The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Modern Classics)

Augie March had an interesting life in his teens and twenties. We follow him through the Great Depression and WW2. The Depression is summed up in a rich, cagy cripple named Einhorn. The war is largely spent in a lifeboat with a maniac.
Augie's greatest adventures are romantic. The leading ladies are assertive Thea Fenchel and beautiful Stella. Thea chases Augie down, despite the fact that it is her sister who Augie has a crush on. But Augie is led by the nose, and doesn't have a chance against a strong willed woman. She drags him to Mexico to bag an eagle and train it to hunt giant lizards. Like Augie, the eagle disappoints her.
Then there's beautiful Stella, damsel in distress, asking Augie to rescue her from a man and a situation. Thea says Don't you dare! But our Augie can't say no to a damsel in distress. When he is rescuing her the car breaks down, they spend the night together, yada yada yada.
In the end, Augie ends up marrying someone. He's the type of guy who really just wants unity with a special someone, a loving wife and a happy family. Either of these girls could have bagged him like an eagle in a sack. So could any other girl with a strong will. Just grab him by the ear and pull him to the Justice of the Peace.

Martin Amis calls this the Great American Novel. It is difficult to disagree. I am not an American, but I'm a great admirer of contemporary American writers like Philip Roth, John Updike and Norman Mailer. No one , I think, has given me a sense of what it means to be an American quite like Saul Bellow. It is difficult to think of another novel as representative of the cacophonic genius of America as this one. Despite the very American setting and language, like all great books it achieves a universal resonance. This is largely because of Bellow's genius for rendering into words those unspeakable yearnings of the human heart. The title of the book is ironic; all life is an adventure, yours, mine and March's. Bellow has taken it upon himself to fill us with a sense of wonder about life's possibilities.

some reviewers have complained "augie march" is a hard read, and to a certain extent they are right. i'm an experienced reader myself and found i needed a good 150 pages to settle into bellow's style. but boy, was it worth it! and now i have the pleasure of carrying augie around inside my head -- and a fascinating companion he makes. to those of you who threw in the towel i direct your attention to the priceless "how to read a book" by van doren and adler. flip straight to chapter 21, "reading and the growth of the mind" and slurp it up. a wonderful 9- or 10-page essay that'll give you the strength to keep turning those pages, and help reveal jewels like "augie march" for the treasures they are.

Forgive me for gushing, but this is a work unequaled among modern American novels. Bellow's novels are invariably thoughtful, playful, funny and profound, and this is his greatest.

No, (as the reviews below attest) its not a novel to dip into between servings of the latest pablum masking as literature. It takes a little work on the reader's part, as do all of Bellow's works, but the pay-off is enormous.

It's instructive that reviewers below who've panned the book haven't read other Bellow before coming to Augie March. Bellow's writing style - long, elegant sentences full of digressions and asides - can be difficult until you find their rythmn, which typically takes 50-100 pages, but once you do the poetry of the book carries you along with little effort. And Augie March is the densest of Bellow's books, so the learning curve can be longer than usual, certainly when you havent read other Bellow.

Stick with the book. like all great literature, it rewards concentrated reading.

Slow moving story of a young romantic growing up in Depression torn Chicago. Augie pursues love, happiness, and the meaning of life. Unfortunately Augie finds only unhappiness in his pursiut for love, while he learns to understand life only when it has dealt him misfortune.
The supporting charcters are compelling and memorable and Augie learns from everyone he encounters.
My difficulty was with Bellow's prose which was long and ponderous and sometimes over my head. I would re-read many paragraphs and still not completely understand what Bellow was trying to say.
Also if this book was supposed to be comedic the humor was lost on me.

Augie March is a modern Coloumbus discovering America. Bellows, master of the complicated single character narrative, paints Augie's childhood strongly illuminating his relationship to money. Augie was born poor. This is contrasted with Grandma Lauch's desire to have Augie and his brother Simon become gentlemen. She strives to teach them manners without the world to match the image materially. She eventually gets thrown away into a old age home where they rarely visit. Characters are disposed of, like Augie's mother, who goes to a home for the blind and his other brother George, a mental handicapped boy. George eventually marries rich and then disposes of Augie all together after Augie is no longer a viable product for marriage to one of his wife's daughters. Augie trades on his cowtowing and good looks to break into wealth circles, but this is far from a novel of manners. Augie's grit reflects that of all social classes, that of all of America. Simon goes as far as to boorishly tear his new mother-in-laws clothes off at the dinner table in a joke as to how poorly she dressed. Augie paints himself as a victim to everyone else's plans, they are never his own. A friend gets pregnant and comes to Augie to help with an abortion. Another suggests that he start stealing books. When he begins stealing quarters as a child from his job, it was again someone else's idea. It is only when he decides to get surgery to allow him to join the military does he start to live for himself. But ultimately he is tied up by an insane crewmate whose life he saved, again plays victim to luck and chance. It reminded me of the Stephen Crane story "The Open Boat" with all its naturalistic undertones. If this victimization and materialism has a sort of counterpoint it may be suggested that it comes in love. However, emotion falls behind the ability of a man to take care of a woman financially, or provide her with copious excitement. The "connections" that form fall away. Like many (all of the Bellows books I have read) the main character is a free wielding one man army of insatiable cravings ("I want I want," says Henderson). I found myself less interested in Augie than Henderson or Herzog. Bellows vignette style, along with providing multifarious facts about a character falls short at times for its failure to outline Augie's motives. I can follow what he does, and be interested in what he does, but without a impetus I can understand why some people mentioned they had a hard time finishing this book. I did not, however. I love Bellow's philosophical styling's and would have liked to see a stronger singular perspective been developed for Augie. This is a bildungsroman that never matures. Perhaps another viewpoint would be to read this in a post-modern light where ennui and nihilism and Marxism coalesce for the character that is going everywhere and nowhere at once. However I believe this has been said better (Gravity's Rainbow) and more simply (On the Road). And if Bellows later works are any indication he seems to be more of a modernist writer. This is a great artist who has not found a solid enough footing to produce the cohesive novels of his later years. Any part of the book, isolated, is a great read.

Augie March is Saul Bellow.

What an effective technique, writing a novel about yourself, an autobiography really, because you can play with the facts and draw on your experience to make the best of both worlds. It has to be such, because this long book is full of so much intimate detail.

Oh, of course, Augie March's adventures are not all true, not all of them. It's fictionalized for effect, but it's just truer in some respects than many novels. Maybe that also explains why it seems to drag and get boring so often.

Knowing nothing of Saul Bellow's life, I can't really say how much Saul and Augie resemble each other, but I'm sure there's a knowledgeable English professor out there somewhere who has studied and written about Bellow, his life, his works, and their interweaving.

Those who can't do, teach, or maybe they write. Augie admits that he can't do much, so he writes to fill up the empty space in his life.

Augie narrates the entire story in the first person, just as an autobiographer does. However, Augie is not an "important" personage, at least not in the public's eye, so his story is "fiction," so to speak.

However, it is interesting. This is my first reading of Bellow. I know he became highly respected as he continued to write, and I do intend to read more of his oeuvre.

He's verbose and a little confusing at times, but nevertheless, he's interesting, him and Augie both, Augie being his alter ego.

Augie March is the second son in a small and relatively poor family. His father has disappeared. His mother is passive and a surrogate grandmother moves in to rule the young household. This all takes place on Chicago's South Side toward the end of the 1930's, and we then follow Augie through the end of the Second World War, when he ends up in Paris helping to run some kind of black market operation on surplus Army supplies.

Augie's brother, Simon, marries into a family with money and then makes his own fortune. In the book's last chapter, we get the denouement of Simon's life story, an ill-fated tryst with a paramour who then tries to sue him.

Augie, meanwhile, meanders here and there, in a seemingly aimless path, keeping a journal because of all the free time he has, so he tells us.

He takes up with various women, rich and poor, does some petty crime with an old homeboy, and reads constantly, whenever he can, educating himself.

He breaks a bone falling off a horse while training an eagle in Mexico with his girlfriend, so the military will not accept him, and instead, he joins the Merchant Marines. His boat is blown to bits and he finds himself, along with the ship's carpenter, as the lone two survivors, as far as they know. This part is hard to believe, among other parts, but who cares? It's real enough.

All through his narration, Augie gives us various philosophical tidbits to think about, for example, when he and his boat mate, the ship's carpenter who has a degree in biophysics or some such are discussing why humans get bored and amoebas don't. A question I often ask myself, sort of.

Or Augie writes: "People don't do what they have a talent for but what the preoccupation leads to...(for example) If they're good at auto-repairing they have to sing Don Giovanni...It's having to prove full and ultimate self-sufficiency or some such monster dream that you don't need anyone else to do these things for you."

This little bit of Augie's philosophy really hit home with me, and it described my feelings "to a tee" (so to speak).

Augie's romantic experiences never quite spill over into the profane or pornographic, but they get close. He travels to a small town outside of Mexico City (Acatla) to be with one sweetheart, a rich and eccentric young woman who finally jilts him, though he was first untrue to her.

There are too many other characters in Augie's narration to even keep track of. I started highlighting people's names, to help me remember them, because they keep recurring, just as people come and go in each of our lives. Nevertheless, it did not help: I still could not keep everyone straight in Augie's long story.

Augie's brother, Simon, stands out, and his mentor, Einhorn, the crippled man who still manages to make it the best way he can. The Mexican, Padilla, is an interesting character, an apparent mathematical genius, and with a good heart.

Augie's women are not very appealing. His mother is kindly but seemingly lost due in part to loss of vision as she aged. Grandma Lausch is too much of an autocrat, small kingdom or no.

Augie's Greek girlfriend, Sofie, seems good-hearted and she certainly was not a prude.

Stella, a minor actress whom he ends up marrying after meeting her in Mexico, is pleasant, up to a point, but later Augie learns about her "sugar daddy" and a little habit Stella has of not telling the truth.

Anyway, the crux of the matter is that, if you like long and involved novels, that go nowhere and everywhere at the same time, this is your book.

It's nothing like the quick and dirty novels that cloy the best-seller lists today, but it should hold up over time, especially for the unique perspective of Augie March, aka Saul Bellow, growing up in the Chicago of that era.

In that geographic respect, Augie/Saul share Chicago with Nelson Algren, although he was a little bit later in sequence, and with Nelson's friend, Studs Terkel, the "working" person's writer.

Diximus.

It is really quite amazing how people throw around the highest grades/stars, and belch out "Masterpiece" because they were entertained until the word has been rendered meaningless. When I saw this book on the top 100 list, I had to ask myself "How many judges work for Random House"? I am a big fan of Bellow's when he sticks to chronicling the plight of intellectuals in Americana a la "More Die of A Heartbreak", "Herzog" and "Humboldt's Gift", than with the bored bourgeoise protagonists (always men) in this novel and "Henderson the Rain King". There is nothing to take away from reading this novel. It has nothing to say that other coming of age books such as Stendahl's "The Red & the Black" or Maughm's "Of Human Bondage" say with far more superiority. And that whole bit with the bird in Mexico was just more filler. Either he had been reading too much D.H. Lawrence at the time, or he does not disdain the beat poets as much as he would like to believe.
When Bellow is on, there are about two or three living American authors (Delillo, Toni Morrison, Barth?) that can touch him. This is kid's stuff.

Anyone who has ever wondered where life is taking them will appreciate Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March." Bellow takes readers on a colorful journey through Depression-era Chicago, incorporating numerous characters, all of whom are memorable. But the strength of "March" lies in it's message. Simply, "the only possessing is of the moment. If you're able." Augie fails a lot in this book, but Bellow is proud of his protagonist, for it is through these failures that Augie eventually succeeds. It is through these failures that he ultimately gains possession of the moment. This book is a wonderful commentary on human nature and the forces which drive us to succeed. Anyone reading this book will gain a new appreciation for Bellow's interpretation of meaningful success. I can't recommend this book enough.

I have stopped reading Bellow. Because he is dead and wont be writing any more, and I am only 19 and still have most of my life in front of me and a limited number of his books to read.

Augie March is a not a flawless work, but it does embody every theme

that makes a book by Saul Bellow unique. Sentences that are long and deeply descriptive and, literally leave you breathless. He describes not characters but souls. People you can see and hear, not just static figures. At the end of his novels, you will know these people better than you know most real people.

Augie March, an illegitimate child, with his two brothers and mother, under the strict supervision of Grandma Lausch , their tenant, grows up in Chicago and has many adventures along the way to discovering the meaning of life, his life. That's the story, spanning probably thirty years of his life. Whether he finds it is left ambiguous.

Anthony Burgess once wrote that a novels worth is measured by the philosophical residue it leaves behind. On that basis alone, Augie March would be one of the best novels written in this century. In society, our worth is measured by achievements. Both the March brothers realize this :One marries a rich woman and forms a large business, grows rich, fat and unhappy, while the other takes his own route or rather paves his path as he goes along. Augie March, becomes a book-thief, an eagle trainer, Trotsky's bodyguard(or nearly), and finally gets stuck on a job as a war profiteer, never aligning himself to a particular ideology, and generally `fitting in others peoples plans.' Augie is not a stereotype, angry and disillusioned, but rather more sensitive, somebody with real depth. Towards the end he does have his epiphany, he finds his `axial lines', but is not able to put it to any practical use.

Definitely the book could have 50-pages shorter, March's exploits in Mexico and his abandonment on a boat with a sociopath who has an interesting theory on boredom, are over the top. But nobody but Bellow could have written about youth and the longing for greatness, or at least a meaningful life.

Augie March takes the lead among Citrine, Herzog, Henderson in the group of characters that Bellow created, men who want something more than this world could provide and dared to go out and find it. To bad he wont create any more...

absolutely essential if you are a young man (in his twenties) like i am. this is an exploration of a boys quest for other peoples pragmatism which at first, in each case he beleives to be beyond him by way of the affectations of absolute understanding imposed on his attentive personnality by them. these people define their own reality by their own authority whereas augie has not the confidence to do this. the turning point in the novel is when he realises that these people have no more authority than he does. this he realises from his meeting this girl "thea" who overshoots all of the boundaries that have been set by his previous opressive but intently beneficial influences. bellow finally concludes by introducing a new character that is a figure for endurance (as is the millionaire cripple einhorn) and suggesting that although augie is with an inapropriate whoman, and that he may never find it, that he will never give up on the idea that he will find love.
it is a difficult book with some obscure (modernist) proustian strange stuff that is incongruous with the down to earth pragmatism of the theme. but it is beutiffully written. and i found it a hard slog but am so glad that i endured it - things in life are often difficult. this is my desert island book. its greatness didnt hit me at first, but it did, and now i am convinced that if i hadnt read it i would lack ninety nine percent of the success that i have had since.
my language fails me. just read it.

I wanted to love this book because I thought Ravelstein and Herzog were great, but Augie March was a bit tedious for me. I thought the prose was remarkable but I didn't care for the story or like Augie too much.

Yes Ok the book deals well with relationships but to allude that Augie March had adventures is misleading. The most interesting part of the book is the "hero's" name and the lizard. Yes Augie you "....may well be a flop", that was the most relevant statement in the book and it came on page 536. I just wanted the book to get started and it was over.

Augie is born in the early nineteen-hundreds in Chicago. He doesn't have a father. Nobody seems to know who, exactly, left his simple-minded mother alone with Augie, his ambitious older brother Simon, and their mentally retarded younger brother George. Right from childhood, Augie floats from one thing to the next, influenced by whomever he is with. An old woman who appoints herself the boys' surrogate grandmother moves in and tries to shape their lives, and Augie works the jobs she sets up, tells the lies she instructs him to tell, and hands over his money to her.

During his teen years, Augie continues to drift from one situation to the next, letting himself fall in with thieves and becoming one of them, or letting himself fall in with rich folks and feeling at home with them.

Girls flatter him and get him to do things for them--travel long distances, lend them money, help them escape from unpleasant husbands. Augie seems to always feel like he is meant for better things than the rest of those around him. He talks about taking the high road, not allowing the rich couple for whom he works adopt him and make him their heir or not consenting to marry his brother Simon's rich cousin-in-law. But then Augie never finds his own path to greatness, or, indeed, does anything notable in his life. It seems that all of his self-important ideals simply allow him to live as a bum without having to feel guilty about it.

I found the story very draggy, and I really disliked the character of Augie. He had no motivation to do anything and his so-called "adventures" consisted of him following whomever had recently caught his attention into whatever scheme he or she proposed, regardless of the consequences or the hardship his actions caused those surrounding him. This was a tough book to finish.

Fantastic story. Very long and can give more detail than necessary at times. Nothing a skimmer like myself couldn't bypass. One of the first books I've ever read that I could NOT resist underlining and marking up. Saul Bellow truly shines throughout this one.

After the intellectual Left killed off God, they found themselves staring into the abyss; absent God what is the meaning of life? There have been many, mostly feeble, attempts to answer this question. The most disastrous have, of course, been Darwinism--we exist to propagate the species, Hegelianism/Marxism--there are World Historical forces in control and Existentialism--existence is it's own point. Saul Bellow seems to fall into a loose grouping with the Existentialists and The Adventures of Augie March is essentially an existentialist tract. In a return to the style of the picaresque novels (i.e., Tom Jones), Augie March bobs along from Chicago to Mexico to Europe to an open boat in the Atlantic, experiencing life and meeting a variety of characters--observing without judging, experiencing without changing, seeking without finding. Critics claim that this is a life affirming book; but life does not need to be affirmed, it simply is. One recalls Dr. Johnson's response to the argument that the material world does not exist: he kicked a rock and said, "I refute it thus!" The task before us as human beings is to find or bring meaning to life. Great literature illuminates the human condition and reveals truths which help us discern this meaning. Bellow fails in this basic task and does so at mindnumbing length.
GRADE: F

Classic? Why? Slow, plodding and pointless. The style is pretentious and irritating. One doesn't care about any of the numerous characters. The narrator Augie isn't likable, and the so called adventures are nothing but a long string of stories that amount to nothing. Bellow seems to try to use every word he knows and in ways you've never heard in sentences that don't make sense.

This was my first (and probably last) experience with a book by Saul Bellow. I found this book to be extremely difficult to read. I got through about a quarter of it before finally giving up and donating the book to the library. This book might be a classic, but quite honestly I found it boring.

Go to the library and attempt to read this before purchasing. The intelligentsia crowd is somehow attempting to sell this novel (to themselves?). They scare me. Choppy, non-cohesive and altogether boring. That's my truth.