Word: reader
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...novella can be considered on two levels--but either way it falls short of what a reader would expect from Bellow. The book could have been a standard mystery story but it provides no real suspense. It also could have been an exercise in subtle symbolism, but it provides no real insights...
...only part of the book that Bellow develops fully is Clara's character. Her name says it all: She is a combination of a naive, good-mannered, rural woman (Clara) and a lustful, svelte, executive yuppie (Velde). Bellow actually addresses the reader, as if to say that Clara, and not the plot, is what's important...
...intense characterization seems useless when Clara admits that she loves the au pair girl and desperately tries to keep her from returning to Vienna. This unexpected twist is completely alien to the character that Bellow so meticulously created. Nothing earlier in the book prepares the reader for such an incongruous revelation. It appears to come from nowhere and undermine any sense of Clara's character which Bellow may have created...
...heart of this enterprise will be the same spirit that infused those two creative dreamers on 17th Street. Our dedication to and respect for you the reader are as strong as ever...
Hovering over his keyboard, Taliaferro cradles the telephone receiver just above the monogrammed RT on his black jersey. Like the capable editor of a small-town newspaper, Taliaferro has the reader by the pulse. He is a leader of his captive constituency: vice president of the Jaycees' Star of the North prison chapter, a leader of a black-culture group and a big editorial voice inside these walls. "I'm a black redneck," he says with a casual smile. If he were free, he'd have voted for George Bush for President even though he thought his candidate didn...