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HERZOG

Name: HERZOG
Author: Saul Bellow
ISBN: 0142437298

by Saul Bellow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 21, 1964

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There are two things we can say. Many feel Bellow is the best novelist of his generation, or at the very least, the best stylist. Herzog is not one of his best novels. It is, however, irritatingly impressive, and a very crucial work in the canon. It looks backwards and forwards. Something of Seize the Day is here- the Levantine honesty; something too of Henderson's nervy brilliance; and something quite new: the hero, an intellectual schlemihl, a professor of philosophy, a searcher trying on the masks of comedy and tragedy, seems to be an alter ego, as if Bellow were on a trial run, getting rid of the more subjective kinks for a forthcoming Major Leap. And that might explain the self-indulgence which inhabits the book, and a particular strategy-charming, funny, educative, boring- whereby Herzog is kept writing letters to the great or near-great, past and present, from Nietzsche to Ike. The plot is as cluttered as a case history: married twice, cuckolded by his best friend, romancing hither and thither, Herzog engages in numerous journeys both through his own mind and the worlds of New York, Chicago, Montreal. He contemplates murder, remembers the Jewish experience, takes the temperature of the metropolis (Bellow is of course a master at evoking alienation), meditates as an open-ended scholar, a self-conscious lover: "But what do you want, Herzog?" "But that's just it- I don't want anything." Characters dart in and out, for the most part, like the dialogue, demandingly, dexterously real; the details are splendid. In the end wry, whipped Herzog (I will do no more to enact the peculiarities of life. This is done well enough without my special assistance) has no messages for anyone. He will presumably, Just Live. Bearing an odd-shaped resemblance to the Henry of Berryman's Dream Songs, Herzog sums-up prevalent mood: a Chaplinesque acceptance of the end of ideals. It should be read.

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1964

ISBN: 0142437298

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1964

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SIMPLE GIMPL
by Isaac Bashevis Singer ; translated by Isaac Bashevis Singer , Saul Bellow & David Stromberg ; illustrated by Liana Finck

- BOOK REVIEW
THERE IS SIMPLY TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT
by Saul Bellow edited by Benjamin Taylor

- BOOK REVIEW
COLLECTED STORIES
by Saul Bellow

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.