About this title: In Saul Bellow's 1970 more-bitter-than-sweet novel about alienation and moral decay, Artur Sammler, a 70-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, spends his days quietly and pointlessly in New York. An intellectual and academic, he lectures occasionally at Columbia University but spends most of his time drifting about the city, trying to make sense of an ...
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Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. [6], 313 p. 21 cm. "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Press, New York
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670333196ISBN:0670333190
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. damaged book cover. 313 p. 22 cm. "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Press, New York
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670333196ISBN:0670333190
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. 313 p. 22 cm. "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Press, New York
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670333196ISBN:0670333190
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. damaged book cover. 313 p. 22 cm. "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " Previous Owner's Inscription. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Viking Books
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670493227ISBN:0670493228
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Good, In good dust jacket. Trade paperback (US). Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. Ex-Library expected imperfections. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Fawcett, New York
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670333196ISBN:0670333190
Description: Good. Signed by Author. 313 p. 22 cm. "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " Previous Owner's Inscription. read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1971 Fawcett paperback. Pages are clean & bright with some light wear, a few bent page corners, spine tight but creased, edgewear, covers mildly scuffed. 286 p. NOT EX LIB! "Originally appeared in Atlantic monthly in a different form. " read more
Binding: Perfect Bound Paper
Publisher: Penguin
Date Published: 1977
Description: Good. No Jacket as Issued. Trade Paperback. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" Moderate to heavy wear, no remainder marks. (Store Display-Gen Fic) read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: The Viking Press
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780670333196ISBN:0670333190
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. VG/VG, mild edgewear to the dust jacket, is price clipped but has a price sticker on front panel of DJ, interior clean, binding tight. read more
"If you want a view of the broken down rubble of the new york of the 70's, this is a great snapshot of the time. Saul Bellow's protagonist is an aged scholar, a Holocaust surviver who sees the running wild of new york, and his own aging and considers the state of things. It is a road map to where we are today.
The way he sees hippies breaking all the rules just to break them, after all he went through in the holocaust leaves him in a kind of walking dead but humanitarianly thinking and observing state.
here is an enlightening passage from the book about how Sammler sees the times, of all the hippies and others going wild and not fallowing any sense of decorum at all anymore:
'.....the philosophical rambler out on Broadway, inspecting the phenomenon. The phenomenon had in some way achieved a sense of its own interest and observability. It was aware of being a scene of perversity, it knew its own despair. And fear. The terror of it. Here you might see the soul of America at grips with historical problems, struggling with certain impossibilities, experiencing violently states inherently static. Being realized but trying itself to realize, to act. Attempting to make interest. This attempt to make interest was, for Mr. Sammler, one reason for the pursuit of madness. Madness makes interest. Madness is the attempted liberty of people who feel themselves overwhelmed by giant forces of organized control. Seeking the magic of extremes. Madness is a base form of the religious life. '
it is a very close read of the cultural feel of New York City at the time, Bellow hit a moving target just right. His musty forties coats meshing with the wild nakedness of the new freedom of the hopeful unleashing of the id. He was a definite skeptic of where that was going to get us. And he was right philosophically. It turned out in deed to be the last gasps of the age of the 'gentleman,' of the values of 'decorum' being vaunted."
"This amazing novel now tops my 1998 reading list. I don't know if I want to re-read it again immediately or run out and grab more Bellow titles to read. It's interesting that I read an Updike alongside a Bellow. Saul wins! A strong, strong recommendation."
"70's fiction often depresses me. Bellow's characters aged 35 and younger are irresponsible, dissolute, or insane. It must reflect how Bellow saw the children of his peers living in New York at the time. There's not a young person in the novel who has gotten married, gotten a career, gotten children, in short, gotten on with it. Maybe reflects the time in history, matybe reflects the literary crowd a guy like Bellow hung with, maybe just reversion to the mean. But still depresses me and isn't very interesting."
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