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Title: The Victim: A Novel (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Saul Bellow ISBN: 0-14-018938-6 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: The Victim
Comment: Why is it that Canadians don't understand this book? While I agree it's not Bellow's best work, it's certainly a worthwhile read, painting a memorable portrait of a neurotic New Yorker tripped up by his own erroneous thinking.
Rating: 4
Summary: a tight, beautifully composed narrative
Comment: Surely this is not Bellow's best work, but it's deeply affecting nonetheless. Okay, I'll admit it: I'm an enormous fan of Mr. Bellow's and had this been written by another writer I was less familiar with, I perhaps would have gone the three star route (three and a half--but that isn't an option, so Saul gets rounded up), but there is still a lot to admire here. The prose is gorgeous and, while the story sometimes falls off track, anyone reading should be able to identify with one of the two main characters (or, in my own case, with both of them at different times). It deals with the struggles of the modern world and blaming your own mistakes and misfortune on others to keep up the thin stirrings of hope and an optimistic idea of the future. There is also a lot to say about conformity in a modern world (regardless of the 1947 date of publication, the focus on these elements seems to have become 'modern day timeless', lasting forever as the days and seasons change), and how we are dehumanized by the swift pace and grubbing filth and greed of inhuman business, automated people shuttling to and from whereever it is they for some reason need to be. The way these themes are expressed humanizes this sort of fear and explains the way many people feel as their lives settle down and the sky darkens, with an ominous future of nothing left to look forward to. Now if only Asa weren't so irritating (and believe me--I perfectly love unlikable protagonists, but this guy is kind of grating at times and you often find yourself wishing his nightmare could get worse and worse and worse and worse . . .)
Rating: 5
Summary: A great early novel by our greatest living novelist.
Comment: Saul Bellow's novel, The Victim, first got under my skin about fifteen years ago. It is not an easy book to read, but not because it isn't well written or well conceived. The style of writing here is very clean, particularly in comparison to later works by this same author, and the plot is both very simple and very tight, maybe too tight for readers who prefer to luxuriate in a more leisurely unfolding of events. It seems to me that what makes the novel somewhat difficult is Bellow's nearly claustrophobic presentation of Asa Leventhal's character and dilemma. He places his reader so close to his main character that at times the proximity becomes unbearable. But this is what makes The Victim such a compelling read. I can think of no modern American novel I would recommend more highly than this one.
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Title: Dangling Man (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Saul Bellow ISBN: 0140189351 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren ISBN: 1583220089 Publisher: Seven Stories Press Pub. Date: 05 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Herzog by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth ISBN: 0142437298 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Professor's House (Vintage Classic) by Willa Cather ISBN: 0679731806 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Him With His Foot in His Mouth: And Other Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Saul Bellow ISBN: 0141180234 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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