Talk Back

[Eisworth]

I approached this novel with trepidation, as everything I know about Saul Bellow I learned from Doug's Top 100 Novels review series and The Adventures of Augie March doesn't fare very well there. But the other day I was in the bookstore, and there it was, sitting on a rack next to a big sign that said "Read a book by a Nobel Prize Winner".

That sounded like a reasonable idea, so I bought it. I also enjoyed it, but I'm not quite sure why. I could never decide if I liked the main character Moses Herzog or not. Most of the novel consists of interior dialogue as he deals with the collapse of his marriage and his academic career. He has the habit of mentally writing letters to people both living and dead, a habit that disappears when he finally obtains a measure of redemption in the end.


I enjoyed the book, though. I've never been a Jewish guy from Chicago before, so it was as novel experience.
_________________
Todd Eisworth
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Ohio University

[shaw]

There is another Bellow on the top100 list that I read after Augie March, and I quite liked it.