Word: bellowing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When several publishing houses reject a manuscript by a Nobel Prize-winner like Saul Bellow, it's a sure sign that something is wrong. But I was optimistic as I began reading his new novella A Theft, convinced that I would discover an overlooked masterpiece. Unfortunately, all those publishing houses were not wrong...
...Bellow's book is a first-class mystery--and that's not a compliment. True, the plot could be called a mystery in the standard literary sense, but the book's theme, purpose and often its characters are enigmas themselves...
...THEFT by Saul Bellow (Penguin; $6.95). The Nobel laureate offers an original novella in paperback, a vivid new fiction in which the familiar Bellow hero has become a heroine...
...immediate conclusion -- that the culprit is the Haitian boyfriend of her Austrian au pair girl -- will offend liberal sensibilities, especially since it turns out to be correct. Bellow has ruffled racial feathers before, notably in Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) and The Dean's December (1982), and his new heroine's thoughts will not heal those old wounds: "These people came up from the tropical slums to outsmart New York, and with all the rules crumbling here as elsewhere, so that nobody could any longer be clear in his mind about anything, they could do it." But Clara is here...
...Saul Bellow offers a literary bargain: A Theft, his vivid novella, costs $6.95. -- Umberto Eco's latest tome incites Ecomania in Italy...