Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize. And after his recent death, numerous respectful eulogies proclaimed that the BIG issues of soul and conscience were at the center of his fiction. So who am I, a nobody, to say that THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH is boring? Nonetheless, I say that the experience of reading this "classic" of American fiction is akin to watching the Home Shopping Network. You know how those HSN salespeople show some object, pour on the details, and then move onto the next tacky item? Well, that's how AUGIE struck me. You see, what Bellow does in this novel is to focus on the characters that Augie meets as he matures, moving from people who populate his boyhood, to those who populate his adolescence, and onward. And, as Bellow introduces these characters, he heaps, he piles, he shovels on the details. Once in a while, one of his endless descriptions comes to life and the character makes sense. But, what I usually got from these descriptions is pointless and self-indulgent craft. The stuff is absolutely eye glazing. In my case, I put up the good fight and tried to push through these descriptions. But, my reward was-Gaa!-another endless and tedious description, usually of a character that didn't reappear. Yes, some characters do reappear. But, you know what? Then, you often don't remember anything about them. They're strangers, even though Bellow has told you what kind of sandwich they like or how they pull on their pants. The descriptions just don't resonate. I bet that people who like this book start off with the premise that Bellow is brilliant. (Only a writer who considers himself, or herself, brilliant, by the way, would ever write such a book.) And if you think the guy is brilliant, you look at his descriptions and see rich and complex nuggets of great descriptive writing. It's brilliant! But if you're a working stiff like me and want to end your day with a good story about a character moving through an emotional challenge, AUGIE is not for you. Instead, it's a chance to go back to college, where professors assign great books that totally turn off the average person to literature. But, say you're the sort of person who likes to end the day with a progression of baubles? Then, turn on HSN instead. On HSN, at least they're trying to communicate. This book is just a writer indulging himself, a real show-off, Augie might say.