The Adventures of Augie March

By: Saul Bellow

Narrated by: Tom Parker

Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.©1949 Saul Bellow (P)1993 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Well crafted narration, vivid language, imaginative storyline

While I wasn’t wild about the readers voice, Bellows writing makes it worth listening to. The second time reading it 20 years later, the slow-ish beginning pays off in wild and unforeseen adventures worth the listen. I first picked this up in my 20’s while traveling from Russia to the UK while utterly broke. Augies adventures more than made up for my lack of dough and made the trip so much better. Reading second time was a bit of reliving those days lolling around parks and cafes reading.

Wow!

The writing is often closer to poetry than to story telling. I’ve read two or three other books by Bellow (Humboldt, Herzog) but this is the best I’ve read so far. Fascinating characters, great writing. The reading also very good, though once in a while the reader mis-pronounced a title or foreign word, but no big deal - he has a good ear for the characters he is reciting. The prose moves so quickly that I am tempted to start again from the beginning.

Great Novel

Great novel by an almost forgotten master. Very well written and captures a fictional life with all the real flavorful details of the era(s).

Very long

There is no real plot. It is very long with what seems hundreds of characters. It is more stream-of-consciousness than a structured plot.

A lousy choice for 1Book 1Chicago

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

To some friends only -- those who are into literary fiction that has no real plot. I would recommend it to persons who revel in language and turns of a good phrase, to people who are so well educated as to "get" all the references, allusions and "inside" jokes. I would not recommend it to a traveler needing a long read. I gave it to my son for a trip to London and he gave up after 20 pp. It's a tough sell, this book. It is based in Chicago (mostly). It is about a boy growing up and how he makes his choices and finds a way to live a life that is not a disappointment. But Augie's telling of it (1st person) is so tedious, so drawn out that even at the end I could not champion the boy's overcomings. Few (1 or 2) characters were interesting and memorable -- and Augie is NOT one of them. Some of the episodes of his life were interesting. none was laugh out loud or tear-jerking.

By the end, I believe Bellow summoned up every "great" book ever written -- and he managed to incorporate no less than Don Quijote de La Mancha, Frankenstein, Robinson Crusoe and a hundred other ancient texts and parables as well.

I felt as if I was watching as Bellow trotted out his lofty education, as if he wanted the reader to know he had "made it." I am not speaking of Augie March, but of the author himself.

I cannot understand how this was a Nobel winner. Yes, it details the life of a young Jewish American boy, and it underscores the myths of what makes a life, but really, it's just too tedious. Augie's sufferings are minor, his joys are diluted, his fears are tepid, his actions are null -- if action is what you call his responses.

So, what was good about it? Language, references to those arcane texts (if you're into the scholarly stuff). Unbelievably, there were no dates of any sort. No placement on the timeline, though all the literature says it starts in Depression era Chicago. We can surmise through the aging of the characters that it ends in the late 50s, early 1960s, but not sure. Perhaps this is Bellow's idea of making it an everyman bildungsroman that could land in any era, but I found it inaccessible.

Am I glad I read it? Yes... another notch on the bookshelf.. I feel I accomplished a great feat by finishing it and trying hard to exact some value from it.

Recommend it? Yes, with the qualifications stated above.

Has The Adventures of Augie March turned you off from other books in this genre?

No..

What about Tom Parker???s performance did you like?

Clarity, emotion (where none was in the text), apparent effort to make us care about the characters who were white-washed and stiff.

Did The Adventures of Augie March inspire you to do anything?

Some thoughts of Augie's are very deep and profound. It will cause me to go back to my highlighted passages (Kindle and Audible) because they did resonate with me and I felt some of the philosphies applied to me.

Any additional comments?

Taking on this text requires a dedication that may work best in intervals. It is valuable because it is part of the canon of American literature. As for being a Chicago-based book.. I don't think so. There are about 4-5 chapters that transpire in Mexico, some more in Paris, and others in New York. Except for Augie's propensity to deal in certain illicit activities (and that's not specific to Chicago either), Chicago is only mentioned in wistful reminiscences or references to where characters hang out, get the streetcar, go and party, etc.

I expected more ethnicity out of this Chicago born Jewish writer. It just was not there. Adjust your expectations and it will be fine.