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Tim O'Brien

318. Saul Bellow - Humbolt's Gift


Tried, but failed to finish this at the end of the holiday. Bellow now seems to me to be very overrated; some Jewish humour, but pretty pretentious pseudo intellectual stuff I thought.

However I did finish it back home, and haven’t really revised my view in the preceding sentence, although that is slightly unfair.

Certainly Bellow is prolix and undisciplined, long paragraphs repeatedly range off into discursive text about not a great deal. But the central plot of the book – an unexpected (and in this case unintended) gift, not unlike no.317 above - is comedically quite clever. And I guess he writes quite well about the ambiguities of success and failure in late 20th century USA.

But, will I rush to read a lot of other Bellows – no.


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