Word: ravelstein
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Bellow is the narrator of Ravelstein. He assumes the character of "Chick," long a friend to Ravelstein, an intensely intellectual professor at an elite Midwest university...
...Ravelstein taught in comfortable obscurity (though he was in debt), until, at Chick's urging, he put to paper his ideas on the life of the mind. Ravelstein became instantly famous, in the U.S. and overseas. And so, to return the favor, he has asked Chick to write his memoirs. He was traditional, conservative and gay. The book tries not to linger on his homosexuality-Ravelstein certainly didn't consider it the defining aspect of his personality-but since he is dying of AIDS, it is rather unavoidable...
...Some of the exposition, and there is lots of exposition because the book focus on moments, is necessary-watching Ravelstein finger through silks in a Paris boutique, for example. But the reader often longs for something more concrete than the image of an effete, successful intellectual on a Paris shopping binge. The sum of Ravelstein's character is revealed in ordinary interactions, rather than when his intellectual or personal muscles are challenged...
...easy-going and light-hearted style, famed novelist Saul Bellow read excerpts last night from his new novel Ravelstein to a large audience at the First Parish in Cambridge. He stopped afterwards to pose for pictures and meet with admirers...
...There's no denying the engaging quality of Bellow's reflections on the power and mystery of friendship" wrote Ron Charles in his Christian Science Monitor review of Ravelstien. As audience members found out on yesterday evening, the novel begins in the early 1990s and documents Abe Ravelstein' s ostentatious lifestyle and tragic death from AIDS...