponderous and artificial.

I am willing, however, to call Augie March a "thinking being", because I want to go one step further
and say he is a "thinking doing being".

And then to say, paraphrasing Bob Dylan, that he not busy thinking doing being is busy dying.

What I love about this novel is just how much Augie March gets up to during his [incomplete] life,
how much thinking and learning, how much living and loving he does, while simultaneously
defying his mortality and death.

For me, he is the epitome of a special brand of intellectual and personal dynamism. And this is
one of my favourite novels.

A Quest with a Request

This review is an invitation to read a Great American Novel, but with a few caveats about length
and style for some readers.

The novel is 536 pages long. It consists of 26 complete, well-defined chapters, but it doesnt follow
any preconceived linear plot. It contains a hero, in fact, many heroes, but it doesnt consist of a
traditional three act heros journey.

Its not precisely crafted in the sense that what we read, the life experiences, have been heavily
edited, abridged, distilled and selected, so that much life has been left out and what remains is the
bare minimum the author could say.

Instead, much, much life has been left in, and whats been said about that life is precisely crafted.
Its what Bellow needed and wanted to say about everything around him.

Bellow didnt invite us into a cinema, sit us in a seat, turn out the lights and exclude the outside
world, so that we could focus on his art.

Instead, he removed the ceiling, the walls and all of the obstacles that might block our sight, so
that we could see and experience the real world, real people and real life. The book teems with
reality, with realism, so much so that Bellows brother, Maurice, refused to speak to him for five
years after its publication.

This novel, this filmic experience, this thought process might be longer than what is conventional.
If that bothers you, this might not be the book for you. But if it doesnt, then, like me, you might find
it one of the most rewarding reading experiences of your life.

A Smorgasbord, Not for the Smorgasbored

Augie March is a smorgasbord, not a TV dinner. Its not pre-packaged and pre-digested. It invites
you to focus and observe and think and enjoy.

Its expansive, sprawling, discursive, in the sense of "fluent and expansive rather than formulaic or
abbreviated".

Sometimes, it seems to be a directionless wander, other times a wild ride. Augie is a wonder boy
with a wanderlust. But at all times, Augies quest is singular, like Christopher Columbus, to
discover America, the world, and through it, himself.

You might not enjoy this novel, unless you can relate to his quest, his adventures and his
discoveries, unless you can imagine yourself on board the "Pinta", the "Nina" or the "Santa Maria",
setting sail for some unknown, far horizon.

I urge you not to embark, if you are easily bored or fear you might want to jump ship mid-voyage
or mid-adventure. The novel is ship-shape. It would take only you to torpedo it. It would break my
heart to read yet another uncomprehending three star (or less) review of this brilliant and important
novel. But if youre not deterred, welcome aboard!

A Picaresque Without a Picaro

Now that its just you and me, lets talk about Augie, baby, and his adventures.

Many critics describe "Augie March" as a picaresque novel.

The Spanish word "picaro" means a rogue or a rascal. The Wiki definition mentions that a
picaresque narrative is usually a first person autobiographical account; the main character is often
of low character or social class; and there is little if any character development in the main
character, whose circumstances may change but rarely result in a change of heart.

The reference in the title to "adventures" hints at this narrative tradition, as does Augies lower
class orphan social status.

However, Augie isnt just content to let things happen to him. Hes not passive. He goes where his
quest takes him. He is not there by accident or fate. What happens there might not have
happened if he had remained at home. His experiences and adventures are a direct response to
his quest.
Achievement Without Lineage

Just as there is little or no narrative linearity in the novel, Augie has no familial lineage of any
grandeur.

Bellow strips him of his father. Augie is "the by-blow of a travelling man" (a child born out of
wedlock). He has no recollection of his father.

Nevertheless, Augies mother is responsible for three boys and a dog, and family love is at the
heart of the novel:

"Georgie Mahchy, Augie, Simey

Winnie Mahchy, evwy, evwy love Mama."

Mama is not a strong-willed, domineering matriarchal type in the Jewish tradition. The mantle of
that role is assumed by Grandma Lausch, not a blood relative, but a Russian (Odessa) lodger,
"boss-woman, governing hand, queen mother, empress" and major influence who wants what is
best in life for Augie and his brothers. She sees potential for greatness in the boys and wants them
to aspire and succeed to greatness.

To this extent, the novel is about the achievement of aspirations, both internal and external.

Augies quest is for material independence and love. If he achieves these two things, he will have
learned the meaning of his life.

Having achieved himself, he will leave a heritage, a legacy for his own family. He will have
commenced an empire, a lineage of his own.

Nobility Without Savagery

The single word that captures both of Augies aspirations is "nobility".

A key metaphor in the novel is the difference between nobility and savagery.

We are all part of the Animal Kingdom, but what separates humanity (human beings) from the
other animals is the capacity for thought, the ability to be dignified, sophisticated, social, cultured,
marvellous, refined, sublime and civilized, the tendency to explore, discover, invent, create, learn
and teach.

This is our nobility, what separates us not just from animal savagery, but human savagery (such
as was to be experienced in the Holocaust).
While I understand Augies name is pronounced "Or-gie", I cant get out of the habit of
pronouncing "Augie" as "Ow-gie" in the German fashion (like I suspect Grandma Lausch did).

Augies name is presumably short for August, which hints of the noble in its own right, for example,
the name Augustus (Caesar), but more likely in the adjective "august" ("inspiring reverence or
admiration; of supreme dignity or grandeur; majestic") and its Latin etymology (augustus:
"venerable, majestic, magnificent, noble," probably originally "consecrated by the augurs, with
favorable auguries").

With all of these personal aspirations and social expectations, its crucial that Augie succeed, that
he triumph in life.

The outcome he fears most is failure. He cant bear the thought of being a "flop".

In this way, his adventure with first real love, Thea, in Mexico with an eagle that hunts iguanas and
snakes is symbolic of Augies own plight.

The eagle is called Caligula, after the Roman Emperor, but equally importantly, the Spanish word
for eagle is "guila", which doesnt take much contortion to become Augie.

This eagle should be the most noble and august of birds, yet it fails to achieve its purpose. In the
eyes of the township, it becomes the flop that Augie feared.

A Mans Character is His Fate

Augies great advantage is that he is a good listener, "clever junge", bright, intelligent, hopeful,
optimistic, eager, [mostly] honest, "ehrlich", loyal, strong, tough, robust, sensual, handsome and
grows to be 5' 11" (four inches taller than Bellow himself, thus achieving one of the authors
personal aspirations).

He also feels both obliged (or obligated) in the pursuit of his own self-improvement, and obliging in
the support of others.

If anything, his greatest risk is that others can easily take advantage of him, his friendship and his
generosity.

This is not to say he is an easy con. It is his nature, his character, and in the words of Heraclitus,
"a mans character is his fate."

A Womans Influence on a Mans Fate

While Augies adventures are necessarily masculine, women play a vital role at every step as
mother (Mama, Grandma Lausch, Mrs Renling), lover (Lucy, Sophie, Thea, Stella) and friend
(Mimi).

Mrs Renling is almost as ambitious for Augie as Grandma Lausch:

"An educated man with a business is a lord."

Cousin Anna Coblin shares the view that Augie deserves to succeed:

"You should know only happiness, as you deserve."

Working Class Politics

One of Augies mentors, Mr Einhorn points out that he is a contrarian:

"This was the first time that anyone had told me anything like the truth about myself. I felt it
powerfully. That, as he said, I did have opposition in me, and great desire to offer resistance and
to say 'No!' which was as clear as could be, as definite a feeling as a pang of hunger."

Augie spends some of his apprenticeship in life as a union organiser. He is good at it and popular,
except with rival unions.

Like Bellow himself, Augie reads up on Marx and becomes an anti-Stalinist Trotskyist for a while.
He even sees Trotsky in Mexico from a distance, just days before his assassination. (Bellow
himself missed meeting Trotsky by days.)

However, Augies heart is not behind the cause at this grass roots level, especially when he has
unresolved issues with Thea to deal with.

The Universal Eligibility to Be Noble

I was always disappointed that, in his later novels, Bellow became less left-wing and more
conservative and curmudgeonly.

To a certain extent, he moved with the times, in response to revelations about the reality of Soviet
Communism and the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

I dont think he ever became a fully-fledged Neo-Conservative, more what we called an Anti-Anti-
Communist, someone who was sympathetic to the Left, but was not a supporter of McCarthyite
tactics.

He was a writer, not an activist. Like Augie, to quote James Atlas, he was more interested in
experiencing "lifes intellectual, aesthetic and sensual pleasures".

However, more specifically, in terms of Augies worldview, what both author and character seemed
to believe in was "the universal eligibility to be noble".

They were not so much concerned with the primacy of Equality, whether of outcome or income,
but the equal opportunity to achieve Nobility in all the senses that make a human civilized and a
civilization great.

"I am an American, Chicago Born"

This might all sound very obvious and trite to you, but I first read "Augie March", when I was
defining my own political and cultural views, and Bellows and Augies example was absolutely
vital to me, especially because, part of my own intellectual development occurred in an anti-
intellectual context, where it was reassuring to know that intelligence and personal dynamism
could be combined successfully in one person.

The other reason I am so protective and assertive of the merits of this novel is what it represented
in the America of 1953.

Bellow was a Jew, a member of a race that had been denied entry into society, members clubs,
golf clubs, academia and the cultural intelligentsia.

Bellows third, most ambitious novel burst onto the American literary scene with the following
memorable words:

"I am an American, Chicago bornand go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will
make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted."

Augie was asserting his own Americanness, opposed to any attempt to marginalize him because
of his racial or religious background.

He was an American, first, a Jew, an American Jew. There was no inconsistency between the two
qualities. He was proud to be both. He was proud to be the one.

When I recently read and reviewed "The Great Gatsby", I wrote about a Capitalist America, that
survived and arguably thrived in some way by maintaining an exclusivity.

Perhaps, Gatsbys only failure, the reason he could grasp the American Dream as a Holy Grail
and find that it disintegrated in his hands, was that he didnt realise that he wasnt welcome by
those who were already at the top.
In a way, Jay Gatsby handed the baton onto Augie March, who then insisted on making his way
through those doors wedged closed, so that more people could follow him and have their
contribution to America recognised and respected.

Whereas "The Great Gatsby" describes exclusion, "Augie March" conveys a message of inclusion,
not necessarily assimilation, but co-existence in harmony of purpose and outcome.

So "Augie March" was a major assertion and achievement for an American Jew, an even greater
achievement when the novel won the National Book Award for the most distinguished American
novel of 1953.

I am still more sentimental about this book than "Herzog" or "Humboldts Gift", and therefore I am
motivated to say that "Augie March" was a large part of the argument for Bellows entitlement to
receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

I am not an American, I am not Chicago born, I am not a Jew. However, the thing about "Augie
March", this book written by a 38 year old American Jew, almost 20 years younger than I am now,
is that it resounded with me all this way across the world, once upon a time 20 years after it was
written, then again 60 years after it was written, and during every moment in between and for
every moment during which my heart might beat and my mind might imagine afterwards.

Free-Style, In My Own Way

It wasnt just the subject matter that appealed to me, though that would have been enough. It was
the language.

Bellows first sentence announced his modus operandi: he wasnt going to be constrained by
convention, he was going to write free-style, in his own way, autodidactically, because he wanted
to communicate what he had learned himself, rather than being taught.

As it turned out, he wrote like he spoke. It didnt read like it was written, it sounded like it was said
and we were listening to it. Augie could speak as if in the street, as if in a bar, as if in a club. It was
entertaining, persuasive, informative, endearing, inspiring. Even when most intellectual, his words
were still beautiful to listen to.

This was no smug Ivy League belletrist pronouncing from the comfort and security of his study. As
Bellow has revealed, not a word of this novel was written in Chicago. This was a man jotting down
the intricate workings of his mind while sailing across the Atlantic or sitting drinking coffee in a
Parisian or Mediterranean cafe.

Like Joyces portrait of Dublin, this was Chicago and New York remembered from afar, painted
from memory, complete with its own deli sights and smells and Yiddish rhythms and intonation.
Bellow never descended into purple prose. Everything seemed to be in exactly the right place, as
required to communicate effectively. Yet frequently, I wondered at the beauty of his prose,
speculating on whether anybody had ever used this combination of simple words in this precise
way before.

I'll leave you with a random sampling of sentences that appealed:

"I have always tried to become what I am."

"I have a feeling with respect to the axial lines of life, with respect to which you must be straight or
else your existence is merely clownery, hiding tragedy."

"Happy as a god."

"You are the author of your own death. What is the weapon? The nails and hammer of your
character. What is the cross? Your own bones on which you gradually weaken."

"Mama was beginning to have the aging stiffness and was somewhat bowlegged; she enjoyed the
cold air though, and still had her calm smooth color of health.

She could be singular too, when shed swagger or boast or vie against other women; or fish
compliments, or force me to admire her hair or skin, which I didnt have to be forced to do."

"I felt her conduct like a kind of touching athletic prowess."

"There was the object of these wicked thoughts with a warm healthy face, looking innocent and
happy to see me. What a beauty! My heart whanged without a pity for me. I already saw myself
humbled in the dust of love, the god Eros holding me down with his foot and forcing all kinds of
impossible stuff on me."

"We were risen up high with pleasure. We had all the luck in love we could ask, and it was maybe
improved by the foreignness we found in each other."
Nobility Rewarded with a Nobel Prize

Here is an extract from Bellow's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.

It gives some insight into the Nobility of the thinking doing being and its origin in the quest to know
ourselves and others, in other words, in Augie's quest:

"When complications increase, the desire for essentials increases too. The unending cycle of
crises that began with the First World War has formed a kind of person, one who has lived through
terrible, strange things, and in whom there is an observable shrinkage of prejudices, a casting off
of disappointing ideologies, an ability to live with many kinds of madness, an immense desire for
certain durable human goods - truth, for instance, or freedom, or wisdom.

"I don't think I am exaggerating; there is plenty of evidence for this. Disintegration? Well, yes.
Much is disintegrating but we are experiencing also an odd kind of refining process. And this has
been going on for a long time.

"Looking into Proust's Time Regained I find that he was clearly aware of it. His novel, describing
French society during the Great War, tests the strength of his art. Without art, he insists, shirking
no personal or collective horrors, we do not know ourselves or anyone else.

"Only art penetrates what pride, passion, intelligence and habit erect on all sides - the seeming
realities of this world.

"There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of.

"This other reality is always sending us hints, which, without art, we can't receive.

"Proust calls these hints our true impressions. The true impressions, our persistent intuitions, will,
without art, be hidden from us and we will be left with nothing but a terminology for practical ends
which we falsely call life.

"Tolstoy put the matter in much the same way. A book like his Ivan Ilyitch also describes these
same practical ends which conceal both life and death from us. In his final sufferings Ivan Ilyitch
becomes an individual, a "character", by tearing down the concealments, by seeing through the
practical ends."

83 likes
75 comments

Luke Felty
Excellent review--I started this book a few days ago simply to read Bellow and it was helpful to get
some perspective on how to approach it. If only t
Excellent review--I started this book a few days ago simply to read Bellow and it was helpful to get
some perspective on how to approach it. If only there were more people who actually put thought
into their reviews instead of applying two stars with the note: "I didn't like it--too boring!" Looking
forward to these adventures.

Mar 20, 2016 06:07AM

Ian "Marvin" Graye

Luke wrote: "Excellent review--I started this book a few days ago simply to read Bellow and it was
helpful to get some perspective on how to approach
Luke wrote: "Excellent review--I started this book a few days ago simply to read Bellow and it was
helpful to get some perspective on how to approach it. If only there were more people who actually
put thought ..."
Thanks, Luke. Five star reviews can be equally unthinking! This is very much an invitation to read
a great book by a novelist who is busy being buried by holier-than-thou taste-shapers.

Mar 21, 2016 01:42AM