Around the time Bellow received the Nobel for this novel, he was the subject of my college dissertation. It was to be almost thirty years before I revisited Humboldt's Gift again as my inflight reading on a trip to the US, and when I did the experience was somewhat different. First I noted the humour.
Praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose, Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.
Saul Bellow was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, and was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honours in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.. Humboldt’s Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Bellow at his best. funny, vibrant, ironic, self-mocking and wise (San Francisco Examiner)There was something about Humboldt's Gift - the sheer ecstatic pleasure of the writing, the intensity of the imagery, the entrancing ability to combine high comedy with deeply serious intellectual ideas, the astonishing talent for describing faces, the warm affection for Chicago characters - which.
By Saul Bellow This book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for 1976. Poor Charlie Citrine. His life is a shambles. A petty gangster has pounded Citrine's beautiful car to a pulp. Charlie's ex-wife is suing him for a bigger share of his assets and a judge has frozen Charlie's money telling Charlie that Charlie can always make more money.
Reading up on President Eisenhower for an upcoming essay on Canadian PM John Diefenbaker, I was reminded of a passage I marked while reading Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift last year. The narrator, Charlie, recalls the reaction of his friend Humboldt, a Jewish radical poet with paranoid tendencies, to Eisenhower’s election in 1952.
So, let’s begin with a passage from Saul Bellow’s 1973 novel Humboldt’s Gift, describing the writer “Von Humboldt Fleisher”, who was loosely modeled after the poet, essayist, short story writer, and editor Delmore Schwartz, whose extremely creative yet sadly turbulent life, spanning the mid-part of the twentieth centry, ended all too.
Humboldt’s Gift makes it clear that it’s the ultimate question of mortality: the novel ends with Humboldt’s reinterment in a proper cemetery after a long exile in a potter’s field, and Bellow renders Charlie’s graveside thoughts with muted poignancy. Humboldt, he reflects, “had opened his mouth and uttered some delightful verses.
I’m working on a new novel that sort of involves a poet, so I read two books that involve poets: Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift and May Sarton’s Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. This is like someone who’s never played tennis deciding to learn the game by studying Venus and Serena Williams, but there you go.
Read Online Humboldts Gift Saul Bellow Saul Bellow on boredom from Humboldt's GIft The Greatest American Essays: Saul Bellow (Herzog, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift) (1998) Saul Bellow (June 10, 1915 -- April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was. Humboldt's Gift Scene A grieving.