Word: ravelstein
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...much worth discussing. And he was right. For a quarter-century, untold thousands of people who never heard of Delmore Schwartz have read Humboldt's Gift and been beguiled by its stand-alone fictional power. That is what thousands more, knowing nothing of Allan Bloom, will eventually find in Ravelstein...
...novel, like Humboldt's Gift, portrays the effects of a powerful personality on an impressionable observer, in this case Chick, the narrator. Abe Ravelstein, his friend and academic colleague at a university in Chicago, has recently astounded everyone, including himself, by writing a book that has made him enormously rich. "That Ravelstein's most serious ideas, put into his book, should have made him a millionaire was certainly funny," Chick notes. "It took the genius of capitalism to make a valuable commodity out of thoughts, opinions, teachings...
...Ravelstein owes his good, big fortune to Chick, who suggested that his friend write a book in the hope of bringing his expensive tastes and his professorial income into closer alignment. But Chick does not consider himself Ravelstein's benefactor or mentor: "Though I was his senior by some years he saw himself as my teacher." Chick sees things the same way and willingly obeys Ravelstein's instructions: "He wanted me to write his biography and at the same time he wanted to rescue me from my pernicious habits. He thought I was stuck in privacy and should be restored...
...When Ravelstein becomes ill and starts declining toward death, Chick realizes that the biographical task he had taken on as sport, never believing he would outlive his subject, has turned earnest indeed. Ravelstein is what he finally, after the passage of some duly noted years and difficulties, produces. This is a book, in some sense, about the writing of a book...
That news may produce a few groans in the audience, but any protesters should just settle down for a minute. Plot has never been the sharpest arrow in Bellow's quiver, and Ravelstein holds true to form. It might, like the author's earlier works, be called a novel of ideas, but that is too bloodless a description of Bellow's signature accomplishment. Again, as always before, he portrays people with ideas--sometimes good, sometimes wacky--bumping into one another and sparking unpredictable reactions. Seasoned Bellow readers do not look forward to what will happen next but rather to what...