Word: herzog
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...HERZOG, by Saul Bellow. This long-awaited novel will not quite establish Bellow in his long-reserved place in the U.S. literary pantheon. Though the writing and the characterizations are often brilliant, Anti-Hero Herzog is too passive and maudlin to carry a plot to a wholly satisfactory conclusion...
...Bellow Herzog...
...HERZOG, by Saul Bellow. This long-awaited novel will not quite establish Bellow in his long-reserved place in the U.S. literary pantheon. Though the writing and the characterizations are often brilliant, and each single page is a delight. Anti-Hero Herzog is too passive and maudlin to carry a plot to a wholly satisfactory conclusion...
...Dust. But if Herzog is an emotional deadbeat, other characters have plenty of chutzpah. Herzog's wife Madeleine is the perfect man killer with her cold, carnivorous smile, her facial tic and gnawed nails; she strips Herzog of his bank account during the day, ridicules him into impotence at night; after meals she is in the habit of applying her lipstick while gazing at her reflection in a knife blade. Her lover, Valentine Gersbach, is an ex-disk jockey who loves to "yuk it up" with intellectuals, gives Herzog fatherly lectures on how to get along with his wife...
...chief character, Bellow's prose is sometimes pudding-soft, mushy and too sweet; but at other times it is as good as anything he has written. In fact, where the novel does not limp, it moves majestically, as in a grimly tender description of the death of Herzog's mother. It is just that Bellow does not seem to be covering any new ground. Toward the end, Herzog reflects: "I look at myself and see chest, thighs, feet-a head. This strange organization, I know it will die. And inside -something, something, happiness . . . Something produces intensity, a holy...