Ways of DyingThis is a novel about ageing; more specifically about that stage in life when death has become a persistently conscious prospect. But about whose ageing and whose death is debatable - that of the eponymous Ravelstein; or of the narrator, Chick, who is preparing to write Ravelstein’s biography; or, perhaps, of the reader who may have yet to reach that point of maturity? So I don’t concur with the conventional wisdom that Ravelstein is merely or primarily a tribute to the friendship b...

For most literary Americans of my generation, Saul Bellow has largely been forgotten. It seems that when he's thought of at all, it's as a hopelessly out-of-touch white conservative, someone whose artistic ability was ultimately clouded by his stance. While Céline, Hamsun, and other reactionaries have been rehabilitated, Bellow's unsexy Republican uncle attitudes are a tough nut to swallow. And consequently, we're not likely to pick up Herzog any time soon (and frankly, I think it kind of sucked...

Free for Audible-Plus-UK members!Not quite a four, but better than a three-star book; somewhere in-between is the most accurate rating.The book gives an account of the friendship between Chick (Saul Bellow) and the political philosopher Ravelstein (Allan Bloom). It reads as a double memoir. Bloom died in 1992.Six years after his death, Bellow wrote this memoir which Bloom had requested he write. Bellow was in his eighties and had himself almost died.Th story is a mix of fiction and nonfiction.I

I've read all of Bellow, the best American novelist during my lifetime, though Updike became, in his last books, a close second--and a better reviewer.I do not say this simply because Bellow's best friend at the U MN was my Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger: a charming photo of them on a sofa smoking and laughing, with their wives framing it, was printed in Rolling Stone in the 50s. Go to Facebook, Alan P Bruno, to see the photo. (In the pic I think Leonard was just cracking one of his myriad jokes, p...

Ravelstein And Chick"Ravelstein" (2000) is a novel-memoir of the friendship between Allan Bloom and the author, Saul Bellow. In addition to exploring the friendship of the two men, the book's primary themes, to me, are the nature of love and the necessity of facing death, one's own and those dear to one.In the novel, Abe Ravelstein is based upon Allan Bloom, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago and a student of Leo Strauss (called Davorr in the book). Professor Bloom

When it was published critics called it one of Bellow's "minor" books. I disagree. It's softer and subtler than Augie March or Henderson the Rain King, but the narrative exuberance here is unsurpassed even by Bellow himself in earlier decades. Because the book is at its heart the story of friendship between two men who loved one another, Bellow's inability to write about women except in a misogynistic way is a minor flaw in this particular book, one that barely registered for me here, even thoug...

"Often the dying become extremely severe. We will still be here when they're gone and it's not easy for them to forgive us."Finally I have begun to fill a huge gap in my Great American Literature education: I have just read my first novel by Saul Bellow - Ravelstein (2000). What a great read it has been! True, the first 20 or so pages are highly intimidating: the author assumes the reader's erudition and complete focus, and the text almost overwhelms with hyper-intellectualism. But having surviv...

[Reviewed in 2000]Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Saul Bellow at 84 has written a novel as graceful and funny as Ravelstein. But who could have predicted that he would also stir up a hornets’ nest of controversy? The character of Abe Ravelstein is based on Bellow’s late friend and colleague, Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, the 1987 bestseller that became a lightning rod for the culture wars of the Reagan era. What hasn’t heretofore been public knowledge is that Bl...

Allan Bloom wrote a bestseller titled The Closing of the American Mind. I had not read this book when I began to read Ravelstein by Saul Bellow. Nor did I really know who Allan Bloom was, or even that the lead character in Bellow's novel was based on the real and famous professor Allan Bloom.Nor did I know what Bellow was talking about in a good half of his allusions during the course of the book.As I read it, I pondered the following questions: Is a novel without a plot still a novel? Or is it

If this book is a thinly veiled account of Bellow’s relationship with fellow academic Allan Bloom, I wonder why Bellow did not write it as such, and instead relied on the novel form. The novel disappoints, for it flatlines on story and character (even though Ravelstein is a multifaceted personality), whereas a biography or memoir of the real duo would have been more impactful.Ravelstein and Chick (Bloom and Bellow respectively, as I made out) are a modern day Socrates and Plato. Ravelstein is a

After reading some of the other reviews here, I now know this is based on an actual person. I suspected it was, but couldn't get myself to care enough about the characters or the story to find out. I tried hard to finish the book, but then realized I was just waiting for my next requested books be become available at the library.I guess if I knew about Allen Bloom or his work, maybe this would help support some interest. The author seems to want us to take on faith that Ravelstein is a riveting,...

(Second reading years apart.)Saul Bellow inhabits his books, his peep constellation and in particular those close to him usually get his treatments up close and personal. That's da rub so say many a peep &/or critic. Yet and so, as "JR" (Gaddis punk peep) 'it's what you do' in creating nonetheless a fictive world in search of reality. So it goes here with Bellow's octogenarian delivery "Ravelstein" another of his larger than life characters like Humbolt & Herzog who is or is not NOT ambiguously

While I adore Bellow, I didn't like this at all. Bellow here is aging, and playing Boswell to Alan Bloom's Johnson. But Bloom, a well known Straussian and epicure, though he must have been charismatic and high-IQ , was an intellectual hack, imo..., and so Bellow's hagiography falls flat. Plus, Ravelstein spends as much time and effort on conspicuous consumption as he spends on the life of the mind...and comes off as rather vain, self-centered, and with an inflated sense of his own self-importanc...

I listened to this on audio on a car trip. I really enjoyed the story. The title character is compelling and contradictory in a way that kept my interest. Later, I found out he was based on Allan Bloom, who wrote "The Closing of the American Mind." Which is a problem. In my politically correct youth of the early '90s, Bloom was universally reviled for being some kind of conservative apologist. Now I suppose I have to go back and revisit his book and possibly revise my prejudices. How tiresome!

Is Saul Bellow the best novelist of the 20th century? I don't know, but I loved this fictionalized account of his friendship with fellow academic Allan Bloom.Bellow describes his fictionalized wife Vela: “She had to be seen as a beautiful woman. But it was beauty-parade beauty, and required preparation at a West Point or Hapsburg hussar level.”

Ravelstein alternates between the beautifully philosophical and humorous to the achingly boring and mundane. However when it was at its best, Saul Bellow's writing is devastatingly good. This was my first Bellow and certainly not my last.

This is a loving and moving account - barely fictionalized - of Bellow's friendship to Allan Bloom and his fulfillment of a deathbed promise he made to write his memoirs. As such, there is not really a plot or any significant action in the plot, but rather with the typical Bellowesque surgical precision, descriptions of how they met, what Ravelstein-Bloom were like, how Ravelstein-Bloom died and how Chick-Bellow nearly died himself before finally committing the story to paper. The world indeed l...

How fitting that I finished reading Ravelstein while on the plane home from my weekend visit to my grandmother in Canada. You see, Saul Bellow was born in Canada and when he was nine his parents moved to Humboldt Park in Chicago. Bellow eventually attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. And despite my also having a Canadian background, and living in Chicago, and the fact that Saul Bellow has won both the Pulitzer Prize (1976 - Humboldt's Gift) and the Nobel Prize for Lite...

I read Ravelstein when it first came out almost 20 years ago - it was a big deal then, everyone pretty sure it was Saul Bellow's last novel, and the period-piece "scandal" of Alan Bloom's AIDS-related death still being news (Ravelstein is pretty much based on Alan Bloom, Bellow's friend, and public intellectual who hit the surprising big time with his hest-seller The Closing of the American Mind in 1987). According to Wikipedia, Bloom's friends still won't confirm he had AIDS, although the ficti...

The wikipedia says it’s a roman à clef – and that the key to it is that Ravelstein is, indeed, Allan Bloom, who was a very intimate friend of Saul B. Bellow was eighty-five when he wrote it, and it was his last book (he died five years later, in 2005). It is evidently mature and deep – his insights are precious as usually. Only now they are clearly the product of an overworked brain. You can almost hear this coming like a jumbled train of thought from a bright, intellectual, happily tired old ma...

Saul Bellow's slim eulogy to the late Allen Bloom in novel form has its moments, but it is ultimately a superficial achievement. Banking on the colorful eccentricities of the late professor of philosophy, Bellow is content to retreat from anything resembling a story. I preferred the intricate weavings of philosophy, art, and life that Bellow was able to create and Herzog, whereas in Ravelstein he takes it for granted that the subject is supremely interesting to the reader. Still, I admit that Be...

Back in high school, I befriended my Freshman English teacher. We bonded over our mutual interest in the more esoteric, philosophical issues that beguile most people in life, but not any that really consume the average person rather than the occasional existential angst. We came to the realization pretty quickly that we both had a yearning appreciation for 'deep conversation' as well as a search for the more fruitful things in life, and not just passively accept what is given to us. I was 15 whe...

Saul Bellow’s novel, Ravelstein is within the literary genre called roman à clé; meaning a novel with a key, or a secret meaning that elucidates otherwise esoteric components of the novel’s plot, characters, or setting. Yes, Bellow’s prose is beautifully fluid, evocative, at times darkly humorous, and engulfing. Yet, the driving question is, what was the key? Those of my own generation are likely too young to so easily recognize, but those who remain with a memory, or a knowledge, of higher poli...

When Toni Morrison publishes a novel, she gets her face on the cover of Time magazine. When Saul Bellow, America's other Nobel Prize-winning writer, publishes a novel, he gets his face on a wanted poster."Ravelstein," Bellow's latest roman clef, is a memorial to his late friend Alan Bloom and an essay on the challenges of biography. It's a masterly piece of writing and his first full-length work in more than a decade, but it will have trouble finding an audience - or forgiveness.Bellow and Bloom...

The last novel Bellow published in his lifetime, Ravelstein is a thinly veiled portrait of Bellow's friend, teacher and author of The Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom. It chronicles their friendship and Bloom's final years suffering from the debilitating effects of HIV. Critically hailed as a miraculous return to form by many when it was published, the novel does contain many hallmarks of Bellow's art. The immense intelligence presiding over the novel, the self-deprecating wit, and his p...

Others are thrown by what they label (lazily, I think) the "stream of consciousness" style of writing. What's actually taking place is a forward moving narrative coupled with the reflections it inspires a la "Henderson, the Rain King", etc. My biggest criticism is that the great charm of the first section disappeared. To be fair, outside circumstances have put my mind in a million places at the time of reading this, so maybe I'm not in the best place to judge. Also, this may be the sort of book

The novel is best when Bellow's Chick ruminates on memories and tells anecdotes about Ravelstein, a wonderfully intimidating and human character. Ravelstein is a novel that will likely prompt a bit of research on a great many topics, and readers should expect to come away with considerable, if superficial, incidental learning. At times Bellow can sound off-puttingly affected. For example,Chick and Ravelstein prefer to bask in their knowledge of more precise French and German idioms, and Bellow l...

A rambling plot-free book that begins tangentially with a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s humour and proceeds to meander here and there creating enormous oxbow lakes of philosophical and literary discourse loosely linked to Bellow’s fictional “account” of his friend “Bloom’s” life. He makes the point himself when he confesses that, he is“using a long footnote to open a serious subject.”I stopped reading the book after sometime. There is no plot and the narrative is narcistic and rambling. Ravelst...

Not as enjoyable as Herzog

Ravelstein is Bloom. Martin Amis liked it heaps.