21. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow

Year Published: 1959
Pages: 330
First Sentence: What made me take this trip to Africa?
Rating: 1/3 (don't bother)

Review:
So I actually think that Saul Bellow is a good writer. I didn't get along with Augie March and I didn't get along with Henderson the Rain King, but I don't think that has anything to do with the quality of the writing for either book.

Our rain king is Eugene Henderson, who inherited a fortune, fought in the Second World War, married twice (three fewer times than Bellow himself), raised pigs, and, in this novel, finds himself in Africa. I should note that everything is not necessarily in this order. What made him take the trip? A voice inside him whispering: I want.

Henderson begins travelling with friends but decides he needs to travel to the interior of the continent. He finds a guide, Romilayu, who brings him to the Arnewi, a group that raises cattle. The Arnewi have a problem, which is that the cistern they use to water their cattle is full of frogs. Henderson offers to solve this problem by setting off a bomb inside the cistern to kill the frogs so that they can be easily removed. The Arnewi agree to this plan and within no time he has actually exploded the whole cistern. He flees.

Next, Henderson and Romilayu travel to the territory of the Wariri. This is where the rain king shenanigans come in, as well as the lions that apparently show up on many version of the cover of the novel, including the Penguin edition that I read. However, it's also a third of the way through and that's where I like to end my summaries.

Henderson is an exceptionally well-realized character. He is someone who is wealthy but lacks culture, self-awareness, or the ability to assess the potential consequences of his actions for other people. He's impulsive and thinks very highly of himself. The characters around him are necessarily in the shadow of such a larger than life creation, but many of them are nevertheless well-developed, too, at least in terms of their behaviour, if not their motivations.

The book is also not the white saviour in Africa narrative that I was primed for by the title, thank God. Henderson is the butt of that particular joke. Aside from several unfortunate facts (i.e. the fact that I have to keep referring to "Africa" because the book isn't set in a particular country or territory, not even a fictional one; or the fact that Saul Bellow had never been to Africa when he wrote the book), this is a lot less racist than the premise might lead one to expect, and it's all down to our point of view character being the bit of a dolt that he is.

When I reviewed The Adventures of Augie March, I wrote a lot about how tired I already was of the whiny young white guy narratives of The List. These are a persistent problem, and Henderson the Rain King seems to be a critique of these even as it falls victim to the same problem. Henderson is a whiny older white guy, essentially in midlife crisis mode. He travels to Africa to find something, and it's ridiculous. His vanity causes him nothing but problems. And here's the thing, I feel like I've been mostly talking about this book positively but really it's just so boring. I had a hard time connecting with the blowhard millionaire at the centre of the book and having any interest in his problems. There are a few funny moments, and a few moments of truth, but overall his story didn't interest me.

Saul Bellow has some more pretty famous works but I'm pleased to say that this is his last book on The List and I don't plan to read any more of his work. If, on the other hand, you want to give a pretty decent author a try, I won't stop you this time.

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Her large, pure face was the same as ever. It would never be steady, but it was beautiful. Only she had dyed her hair. It was now orange, which was not necessary, and it was parted from the middle of her forehead like the two panels of a curtain. It's the curse of these big beauties sometimes that they are short on taste.

- - - - -

I am a nervous and emotional reader. I hold a book up to my face and it takes only one good sentence to turn my brain into a volcano; I begin thinking of everything at once and a regular lava of thought pours down my sides.

- - - - -

But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn't last forever? There may be something in this. And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal? There is no time in bliss. All the clocks were thrown out of heaven.

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81. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Zomg after the next romnov review goes up, it'll be time for a retrospective post! And new books! -M.R.

Uncomfortable Plot Summary: A young man angsts all over this fine continent.

Year Published: 1953
Pages: 586
First Sentence: I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.
Rating: 2/3 (meh)

Webcam pics, ahoy!

Review:
I'm getting frustrated with The List. The Adventures of Augie March is yet another example of the "Dude Feeling Sorry for Himself" genre that seems to occur every other book or so. The narration is invariably in the first person, the story is a nonentity, and there's a very heavy sense of the author behind the words, stroking his ego. It's not quite accurate to say that half of The List so far has consisted of these books, of course, but I can think of at least two other examples: A Bend in the River (which defied convention somewhat by not being about a white dude), and Sophie's Choice (which defied convention somewhat by actually having a plot external to the narrator). And frankly, I'm not interested in these books. In fact, while I'm reading them, I'm less interested in what's happening than in whether anything at all is going to happen, and when the book will finally be over.

Yes, they do brush certain truths about people and life that I find interesting and thought-provoking. But mostly they're boring and hard to relate to. The List is supposed to contain the best books written in the last century. To me, this means that these books should have not just the best writing, but also the best characters, best stories, and all the rest. A book about some random dude wandering through his life, trying to figure out what his place is in the world, and boning lots of beautiful women while he's at it doesn't really constitute a great story and great writing, even if some of the philosophizing makes me nod my head. I can't relate to these books because as a young woman I just barely have the amount of agency that a young man does (debatable, I know). I have enough uncertainty about my own place in the world that I don't really have time or interest in reading about someone else if there isn't also a plot of some kind to keep me engaged (see The Magus for what I think is an excellent example of angsty existentialism that doesn't suck).

But as for Mr. March, his story proceeds like so: raised in a sort of hazily Jewish household by a single mother and an old woman whose children have failed her, Augie holds various jobs through his youth and meets a variety of intriguing individuals. At some point the 30s occur, and Augie gets older and gets into scrapes and just sort of drifts. Much later (the jacket talks about this, but it feels like a spoiler because it doesn't happen 'til pretty far in, so, um, be aware) he hooks up with a rich girl named Thea and they pursue a crazy falconry project together and also bone a lot.

Despite my rant and impatience, this book wasn't all bad. Saul Bellow is an excellent writer, although his style only half appeals to me. There was also a really good bit right around the middle where a friend of Augie's has to get an abortion, which I think is the final argument I'll ever need to see about providing safe access to that particular medical procedure for women. Thea was a very cool character, with probable mental illness and a hobby of catching poisonous snakes. There are actually an astonishing number and variety of characters in the book, including several with disabilities, which was a little unexpected. On the other hand, Bellow lost me for good within the first hundred pages, where he wrote about an old man who could just fondle whoever he wanted, because he could hone in on women's best attributes. That and it was just too meandering. The compelling bits were mired in a lot of, for lack of a better word, blah.

It's not that Augie is a bad dude. He cries when his surrogate grandmother dies, and his heart breaks, and he reads books. It's just that I didn't particularly like him that much, or care about any of that. And I guess that's one of the side effects of The List being compiled mainly by a bunch of old men (I keep talking about this and one of these days I should actually profile these board members or something...): the books that speak loudly to them aren't necessarily the books that speak loudly to me.

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I don't know whether it was the refusal or the emotion of speaking and being spoken to that knocked me down, and I wasn't in any condition to touch around and feel for the trigger, where it was and why it was like a loose tooth.

- - - - -

Imagining how this would be, I melted, my chest got hot, soft, sore, and yearning. I saw it already happening. It's always been like that with me, that fantasy went ahead of me and prepared the way. Or else, as it seems, the big personal van, dark and cumbersome, can't start into strange terrain. But this imagination of mine, like the Roman army out in Spain or Gaul, makes streets and walls even if it's only camping, for the night.

- - - - -

"Let me come with you."
"No."
That was how it was. Nothing as I had foreseen it.

- - - - -

So works of art aren't eternal. So beauty is perishable. Didn't this saintly German wake up many mornings inspired, with joy in his heart? What more can you ask? He couldn't be both happy and sure of being right for eternity. You have to take your chance that being happy is also being right.