Ravelstein (Penguin Modern Classics)

Can someone explain to me why this book has gotten glowing reviews and high praise? I've read half of the book and so far, nothing has happened. So OK, Ravelstein is supposed to be Allan Bloom and he's brilliant and witty and Bellow loved him. I am not charmed by Ravelstein/Bloom's charm and scintillating conversation, alas. Bellow also is taking the opportunity to trash his ex-wife in a very nasty and unpleasant way. (Do we really need to hear about her pubic hair? ) My recommendation: if you're curious and want to read it, DON'T pay big bucks for the hardcover. Get it from the library because you probably won't be able to finish it any way.

While I appreciated the chance to spend time again with the unique voice and viewpoint that Saul Bellow brings to each of his works, I am sorry to say that I found the book to be a disappointment. Surprisingly for a Bellow novel, the portrayal of Ravelstein seemed very one-dimensional, and I felt that the decision to devote the last third of this very short book to the narrator's medical problems rather than to a final orchestration of Ravelstein's life and personality was misguided.

To those interested in the subject of this novel (the late political philosopher Allan Bloom) it is most interesting as an illustration of what Bloom would have called (from Plato's Republic) "the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry". I think the purpose of the book (conscious or not) is to suggest that, while the novel's protagonist turned to political philosophy primarily to understand love and death, philosophy did not enable him to understand either one as well as Bellow can in his capacity as a novelist.
Chick's wife Vela is a foil to Bloom ("Ravelstein"). They are both scientists, she natural, he a political philosopher. Both despise natural beauty (trees birds etc.) in favor of their respective studies. But she ignores politics for chaos physics, while Bloom is engaged in what Bellow refers to as a higher duty (we can be assured Bloom did not regard it as a mere duty): the study of man. Both are voluptuous, but Bloom's tastes are informed by a broad view of history and he is not so vain as she. She is dumb about people whereas Bloom is constantly looking at human affairs with all his learning and the perspective it gives and making definitive pronouncements, which Bellow ostensibly does not quarrel with. In fact, Ravelstein ought to be the solution to the problem Bellow has so long struggled with: how to bring the reason of a scholar to bear upon the problems of real human life.
But Bellow sells Bloom short along with the tradition Bloom stood for. In fact, what Bellow describes as an agreement on Bloom's part with Athens and respect for Jerusalem turns, according to Bellow, into an obsession with Jerusalem toward the end of Bloom's life. from the novel, one could say it was under the surface the whole time, and Bloom himself only came to realize his own religious longings when he was about to die. Bloom's science (Socratic philosophy) is supposed to be the highest realization that we cannot live forever, "learning how to die"; but Bellow goes out of his way to suggest that Bloom's attachment to material possessions and people and life belied his supposed perspective on death. His death was unsocratic, and he had to turn to religious concerns despite himself to deal with the pain of leaving the world. Bloom's science, like Vela's, fails to deal with love and death, though it fashions a much more elaborate illusion that it has.
This book illustrates the old maxims about poets. They concentrate on the particular to the exclusion of the general ideas behind particulars. They are also enslaved to opinion. As a man dependent upon an audience, Bellow is proud to appeal to the "wider interest" as he announces on page 6, and so he skims over the rational confrontation with death in philosophy for the task of vindicating the common man's counter-rational attachment to an afterlife. He also admits the incapacity of art to comprehend women and instead flatters his wife (making her out to have a superior understanding of love than Bloom) for flattering him with her attentions when he was sick. Bellow is intrigued by the world and its phenomena and wants to observe them like the philosopher does, but in the end he cannot reconcile this observation with the fact of death and the isolation and vulnerability of the individual in light of death. So he clings to particulars, popular distortions, and love uncritically elevated to supreme status.
This of course is not the character of Bloom's eros in deed or concept. the fact that Bellow is obscuring Bloom's true superiority comes out in that Bellow does not even mention Love and Friendship, which Bloom wrote during the severe illness that eventually killed him. This work of clear philosophic interpretation of Eros ("Athens" over "Jerusalem") eclipses Bellow's views and understandings of the phenomena of love and death. It refutes Bellow's complacent views on human nature, God, and love and puts Bloom in a league that vitiates the very attempt to do what Bellow claims he has done -- show us something important about the Man behind the Ideas.
Bellow mentions that Bloom thinks the "highest function of our species" is love; and that according to Plato living by Nature or Eros is a strong life compared to a weak modern life. But he does not say that according to Bloom and Plato natural Eros is for Logos and the strong life is the life of philosophy. The reader is not even let in on the fact that the dispute is between this (here undeveloped) robust foundation of philosophy and poetry: no connection is made between Bloom's philosophy and his eros, they are made in fact to seem like accidental conjunctions or even incompatible aspects of his character, and so cannot stand up to the challenge of the common appeal of Bellow's compromising position. Bellow manipulates our view of Bloom to make the wishy-washy appear more satisfying than the "hard" insight of Bloom into the human condition. In this novel, poetry seems to win the "old quarrel", but readers should be aware that it does so only by obscuring the facts of the case at hand.

This fictionalized portrait of Bellow's friend Allan Bloom captures a brilliant, eccentric, unpredictable "public intellectual" in his last days. Pundits on the right and the left tried to pigeonhole him, but Bloom remained his own person to the end, and inspired Bellow to write his best book in years.

Having read *Ravelstein*, I feel as if awakened from a nightmare: gripped by absolute fear, yet barely knowing the meaning of the dream. This story, published in the year 2000, is a walking shadow of the twentieth century: It is a tale told by an idiot, *void* of sound and jury, signifying everything. Everything, that is, that one could be brought to willfully see; but, there is so much else we would rather.

Although the character Ravelstein is essentially Allan Bloom, it cannot be said that Chick is substantially Saul Bellow. The narrator, Chick, is of lesser stature than his creator. Chick is not as famous, not so wealthy, easygoing, less conscientious, and less intelligent (for Chick writes of Pasadena as hosting the Orange Bowl; he believes that a "Sword of Dimwitocles", no doubt phallic in nature, has a spell over him; and he is happy to see his books make it to the low-end best-seller list, earning only middling returns). Despite Chick's shortcomings, he, at heart, is indeed Bellow, for Ravelstein and Chick are close friends, "none closer," just as Bloom and Bellow had been. One suspects that Bellow writes about Bloom from a feigned lowly stature because he sought to soften the blow of the most subtle insight that is to be revealed about his friend. But there are at least two other good reasons. First, Bellow uses the "dim" and jealous Chick to color (green, naturally) the friendship in question; we must scrutinize the characterizations of Ravelstein in order to out the truth, that being the realness of the friendship beneath the envy. Second, Bellow's respect for Bloom, whether in the flesh or in remembrance, was such that he did not want to sink to affectations that would have displeased Bloom. So, Bellow stood his safe distance, and the result was art.

*Ravelstein* is, unmistakably, a seamless masterpiece about achieving redemption in an age of nihilism. Any failure to discern this theme is to confuse salvation with redemption, and to miss the greatness of this novel. There are four heroes in this work, each either a redeemer or a sinner. Chick, a representative of American nihilism, finds redemption in the love of his wife, Rosamund, as well as in his "personal metaphysics" in which truths are revealed to him in epiphanies. Rosamund, plain and angelic, is the second one, a heroine not unlike Mother Mary, whose love is the rarest of all, the love one has for another. Ravelstein is a hero as well. We do not read much praise about how exactly he was one of "mankind's benefactors," nor are we told exactly what was so esoteric about his knowledge (some people believe that Bloom's *Closing of the American Mind* was a difficult read and therefore "esoteric"!). Supposedly, all of that is beside the point, or so says Chick. Ravelstein turns out not only to be a hero, but a tragic one at that. This is Bellow's one and only underlying criticism of his friend -- to the extent that truthful observations, which could only have arisen out of a thorough understanding of soul, may be called criticism.

Understanding the heroic nature of the three men and one woman first requires one to understand what is common or uncommon about them. Rosamund would seem to be uncommonly perfect. Chick has a "pernicious habit." Ravelstein has a "reckless sex habit." Many have faulted Bellow for outing Bloom, not only as an "invert," but moreover, as reckless. Ravelstein died of the infections that come with having AIDS. Couldn't Bellow have just omitted that minor detail, whether actual or fictitious? Bellow viewed Bloom as a *great* friend. He reserves the word 'great' in its basic sense to speak of great evil, great politics, and another great man -- but not of Ravelstein. A great man who engages in great politics would not end up in tragic circumstances.

The paradoxes of Ravelstein, presented only on their surface by Chick, must be unraveled. Ravelstein had been a Jew -- actually, at the time of his death, he still considered himself a Jew -- but was also said to be an atheist. How could God forgive that, and does not a non-believer cease to be Jewish? Goethe wrote that "He who strives on and lives to strive / Can earn redemption still." Another paradox in Ravelstein, not altogether unrelated to his studied atheism, is his recklessness in living, even while he firmly opposed suicide as a Jew. It is Ravelstein, the teacher, who becomes impatient with Chick for appearing to be flippant about suicide. Ravelstein reminds Chick that the Jews believe "when you destroy a human life you destroy an entire world -- the world as it existed for that person." Yet, when it comes to his own life, Ravelstein's habits are not merely "pernicious" (injurious to others) as are Chick's, but reckless and, as the pop psychologists of today would say, self-destructive, or a slower form of dying. Our sorrow in the face of the tragedy is increased rather than reduced by noting that Bellow was only bringing to us an honest appraisal. He should not have needed to apologize for that. Allan Bloom would not have put his intellectually weaker friend in a position of telling the truth, the partial truth.

Contrary to many published reviews that claim *Ravelstein* is meandering or otherwise poorly constructed, I find the book to be concise. And although the story construction is seamless, it bursts at the seams, for its central topic is mentioned only a few times in passing, for example, as the great evil; another signficant mention was that "according to Davarr, who was a very great analyst, German militarism produced the extremest and most horrible nihilism." Bellow had too much respect for the many who died to speak very directly about them, particularly in a story of art that, however, was destined to be politicized. What makes *Ravelstein* a masterpiece of portrayal is how well Chick, an unknowing "dim wit," is able to lay bare the incomprehensible in- humanity. He also ably brings to light the final causes of the most subtle thinkers. Heroic esoterics aside, that seems to me to be the only way to understand, standing from the outside, the two atheist redeemers of *Ravelstein*. Most astonishing was Bellow's juxtaposition of the deaths of the many with his friend's own dying. "How do you suppose ... that a man like Ravelstein might match up his existence -- his daily awareness that he is dying -- with the fact that his attention now is drawn to the many millions who were destroyed in this century."

Non-Jews may wonder what a book with some "Jewish themes" could offer to them. Bellow gently challenges us, in a rather universal way, to use our intelligence -- or, our honest naivete as the case may be -- whether as believer or non-believer, to resist evil ideas and to recognize people of good nature for what they are. In doing so, each may then yet earn redemption.

I wish I knew Abe Ravelstein (Allan Bloom). Ravelstein is portrayed as a larger than life intellectual who is brash, sensitive, quick-witted, quirky, and above all likable. My only wish was that Saul Bellow had written a longer novel about Ravelstein.

The low point in Allan Bloom's notorious Closing of the American Mind -- and what gave the lie to his being a serious thinker -- came when he showed his pride at what he considered a compliment from a talented former student, now studying in Europe: "You are not a political philosopher, but a travel agent." I don't doubt Bloom's student intended his comment as a compliment, which makes it all the more damning, for despite the praise heaped upon Bloom, I cannot help but see him as not just a popularizer, but a trivializer of the literary and philosophical tradition, and a man who truly corrupted the youth that studied under him by infecting them with his attitudes and misconceptions.
Bellow's Ravelstein is supposed to be a thinly veiled portrait of Bloom, and despite the affection and respect its narrator, Chick, shows for Ravelstein, if the details Chick gives of Ravelstein bear even the slightest resemblance to Bloom, one can only conclude that Allan Bloom was the most frightening and extreme example of Nietzsche's cultivated philistine that we may ever see. That Ravelstein is a homosexual is, as one of William Gaddis's characters quipped, just opera; the real scandal is Ravelstein listening to Baroque and Renaissance music "played on the original instruments" -- as if that were a novelty these days! -- on $10,000 dollar loudspeakers at volumes that overwhelm his neighbors despite specially installed soundproofing. Or Ravelstein elevating his taste in clothing designers to world-historic importance. Or Ravelstein spouting the same nonsense about Celine and Flaubert that Bloom put forward in Closing of the American Mind -- Celine's amoral Robinson lived and died by a code? Flaubert's Emma Bovary, spendthrift and social climber, capable of grand passion?
There is a hint of critical irony near the beginning of the book, where Ravelstein holds court in the same Parisian hotel that Michael Jackson, excoriated by Bloom in Closing of the American Mind, is staying in. The idea that Bloom was more kin to the rock stars he criticized is a delicious one, but remains undeveloped.
Theodor Adorno, a real philosopher and musician, might have made some very acid comments on Ravelstein's "listening" habits if he'd been unlucky enough to live to read this book, and if we had his comments, we'd be spared the chore of reading Ravelstein. But Adorno died in 1969, a victim of student harassment for his real commitment to philosophy despite his left leaning sympathies. So it falls upon all of us to examine this depressing catalog of luxury items and received ideas and consider the fate of culture in our time.

I was fascinated by this book, especially because the subject of it ~ Allan Bloom ~ has flowed in and out of my own life over decades. In late 1993 early 1994 I wrote Saul Bellow about my experiences with two Allan Blooms, son and father, dating back to the mid-sixties at Rockford College with the older Allan Bloom. Then in 1989 immediately following a breakthrough in my own research [see, Clifford Brickman, "The Still Soft Voice."] my life again intersected with Allan Bloom, this time the son, and best-selling author of "Closing of the American Mind." Perhaps my writing Saul Bellow helped him with breaking through a writer's block, as he describes in his book. The circles and spirals of time flowing through my own life with the Blooms and Bellow further heightens my interest in Ravelstein.

Imagine for a moment a world populated by Saul Bellow(Chick) clones with think alike wonderful brains. Now...Take a deep breath... We would all be motionless observers and super refined "Yin" type critics of anything and everything that moves, or tries to produce any amount of "Yang" energy. Unfortunately, how can we all make a living writing about nervous little barbed TV artists, powerful bald heads destroyed by excessive sex, overzealous, restless, overdevoted wives ...if they're all now inexistant !

Could we just pump some Ponce de Leon revitalizing fluid into Bellow's bloodstream and keep him writing forever? With even more panache than ever, the 20th (and 2lst?) century's most masterly American novelist richly evokes the complicated interplay of ego and brilliance of life in the upper echelons of Academia, with, once again, a central cerebral Jewish character who is as fascinating to Bellow's goy readers as to his credal peers. Bravo! Maestro. Encore! Encore!

Perhaps because I thought I was reading a novel and not a thinly disguised biography of someone Bellow knew (and whom I do not), Ravelstein left me cold. Bellow has always been a favorite of mine, and I picked up this book with great anticipation, read it, and put it down with great disappointment. (Maybe I missed something, but what WAS all that rambling off at the end about Chick's fish poisoning?).
I'll stick with Henderson the Rain King and Humboldt's Gift, thank you.

The plot twists, spirals & thickens.

Today I received an invite about,
Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow (Great Books of the 20th Century)

We're connected with Ravelstein ~ a long story over many years, and a long Bellow-type letter to Bellow about Bloom, with an intent to encourage Professor Bellow to write about his deceased friend. Perhaps he and they would have done so even without the encouragement, I do not know.

Will say more about this, perhaps a video too, on Unraveling Ravelstein, how we just might be related to the puzzle,
The Still, Soft Voice. New Frontier of Self. Breaking Through to the Inner Core of Consciousness,

Best of luck, unraveling,
Cliff

~

I would never have finished this book except my book club chose it and I felt obligated to finish. It was an utter waste of time. It portrayed academia at its worst - snobbish, cultish,name-dropping, using people, especially students, self-centered. It was disorganized and senile. What's the point of repeatedly putting in "the-ah, the-ah"? Just say he stammers. The professor's selfish, luxurious life was disgusting. Maybe it was supposed to be about old age and decripitude. Despite all the philosophical meandering, I saw nothing worth sharing. What a contrast to Tuesdays with Morrie! There someone shared a final journey and cared about people!

This an excruciatingly short review:
If you rearrange the letters in RAVELSTEIN and add an O, you will have REVELATIONS. Does this encoded word refer to the treatment of Bloom? Or does it reflect the author's feeling that his work is somehow God-given?

I had heard Bellow was a fine author; Ravelstein is not my idea of a fine novel. I can't give it a rating because I didn't feel like finishing it - I left at around page 100, at which point it is the author's fault for not keeping me involved. My main dislike is the incessant name-dropping. Can we read a page without hearing about a quick one liner about Plato or Machiavelli? Congratulations narrator/author, you've read these books. I prefer authors who've read them and use them, not that talk about reading them. I never really cared for any of the characters, including the rich professor.