More Die of Heartbreak

Argues that in entering MDH with narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg we find ourselves transported into the painter Henri Rousseau's hermetic and mysterious garden of consummate desire. However, since Kenneth is, as always, in a hurry to get to the heart of matters, the arcane vision that the memory of this painting momentarily provides gets snagged on an unalluring reality—the woman in the painting is suddenly gone. Instead, this Eden, as Kenneth would reconstruct it in his mind, has as its perceived center his botanist uncle, Benn Crader, and what surrounds his uncle of Rousseauian innocence is a fallen world of corruption, money, and sex. What Kenneth stumbles upon is the very subject of the novel's investigation, namely why more people in today's world would die of heartbreak than of any physical causes—a postmodern condition he proceeds to explain to us, but mostly to himself. Concludes that in MDH, Bellow configures a narrative stance where images and contexts constantly change according to the reader's angle of refraction. Multiple readings are no longer just a possibility; they are a necessity invoked by the author. The seeming hermeticism of the garden from which Kenneth looks out has more loopholes than Bellow would want Kenneth to see. Bellow, it seems, is closing in on the postmodern dilemma of self-referentiality.

Claims that in MDH Bellow's principal problem is that mask and face are no longer distinguishable. Argues that afraid of vulnerability, the individual constructs a false self and that in such a world of unreality there can be no real meeting, no real structure of meaning. Argues also that the failure of the sexual thus stands for more fundamental dissonances, more profoundly disturbing surrenders of imagination and will. Comments on "McCarthy style" feminist critics who automatically accuse Bellow of misogyny. Asserts that it is not misogyny but a lamentation for all parties, and that the ordeal of desire is also a product of the literal imagination which substitutes physical attraction for genuine relationship, or the trading of human complexity for immediate satisfaction. Concludes that sex in this novel becomes an image of social, political, and psychological dislocation in our age.

Traces the Russian allusions in MDH on the grounds that Bellow is very heavily invested in nineteenth century Russian authors, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in particular. Like Tolstoy's heroes, Bellow's protagonists suffer for the unrighteousness of their lives and strive to find a kind of reconciliation between the self and the world, privacy and history. Examines Bellow's uses of Rozanov, Bordyaev, Feodorov, and Solovyew to clarify the nature of Bellow's characters' conflicts, and thereby lend it a universal perspective. Concludes that the meaning of these allusions is entirely contextual, based on Kenneth's deep rooted belief in the "mysterious" Russian soul. Ultimately, the allusions serve as a hallmark of the emotional and spiritual supremacy of Bellow's protagonists in search of access to the soul.

Sees MDH as another account of a hapless flight from present realities, and in particular gender issues, as Benn forsakes his plant-like innocence for the snares of modern Eros. Connects Benn to Herzog in his capacity for "potato love." Concludes this is not Bellow's best novel, but sees Bellow ahead of his thinner contemporary British counterparts because real emotions are involved.

Argues that, in MDH, Uncle Benn's survival in the face of modernity is the point of the novel. His growth and integration can best be understood by a psychology of growth and integration such as that described by Theodore Schroeder. This future-based mental positioning is based on the premise that human rationality will prevail against inevitabilist forces of biological, cultural, and social limitations. Benn becomes the composite man in the age of hybrids who must trust himself as a fit representative of the species who is endowed with higher consciousness. As humanist and scientist, he must preserve the dialectic in the evolutionary development of his character.

Calanchi, Alessandra. "Millions of Leaves: Metafore della memoria nel romanzo di Saul Bellow-More Die of Heartbreak." Memoria e tradizione nella cultura ebraico-america. Ed. Guido Fink and Gabriella Morisco. Bussola 9. Bologna: CLUEB, 1990. Papers presented at the Convegno "Memoria e tradizione nella cultura ebraica," Centro studi sorelle Clarke di Begni di Lucca, June 1988.

Carpenter, David A. "More Die of Heartbreak." Magills Literary Annual: 1988. Ed. Frank N. Magill. 2 vols. Pasadena: Salem, 1988. 2: 583–88.

An encyclopedic article that discusses principal characters, provides a paraphrase of the contents, engages briefly with women's issues, and argues that the book is really about Kenneth Trachtenberg's discovery that conscious existence is only justified if devoted to the quest for revelation and new directions. Concludes that "both men are where they are at the novel's end because they are unable to accommodate to change, and because they seem unable to view 'a new direction' as anything other than escaping a cul de sac by retracing in reverse a well-worn path down a narrow street bordered on both sides by manicured hedges" (587).

Describes MDH as a Prufrockian lament about failed men and absent mermaids-a misogynous compendium of serio-crackpot philosophizings which provide an analogue to Bellow's end-of-the-century comic despair over the general impasse of heterosexual relations. Offers a "resisting" female reading which catalogues Bellow's depiction of the era's gender anxieties through the use of the misogynous bridegroom flight plot, the evasion of marriage, and the banishment of women from the republic of higher consciousness. Argues that in this text the narrative center of consciousness is entirely located in Kenneth Trachtenberg and then triangulated between him, a sympathetic male implied listener and a like-minded male reader. Hence, despite the comedy, sophistication, and cultural irony, there exists a virulent hostility to women in this text which enlists the sympathies of like-minded men, and men only, and thus renders less serious Bellow's investigation into the failures of heterosexual love in late capitalist America. Concludes that for all its comedy and sophistication, as a classic androcentric text it fails to provide a full vision of culpability and rehabilitation in its failure to transcend traditional significations of "woman."

Argues that Bellow, among other things, now stands as the de Tocqueville of his day. Notes in MDH themes continued from earlier Bellow novels, such as the renunciation of women and human sexuality for "higher pursuits," antimaterialism, death, the failure of heterosexual love, and others. Contains an inset essay on the topic of "Bellow and women" in prior novels as well as this latest one. Takes several Bellow critics to task on a variety of critical issues which have arisen with the publication of MDH.

Suggests that in MDH Bellow repudiates the Solomonic wisdom of fixed relationships. Draws the biblical parallels between Saul, Solomon, and various characters in Bellow's fiction. Argues that during the course of his fiction writing Bellow has repudiated peaceful, fixed relationships as characterized in the Solomon paradigm, and has chosen instead a violent turning point hinted at in his renaming of himself Saul.

Argues that given the rich lode of allusion in Bellow's fiction, the unlettered reader runs the risk of missing half the fun. Points to the generous mixture of themes from classical antiquity throughout all of Bellow's previous works. Suggests that Bellow's interest in old ideas is not so surprising when one recalls that much of his thought is imbued with the Neo-platonic notions of transcendentalism. Provides an exhaustive cataloguing of Bellow's classical allusions to the Platonic mind-body dualism and transcendentalism throughout MDH. Shows the use in thematic issues such as soul, love, gender antithesis, postmodern reality, magic, obsession, eros, and beauty. Concludes that there is much arcane jesting in Bellow's elliptical humor indicative of his "kidding his way to Jesus." Reminds the reader of Bellow's Platonic ethos and demonstrates the Apuleian subtext of MDH, not as evidence that Bellow is not serious about transcendence, but as his acknowledgment that for humans the journey to eternity is made more readily with the dance step than the goose step, and that the bawdy Aristophanes and the salacious Apuleius are sometimes better traveling companions than proper Plato.

Argues that in MDH, Bellow is constructing a moral comedy of subjects which in the past were treated very seriously–loves, murders, and family relations. Claims that in MDH Bellow is trying to reverse the Post WWI nihilism which tended to empty things of meaning, and read back meaning into love and family relations, and death as well. This becomes apparent when the reader realizes that love is the first subject of Bellow's periodic scrutiny. Concludes, after developing this theses at length, Bellow presents us with a conundrum. He undercuts the actuality of the world he so vividly envisions by relegating it to the fallen world of appearances. Many venerable writers, increasingly drawn to the transcendent, reach finally toward a theological or mythical summation. The question of later Bellow is–will he now do so. Concludes that the answer seems to be no, given the overall energy of MDH, its comic balancing of ideal and actual, sentiment and sexual struggle, God and Mammon, the elegiac and the grotesque, its realism that thrives on contraries, as well as Bellow's ultimate allegiance to the role of the novelist as historian, and his continuing self-validating distinction in this role.

Calls MDH a dark sexual comedy centered in the mind of Kenneth Trachtenberg, for whom sex is the spoiler, the farcical obsession and destructive enterprise which destroys all harmony and perspective. Traces Kenneth's career of failed human relations, Benn's misadventures, and the whole enterprise of miscommunication due to irrational sexuality. Concludes that in this novel the movement from innocence to experience brings little understanding and much ironic confusion wherein those who can negotiate the corruptions of sexuality survive and move along, while those who cannot suffer a loss. Concludes that Kenneth's theorizing not only fails to bring order to the world, it serves further to blind and confuse, making him vulnerable to the assaults of reality.

Kuzma, Faye. "The Demonic Hegemonic: Exploitive Voices in Saul Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 39.4 (1998): 306–23.

Describes how MDH uses parody to explore the nature and effects of fashionable cynicism. Details how the novel's characters struggle to authentically express lived experience, and to avoid the perennial skepticism of those around them. Asserts Bellow's belief that although cynicism may reveal flaws in unquestioned conventions, it also may becomes a convention leading to mundanities and disenchantments. Concludes that Bellow's fiction continually points to an ongoing effort to answer prevailing opinion and discover an authentic relatedness to others beyond privileged discourse.

Levy, Claude. "More Die of Heartbreak: Une relation d'emprise." Caliban 25 (1988): 47–61.

Levy, P. "More Die of Heartbreak ou les errements du discours amoureux." [In French.] Lévy, Paule. "More Die of Heartbreak: Ou les errements du discours Amoureux." Profils Americains (France) 9 (1997): 133–46.

A story of friendship, love, and mysticism, MDH is an ironic reflection on human relations and the relation to the Divine in a materialistic world. The comedy of the book lies in the gap between the characters and their theories with regard to everyday behavior. This is illustrated on the narrative plane by the fissure between the story itself and the discourse that aims at representing it. As he relates his uncle's disastrous marriage and the failure of the mystical project that they both have in common, the narrator discovers that reality eludes all definitions. The mystical approach proves to be as ineffective as the intellectual approach: both stem from an attempt at reaching a totalizing view of human experience, and both lead to a sense of dislocation. As usual in Bellow, the sublime leads to the grotesque. The narrator is reduced to absurdly juxtaposing theses and antitheses without ever reaching a synthesis. While accumulating comically irrelevant quotations, he constantly loses sight of his own subject and returns to the very questions he cannot solve. The whole novel (as well maybe as the totality of Bellow's literary production) amounts in fact to "one theme developed in thousands of variations. Variations, variations until you were dead." Far from being a weakness of the book, this repetitiousness is part of its meaning. In Bellow the intensity of the spiritual quest matters more than its outcome. This might be an echo of the Jewish tradition, according to which transcendence never reveals itself—it can only be approached through a constant process of questioning and self-questioning. MDH draws its substance from dialogue: the dialogue between characters, the intertextual dialogue and the relation which the narrator strives to establish with the reader. The fluctuations of the style, the constant deconstruction of meaning as well as the ambiguous conclusion seem to open, at the very heart of the novel, a space for the reader to inscribe his or her own interrogations.

Argues that although Bellow is considered a conservative contemporary writer, he has nevertheless adapted and successfully utilized postmodern conventions and forms of discourse. He qualifies as one of Barth's ideal postmodern authors who "neither merely repudiates nor merely imitates either his twentieth-century modernist parents or his nineteenth-century premodernist grandparents." While most of Bellow's early novels can be placed in a traditional realistic mode, his more recent novels since DD show a progression of thought, changes in perspective, and an incorporation of postmodern themes and conventions. MD is of particular interest because it illustrates Bellow's postmodern use of black humor, exaggerated satire of urban life, and cheerful nihilism about the decline of society and the human race. Central to this vision of a humorous and chaotic world with its underlying serious philosophical precepts are Bellow's absurd heroes. This combination creates the postmodern synthesis Barth describes; the disparate combination of persons and situations creates most of the humor in the novel.

Argues that critics have shown insufficient awareness of this wasteland aspect in Bellow's fiction. MDH in particular employs a whole configuration of the wasteland metaphor to arrive at a balanced and positive vision of life-a theme and metaphor which reinforce the author's insistently melioristic view of life. Describes Bellow's rendition of the international scene, money, sterility, the city, modernity, women, sex, and the fragmented consciousness as aspects of the wasteland virus, with the Bellow hero seeking to bring some remedy to ailing humanity. However, counterpointed against these myths of decay and death are renewals and rebirths. Concludes that Bellow's fiction counteracts the wasteland view by revealing a pattern in which the hero shifts his or her faith from the gods of the world to the "God of Mercy," a move which connects them to immortal longings, mysterious sources of life, and endless possibilities.

Examines MDH in the context of DD ant AT. Shows how all three works adopt a Jungian perspective to contemporary nihilism. Argues that Bellow himself described the hero of DD as a humanist "challenged not only by the disorder of life but by a sort of nihilistic questioning in the modern world." Nihilism is very much a concern of the earlier novel which contrasts active and popular nihilism. Active nihilism takes a stand against false meanings in order to create space for more truthful forms of existence. Passive popular nihilism often degenerates into a justification for the unconstrained exercise of power. In its response to the question of nihilism, DD draws major strands of plot and imagery from the myth of Eros and Psyche. In MDH, all the elements of the Jungian intertext are in place. MDH, however, reflects the themes of its companion novel in a darkened mirror. Nihilism is again a central focus, and the plot is once more drawn from the story of Eros and Psyche, but this time with somewhat less comforting results. Traces these complex parallels throughout the novel and concludes that Bellow has unabashedly attempted to reconnect Eros and education by insisting, contra Freud, on love as the conduit to higher ideals rather than to lower unconscious realms. The Kenneth/Benn conversations are structured to advance the project of putting the sublime back into sublimation, and psyche into psychology. Concludes that in MDH love functions as a pharmakon, both as its poison and its remedy. The lessons which women fail to teach Benn are nonetheless passed on to his nephew, with a fiction which offers creative engagement with matriarchal myth-making as a potential path to psychic wholeness.

Describes Benn Crader's quest as bound up with his botanical arcanum, while Kenneth Trachtenberg's quest is tied up in Russian literature. Argues that Bellow makes remarkable use of literary and historical analogies to make this novel a stimulating compendium of his concerns as he enters his eightieth decade. Like the old Russian writers, Bellow embraces the didactic function of literature with an equal seriousness which asks if in fact literature can teach us something about life and the way we should conduct ourselves. Shows how Bellow's commitment to this arcanum of book learning has stimulated his own creativity. The flood of theories which ensues causes the reader to be positioned as one who has just discovered an extraordinarily rich collection of lecture notes strung together by a narrative line and animated by the presence of some old friends. Concludes that this arcanum of knowledge about Russian writers and philosophers has helped Kenneth understand that their horizons cannot be ours, but that the world's arcanum can intoxicate and teach those who care about the world of the spirit.

Argues that what really works in MDH is nothing more or less than Bellow's ability to bring bright talk to the service of an important human subject. Praises Bellow's style in MDH and the elaborate embroidery of the psychological movement within his characters. Then states that there is much that does not work. The too-close identification between uncle and nephew makes it difficult to keep the two players straight. Moreover, both sound like dead ringers for their author. The result is a novel longer on self-indulgence than on discipline; and at the same time a novel that fails to elicit our sympathies in the ways that earlier journeys into the heart of grief once did. Had there been less of Trachtenberg's droning voice and more of the comic from him, MDH might have been more palatable. Concludes that although there are elements in MDH that don't work, there are many more that do.

Combines Bellow's own comments on MDH with comments about the distinctions made in MDH between a fabricated person and a true person who has access to their own soul. This becomes an issue of accepted formulas, or some kind of architectural faith in traditional patterns of life.

Argues that the central concern of Bellow's "Foreword" to Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind about how bad thought has gone in our century finds its way into MDH, published the same year. Notes how Kenneth Trachtenberg complains that people "take pride in [the] ability to think elaborate ideas," then adds that thoughts "don't get us anywhere; our speculations are like a stationary bicycle" (MDH 395). Argues that Bellow develops the irony of Trachtenberg's self-critique in relation to a fixed position, like a belief in the mystery of the human soul, and also in relation to ideas that are not so clearly fixed. Thus, the novel fluctuates between its comic handling of Bellow's desire for "the rediscovery of the magic of the world" and its suggestion, as in absurdist comedy, of the absence of a rationale for evaluating the human condition. Such an irony develops an emotion half-comic and half-tragic, which arises out of the incongruity between romantic expectation and cold reality. Concludes that such ironies help us understand Bellow's title as the bizarre and the serious are intertwined in the multiple meanings that are part of the pain and humor of the ironic mode.

Examines the question of what family means in the context of MDH. Examines this concept in Bellow's earlier fictions which portray the contemporary family overwhelmingly in the process of disintegration, thus using the family to dramatize the fragmentation of modern life. Nevertheless, the idea of family continues to loom large in his fiction and whatever gains his protagonists make during their more or less disastrous adventures, they tend to hold on to a vision of the family that promises a kind of fulfillment, a vision that is largely sentimental and nostalgic. The idea of family is a lost harmony which underscores the fragmentation of the current scene, and which is projected toward the future as an idea that might have healing if not redemptive power. Discusses MDH in depth, and attempts to account for Kenneth's particular notions of family. Concludes that in Benn, Bellow epitomizes the family man, the man who combines vision and memory and thus represents a counter-memory image to the disintegrative dynamics of contemporary life. However, at the end of the novel, the family man is catapulted almost literally out of this world, to the arctic, the very region where Frankenstein's monster, another ideal embodiment of family values, decided to end his miserable existence. Sees MDH as Bellow's most despairing verdict on modern society.

Investigates the thematic significance of the wide range of references to Poe in MDH. Sees Bellow's use of Poe as a symptom rather than an antidote to the mailaise of contemporary culture. Poe would have been ranked as one of those responsible for "the proliferation of a multitude of false worlds." Turns to Poe's stories to illustrate a simultaneous movement of idolization and demonization of woman. The woman seems to provide a springboard into a beyond, but she also—as a being of the earth–presents an obstacle to the pull toward transcendence. Her status is purely provisional, a stimulant to the imagination that suggests other worlds, but that must be left behind because, if taken for its worth, it would tie the imagination to the here and now. Develops this inquiry and concludes that in crucial respects the Poe references in MDH serve to underscore a fundamental difference in aesthetic and moral sensibility, a fundamental difference summarized by opposing Poe's modernism to Bellow's adherence to an older moralistic stance. The alternatives Bellow envisages to the spiritual and cultural wasteland of modernity have to be packaged in the guise of comedy and farce. Art, under these auspices, inevitably borders on the hoax; and the artist trying to "sell" his values of necessity assumes the mask of the clown. Despite the important differences in temperament and outlook mentioned, this is a predicament that the author of "Ligeia" and "To Helen" would have understood.

Argues that Bellow has literally been clearing his desk of ideas, themes, and motifs that have long held him in their grasp, as if he is determined not to leave unpublished any salvageable story element or fragment. Discusses these ideas, themes, and story elements under the headings (1) From Anger to Laughter, (2) Uncles and Nephews, (3) A reliable Narrator, (4) The Importance of Seeing, (5) What Do Women Want, (6) Man's Unfinished and Embattled Soul, (7) Moral Dilemmas in East and West, (8) Darkness and Ice.

Calls this a witty, congenial tragicomedy of Eros, with its musings on the exquisite pain of love. Far from being misogynistic, the novel reflects that men have lost the battle and must beat a hasty retreat from predatory females. Complains about the traditional Bellow digressions but concludes that who else other than Bellow can talk of Locke and Hobbes in the same breath he mentions telephone sex.

Considers MDH as evidence of the influence of Balzac on American Letters. Asserts that this Bellow "put-down" of American society reads like Allan Bloom's Olympian critique in The Closing of the American Mind. Notes Bellow's use of the theme of sexual materialism, and comments "as if sex and women were the causes of America's malaise." Concludes, "More recently he has begun to sound not only genteel but, you should excuse the expression, positively gentile."

Details the story of the novel, its characters, the farcical nature of its humor, and its intellectual acrobatics. Criticizes the clumsy, muffled, "tin ear" voice of Kenneth, which he claims is no longer novel enough to pass as a refreshing ideolect. It makes all the characters sound alike—like Bellow. Discusses also the interminable nature of the plot, dilettantism, misogyny, family values, and the rather modest achievement of this novel.

Details the contents of the novel, and then argues that its central thematic concern is the confounding of human relationships in modern life caused by visions of existence which compete for the soul of the protagonist.

Details the plot and hails the novel as a return to the comic exuberance of Bellow's most enjoyable fiction. Claims that other characters eventually upstage Kenneth and Benn, the foreground innocents, and that the whole production is quite cunningly planned.

Comments on Bellow's unique free association paragraphs with their numerous meaningful digressions and allusions. Details the contents of the novel and most of its major thematic preoccupations. Sees the major story having to do with the difficulties involved in trying to translate magical powers from botany into love.

Describes the plot and characters and goes on to comment on what splendid creations Vilitzer and Fishl are. Calls Benn's innocence frequently muddled and naive, and the text as being full of typical Bellow digressions. Concedes, however, that it still builds toward a carefully developed momentum and "hustling lyricism."

In the context of a discussion on writers and their depiction of cities, discusses MDH as a novel focusing directly on the relationship of city to money. Describes the ruination of Benn Crader through greed after a saintly lifetime of mystical communion with the plant kingdom. Offers a brief critique of the materialism of the Layamons and the many symbolic references to Chicago.

Calls MDH a novel about romantic love, sexual love, spiritual love—grand soap opera!—and the folly wise men commit in pursuing such illusions. Describes Benn Crader and complains that his superior qualities are never dramatized in the novel. Concludes that the heartbreak experienced is ultimately an invigorating emotional experience leading to a richer life, although Bellow would not agree.

Covers the details of the narrative and then focuses on the Trachtenberg monologues, which he considers an insufficient device to save Benn Crader from self-pity, and Bellow from the same. Comments on the coincidences of Bellow's fourth divorce and the publication of this novel blaming women. Instead of seeing Benn depart for the tundra heartbroken, we see him "accepting the germ of cynicism—a much slower and more hideously modern way of death."

Begins with a discursive treatment on Bellow's earlier novels and proceeds toward a description of MDH as full of Dickensian character types, dialogues, awesome intellectual poetic, philosophical and comic medleys, and a distinctively Jewish–American milieu. Considers the book vintage Bellow with its romp through culture high and low, not to mention its disquisitions on the vagaries of love. Complains that the only voice one hears in this novel is Bellow's and that after a while it begins to grate. Despite the fact that Bellow argues for both the embattled realms—male and female—the tone is sneakingly misogynistic. Concludes: "Bellow is secretly grumpy on the subject of women but determined to be a gentleman about it."

Describes Bellow's remarkable language, characteristic themes, penchant for the con-man, con-game and promoter. Comments that in this novel "no image has been left unexplored by a mind not only at constant work but standing outside itself mercilessly examining the workings, tracking the leading issues of our times and the composite man in an age of hybrids."

Considers that despite its cheerless title, this novel is a consistently funny variation on the theme of intellectual haplessness. It crackles with intelligence and wit.

Argues that there is nothing new in MDH, but admits that the novel does not have stale or worn-out feel to it. Bellow is at his very best—energetic, voluble, always intelligent, often angry, but above all, comic. Kenneth is one of the most brilliant of Bellow's talking heads—almost Nabakovian in his narcissism and self-deceit. If love is the crisis of MDH, then sermonizing is its curse. Concludes that the ending is more tortoise-like than apocalyptic.

Calls the book a rare source of pleasure and wisdom despite its focus on angst—sexual, marital and familial.

Details the contents of the novel and concludes: "While nothing much happens in this novel, the author's voice— sane, ethical, utterly lacking in self-righteousness—shines throughout."

Briefly details the story and thematic issues in the novel.

Wonders if in MDH Bellow has hit a problematic late period and run out of things to say, or even lost his edge. Claims he has substituted the rhetoric of anxiety for the real thing. Suggests the book is built on an old Jamesian cliche about decadent aesthetic Europe and an innocent, brash but alive America. Considers Bellow to be exhibiting his knowledge of the cultural history of nostalgie de la boue at tedious length. Claims the major characters refuse to come alive, while the one-liners are ruined by repetition. Concludes that despite this Bellow will have the last laugh on his critics.

Describes the contents of the novel in considerable detail and comments that though Bellow has always been a "crisis thinker" his recent work represents a notable spiritualizing. Complains that the problem in the book is not Kenneth's views, but the fact that he is always "sticking them" to the reader. Believes Bellow clearly does not know what to do with his own overwhelming authorial presence. Notes also that Bellow's spirit of religiosity reflects not so much confidence in Deity as disgust with His creatures. However, there does remain Bellow's feel for lowlife. Expresses mistrust of Benn's motives for rushing off after lichens and concludes that in the end this is a book fired by misogyny.

Details what he considers a story rich in possibilities and then complains that the narrator, Kenneth, "turns a fable potentially as simple as 'The Fisherman's Wife' into a meditation as complex and abstract as 'Love in the Western World.' "Finally concludes that since so many of Kenneth's ideas coincide with Bellow's, this must be Bellow making fun of himself. Concedes, however, that though one may grow tired of Bellow's explanatory bind, one must admire the vision. Calls this novel morose but not sour. Discusses plot and character, and then comments that this book is unforgettably intelligent despite its brutal comedy.

Claims authorial bias is a problem for Bellow and that his fiction sides openly with certain characters against others. Provides a brief account of the biases of MDH.

Describes the novel as subtlely structured around a series of oppositions which reflect his witty, brilliant minds.

Calls the novel an anatomy of love in the postmodern age, "a loquacious, brilliant, entertaining book mixing long flights of ideas with comic scenes that say a lot about the entanglements of serious men and calculating, ditsy, depraved, disgusting and piteously needy women." Accuses Bellow of an almost merciless ability to see through the flesh to the spirit and leave little that is admirable behind. Notes ironically that Benn finally applies his ability to see in the harmless observation of lichens, while removed from the world of hapless encounter and sexual misery.

Details contents of the novel, its characters and themes.

Sees this novel as a serio-comic analysis of a sex-saturated society in which thought has even gone bad to the point of freezing the human heart. Calls the novel jaunty, buoyant, and yet not nearly so bracingsince it ends with Benn heading for ice and polar night.

Argues that in MDH we find indications that Bellow remains "our" most accomplished American writer. Claims that here, instead of big projects, we have overriding questions to answer: namely, what do women want and why have a special class of women selected for special, heartbreaking attention? Calls the book an extended exercise in secret-sharing. Criticizes Bellow for a certain failure to show rather than tell, and argues that he is too pleased with his striking beginning to carry the book forward. Concludes that had there been more of Fishl's comic antics and less of Trachtenberg's droning voice, MDH would have been a better book.

Calls this novel a test of family feeling since it is more like an impossibly long letter from a relative not much has happened to in the years since we last heard from him. Calls the novel restless, eccentric, discursive, and phenomenally boring. Objects to all of Kenneth's "academic gabble" and intellectual futility. Decides that the book finally dies from overkill even though it does express all the qualities of Bellow that have claimed our attention over the years—deviousness, transparency, powerful will, emotional delicacy, European family values, and New World irreverence.

Complains that in this novel the socio-sexual ideas do not hold up well, lack development, and finally produce a book which is too long and too flat. Considers Kenneth—part authorial alter-ego, part figure of fun—to be tedious in the long run. Concedes that there are chunks of free, funny Bellovian rhetoric and sporadic narrative zing, along with amused and appalled Balzacian vignettes "to compensate readers for the longeurs and overall puffiness."

Sees this novel as an eloquent expression of the significant issues of modern life. Commends it for its mordant and trenchant comments. Calls it a remarkable commentary on the "ordeal of desire" Bellow sees as the central challenge of contemporary life.

Complains reviewers of MDH were so busy demonstrating their erudition that no mention was made of the disquieting vulgarity of the book. Accuses Bellow of rolling around in the mess of modern life and Ed McBain of rummaging through life's dirty underwear until he arrives at the vulgar despair one might expect from an old man sitting on the porch step. Concludes, however, that despite those problems, MDH is a good read, and at its heart, a moving tale of a man willing to live and die for love.

A brief series of comments on MDH as a "lighter-than-air machine" which deals with misogyny, Chicago, and intellectual speculation, and provides impish, extravagant, and serious sentences by turns.

Considers Bellow's mission that of genteel commentator on the thundering, savage apocalypse of American life. MDH takes on the same subject matter with its chronicling of the torments of middle-class love and marriage American-style. Praises the nervy colloquial style, notes the vampirish depiction of women, and the perennial Bellow theme of knowledge divorced from life. Concludes that the mistakes of a man of genius like Bellow are merely the portals of discovery for the rest of us.

Complains about the lack of action in the novel and the incredibly hypnotic voice of Kenneth Trachtenberg. Yet concedes that in this virtuoso showoff performance we see his splendid sublimation of this shaggy dog story, the Word made word. Concludes: "In a word, I laughed."

Considers MDH an extensive treatment of the old themes of Love, Sex, and Death, with a minimal plot and a male/male relationship which functions as the still point around which the book revolves. Considers the book a useful mirror for society's failings, a useful critique of the pain of modern love, and unusually lucid. Decries the intellectual stew of Russian mystics and other company, and Bellow's refusal to provide answers. Concludes that the book ought to deeply stir Christians and draw deeply enough of Christian love to improve our own relationships and to bare more urgently the message of Christian love to fellow sufferers who are dying all around us.

Suggests this is a book about the lemming-like human compulsion to head for disaster in personal relationships, and the torment of twentieth-century sexuality. Calls Bellow's analysis of the dislocation in relations between men and women gratuitously embellished with intellectual allusions, as well as a dazzling, speculatively profound and exuberantly comic performance.

Blakes' texts play a significant role in the formation of Bellow's texts. He has produced a "system" which Bellow uses in his own project–the idea of a constitutive vision of the world. MSP is one of these projects or mythologies in which Bellow attempts to account for modern man's vision of himself and to posit the possibility of seeing it through the imagination, or "unfallen" eyes. When Mr. Sammler sees the world he sees a fallen world which is a creation of his own visioning as a modern man. Like Urizen, whose speciality is seeing with his fallen eye, and who is condemned by Los, Sammler, until the very end of the novel, is in need of a new eye. He must experience an apocalypse so that he can cease creating wastelands of reason with this fallen eye.

Indicates that this is a difficult and rich book reflective of the typical Bellow panorama of unreliable son, ruthless big city bosses, intrafamilial financial swindle, finagling big shot doctor, and beautiful daughter. Describes Kenneth's conversations as internal rhapsodies, and calls his search for his soul a process which renders him a creep. His tone finally becomes slack, busy, irritating, flaky, buttonholing, loaded with weakness and self-assertion, full of incontinent associations and forced images.

Discusses the "family traits" in MDH that link it to other novels. Comments in particular on the novel's weakness for big issues, emphasis on European philosophy, popular slang, preoccupation with the transcendent, eloquent images, and sense of religion. Discusses plot, characters, recurring motifs, the comic quest, irony, and narrative technique. Concludes that Bellow, through eloquence and imagery, brings us a sense of "relating" that is more entertainingly and provocatively presented than that of any other American novelist.

Suggests that MSP, though linear and modernist in form, can be conceived of in two parts: one in which the business of progressing through narrative events and dialogue is carried out, and a second that functions as something of an academic diary, in which the protagonist of the novel reacts to the shift from modernism to postmodernism. Consistent with Frederic Jameson's suggestion that postmodernism is nothing more than another step in the march of capitalism. MSP reflects this unique paradigm shift and Mr. Sammler's realization that he is indeed a product of the modern tradition. Concludes that Bellow deconstructs this dilemma by suggesting that at certain times, despite our pretensions and pretending, we are only human and must ultimately share certain worlds and planets.

Kenneth Trachtenberg suffers from terminal pretentiousness and lacks the compelling voice of a Charlie Citrine or a Humboldt. Hence the narrative is something of a miracle. The novel eventually loses focus because of the overly fine-tuned, theological sensibility of Benn Crader. Provides elaborate descriptions of Kenneth and Ben. Kenneth finally articulates for Bellow the genius of faith. Uncle Benn becomes the new model for humanity, a "phoenix who runs after arsonists."

Sees the point of the book to be the difference between Benn Crader as metaphysician, and Kenneth Trachtenberg as intellectual. Complains that for most of the book Crader is pictured in all his purity and then he is left to the lions. Concludes that this is really a sorry tale of male self-pity. The book is marred ultimately by Bellow's suggestion that the sheer intelligence of his two protagonists is evidence that their failure in love cannot be their own fault. Neither does the ending work because it is a flight from the novel itself.

Provides a summary of the themes struck in the novel and calls it a romp through high culture and low. Concludes of the novels real thrust: "It is not just materialism. We need love the way plants need sunlight. Although devoid of consciousness, they perform their functions smoothly and easily. We, on the other hand, supposedly superior, drowning in overburdened consciousness, suffering complex upon complex, manage only to stick it to ourselves."