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Humboldt's Gift Paperback | Pages: 487 pages
Rating: 3.86 | 8059 Users | 541 Reviews

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Original Title: Humboldt's Gift
ISBN: 0140189440 (ISBN13: 9780140189445)
Edition Language: English
Characters: Charlie Citrine, Von Humboldt Fleisher, Renata Koffritz, Rinaldo Cantabile, Pierre Thaxter, Denise Citrine, Demmie Vonghel
Setting: Chicago, Illinois(United States) New York City, New York(United States)
Literary Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1976), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1976), Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction (1976)

Representaion Conducive To Books Humboldt's Gift

The novel, for which Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's own creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course.

Declare Appertaining To Books Humboldt's Gift

Title:Humboldt's Gift
Author:Saul Bellow
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Deluxe Edition
Pages:Pages: 487 pages
Published:June 1st 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published 1975)
Categories:Fiction. Classics. Literature

Rating Appertaining To Books Humboldt's Gift
Ratings: 3.86 From 8059 Users | 541 Reviews

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I have mixed feelings about the overall literary quality of this book, but I'm glad I read it because Bellow is a good teacher, very good at mixing abstract thought (here death, the soul, and the possibility of a vital American poetry are the biggest concerns) with the plot, action, character, and the other stuff of life and novels. Really, Humboldt's Gift reads like a clinic on this novelistic skill, but more in the way of an exercise book than a masterpiece. The two writers I thought of most

When Charlie Citrines lover Renata said When you get to the story let me know, Im not big on philosophy, she hit the bulls-eye. I have never before read a more pretentious glob of self-indulgent philosophizing, high-brow name-dropping, and conceited intellectualism. You realize a novel isnt working when you catch yourself frequently checking how many pages remain. I kept at it only out of respect for Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel-laureate Saul Bellow, as the author of the masterpiece The

I don't know what it is, but Bellow's books just go down easy for me. I can (and have) read them in one or two or five very long sittings, enjoying myself enough to just refuse to take my eyes off the page. There's something about his protagonists- the nervy, learned, spunky, earthy, thoughtful and hyper-attentive 30-40 year old males which seems to resonate with me over and over again. I seriously thought about making a special category on my bookshelves for "old-drunk-wannabe-writer" books

I keep getting drawn back to Saul Bellows novels like a crazy-ass bee to a barren flower. I must love the disappointment, the confusion, the frustration. Im a literature masochist. Bellow sees my eagerness, my dog-like enthusiasm, beckons me in closer...and then smacks me on the nose. His novels are never truly satisfying; they almost enrage me. How could a man be so talented, such a great writer, and yet churn out such flawed books? In truth, I dont know how to review Humbodts Gift. It defeats

Transcendental. Profound. Scholarly. Challenging. Invigorating. Agile. A literary treasure. Citrine lives and breathes with the perspective of a real writer surging against great existential issues like Walt Whitman's ultimate question. Humboldt is brilliant, pitiful, hilarious and, ultimately, victorious from the grave. The gangster, Cantabile, is Citrine's cosmic foil: the Dionysius of Nietzsche to Citrine's Apollo. This is potentially a life-altering work: it can change your outlook on life

This was a fascinating typical Bellow novel about a self-centered neurotic middle-aged male from Chicago. I felt it was less satisfying than Herzog or The Adventures of Augie March despite moments of brilliance. I know it is considered one of the Great Novels of Bellow and I enjoyed the characters and their existential questioning of the meanings of life and sex, but I found the narrative less compelling that the aforementioned classics by this spectacular author. I think that the Pulitzer

SB knows Chicago and he knows its speak, streets, neighborhoods, hoods and peeps so that his stories leap and bound like a winter's blast. He always seems to be chewing on some philosophical root after pulling it out of dark soil examining it in light of day. Here it's death, its realm and those who've gone before whilst their memories remain to haunt our main chap Charlie Citrine, a woman chaser and ass-kisser who can't quite get enough of a good thing even when it always bites him raw in doing