Ravelstein

R is most usefully seen as a discursive novel of transformations, an elaborate variation of that genre created by the English Romantics that presents the gradual process of a mind exploring a problem and coming to terms with it. It is more like a sustained soliloquy, sometimes with himself and frequently with a silent auditor present or absent, finally achieving insight or a moral decision. R lacks plot and is structured by a discursive meditation on, among other things, nihilism's culmination in violent anti-Semitism. In Chick's meditation, Ravelstein's goodness is inextricably connected to his Jewishness. He is a Jewish free thinker and scholar stymied by Jewish humanism. In this death-haunted book, Chick finally accepts the epiphany of a Chicago winter landscape inhabited by tropical parrots, and the heightened moment of revelation rich in the miracle of Jewish survival and evanescent in the beauty and mystery of human existence.

Coburn, Marcia Froelke. "A Promise Kept." Chicago May 2000: 102–105+.

Suggests that Bellow portrays R as a larger-than-life character, a devotee of gourmet food and fine wine, a political conservative who enjoys a homosexual lifestyle with multiple partners, and who dies of AIDS. Points out the numerous autobiographical elements of the novel. Believes that R has given Bellow a chance to explore the astonishment of life, the inevitability of death, and the misery of being left behind. Provides a sketch of Alan Bloom's personal history and career.

Greif, Mark. "Bloom in Love." American Prospect 5 June 2000: 46+.

Argues that R records a friendship which exceeds most recent literature for elegance and emotion. Calls Bellow's renderings masterful,even if the plot is scarcely adequate. The book must be seen as a career endgame on Bellow's part, a joint project which is at once memorial and polemic. Condemns the book for endorsing Bloom's unsavory ideas on gender and race, and particularly for the shared view that the underclass is deficient by nature. Reviews Bellow's own political conservatism. Believes that Ravelstein is a character who breathes physicality and eccentricity. Bellow trumps his elitism, makes us love Ravelstein and believe in an erotic relationship between a gay man and a heterosexual man which is predicated upon a longing for friendship, compassion, and the better self one can be in the presence of such a person. When Bellow sets about overvaluing Bloom's elitism, it turns out he is defending love.

Hitchens, Christopher. "Bloom's Way." Nation 15 May 2000: 9.

Reveals some details of Bloom's homosexuality which were omitted in the final publication. Disapproves of Bloom's and Bellow's recent politics, but admits that R, even in its expurgated form, made him wish he had met Bloom. It would have been instructive to ask him why he himself always sneered at the efforts of other cultural minorities; no less instructive to ask him why his own ideological cohort refused to see that the prefix "homo" denotes not just a form of sex but a form of love.

Leonard, John. "A Closing of the American Kind." Nation 29 May 2000: 25–28, 30.

Calls this a lambent novel, a prayer for the dead in which Chick channels Ravelstein. It is a novel spiced with Western Civilization's greatest hits—long views from Athens to Jerusalem as seen through the eyes of the noble dead (Plato, Rousseau, Nietzche), compulsive scribblers like Xenophon, Joyce and Celine, or prophets like Job and Tolstoy. It is an oriental novel as if it were told like an obelisk with a folding fan. It is a story of two deaths—the philosopher and then the novelist. It is these differences in how to live and how to die that prevent this from becoming merely a tacky roman a clef. Sifts the novel for real-life candidates for the various characters and makes several comparisons with previous novels. Concludes that as male friendships go, Chick and Abe may not be in a league with Ishmael and Queequeg, or Huck and Jim, but they share a sense of what was funny and what mattered. We are finally won over by these cranky, horny men discussing Greeks, Jews, death and sex in their own parrot-filled agora. Neither has given up on the relationship between life's pains and Eros. Concludes that the only one who really knows Rousseauan romantic love and Platonic Eros is Rosamund, to whom the book gives the most admiration.

Max, D. T. "With Friends Like Saul Bellow." New York Times Magazine 16 Apr. 2000: 70–76. Rpt. in shortened form as "Biography or Betrayal?" Ottawa Citizen 20 Apr. 2000, final ed., sec. Arts: F1.

Ozick, Cynthia. "Throwing Away the Clef." New Republic 22 May 2000: 27–31.

Parini, Jay. "The Fictional Campus: Sex, Power, and Despair." Chronicle of Higher Education 22 Sept. 2000: B12–B13.

Phillips, Adam. "Bellow and Ravelstein." Raritan 20.2 (2000): 1–10.

Podhoretz, Norman. "Bellow at 85, Roth at 67." Commentary July/Aug. 2000: 35–43.

Sullivan, Andrew. "Longing." New Republic 17 Apr. 2000:12.

Uhr, John. The Rage over Ravelstein." Philosophy and Literature 24.2 (2000): 451–66.

Vincent, Norah. "Bloom-in' Hypocrisy." Village Voice 16 May 2000, sec. NY Mirror: 1.

Webb, Igor. "The Demands of a Soul." Partisan Review 68.2 (2001): 324–28.

Wood, J. "The World's Mystic Late Bloom." Guardian 15 Apr. 2000: 6–7.

Return to Top

Allen, Brooke. "Twilight Triumphs." New Leader May/June 2000: 30–32.

Considers R as Bellow's most crafted book in years. It is a charming farewell to a much-missed friend. At its best, it is the portrait of the artist and the intellectual, two great team teachers. It is a book which captures Ravelstein's charisma, his hates, his eccentricities and his capability for forcing Chick to reopen what he had closed. It is a little slight, a little disjointed; but it is a witty, humane, and loving book from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Apple, Sam. "Making Amends." Jerusalem Report 31 July 2000: 46–47.

Considers R to be Bellow's great tribute to Bloom and making of amends for his sins of omission in his treatment of Jewish themes in his earlier work. It feels more like a character sketch than a book, and the plot takes a back seat to the details. Scattered throughout are discussions of Nazi atrocities, theories of nihilism, and direct emotional responses to the horror. It is also Bellow's novel of self-flagellation about assimilation, and the relationship of this to the indelible Jewish stain which is both Ravelstein and Chick. Ravelstein appears in this book as a Greek aristocrat with a Jewish character, who loves Jewish vaudeville and hates Nazis.

Aron, Leon. "So This Is Love." American Enterprise Sept. 2000: 56–57.

R is most memorably a novel about love in the form of a Platonic friendship. All the risks, vulnerabilities, fears and jealousies inherent in close male friendship are all delicately on display here. It is an unhurriedly frank and brotherly conversation full of verbal escapades, revelations, explorations, and subversions. The richness of the tale is underscored by the precise austerity of the language. It is full of clarity, grace, delicacy, economy and weight. It is also an epitaph, a passing tribute to a generation of Eastern European Americans whose grandparents and uncles died in pogroms. Ravelstein personifies a fierce engagement with the world, which to him, unlike the vast majority of Americans, was a minefield of horrible memories. In the end, there is a tie between love and death.. The inimitable luminous sadness of this book will be with the reader forever.

Battersby, Eileen. "Saul in the Mind." Irish Times 15 Apr. 2000, city ed., sec. Weekend; Fiction: 70.

This 13th novel is at once both familiar and fresh. It is also streetwise and lyric, possessing all of the ease of a literary master. This is a tender and funny portrait of Abe Ravelstein as seen through the eyes of a friend and biographer. It acquires depth and authenticity through its realistic dialogue carried on between a matched pair of minds exchanging views with the elegance of philosophers and the terse candor of gangsters in collusion. Chick's remarks move between the profound and the ordinary. While Ravelstein's antics are colorful and his stories dominate the narrative, the result is not a caricature. The genius of this narrative lies in its honesty, gentleness of tone, lack of pretension, and wit. R is a wise, rich novel.

Beckerman, Michael. "Ravelstein Knows Everything, Almost." New York Times 28 May 2000: E27.

Comments on the musical tropes in the book and the several either sad or purposeful inaccuracies accompanying Chick's understanding of music history. Concludes that despite this, R is a beautiful book, the work of a master, and the musical uncertainties seem to enhance the sense of loss at the novel's core. Argues that Ravelstein's name appears in no telephone book and may derive from Ravel's Bolero, which both men enjoyed, and suggests that the German work rock is connected to Bloom's comment in The Closing of the American Mind that "rock has the beat of sexual intercourse."

Birkerts, Sven. "The Last Titan." Esquire Apr. 2000: 70–71.

Rescinds his premature condescension that Bellow was "done," because R is full of heart and wisdom. At the center of the novel is the grandly cantankerous, chain-smoking, fire-breathing Abe Ravelstein, who, though arrogant and brutal, is intoxicated with the drama of thought itself. It is an old man's book which stares down infirmity and death and asks the question of what will avail us in our deepest moments of desperation. This is Bellow once more celebrating that elan vital he has celebrated in all his books.

Bottum, J. Bellow's Bloom: Love and Friendship in Ravelstein." Weekly Standard 8 May 2000, Books & Arts sec: 31–35.

Bellow, America's best living writer, is the chronicler of a certain kind of Jewish life that has almost disappeared, and a life of the mind that has nearly closed. R, really an elegy, runs into four movements. The opening chapter paints a comic yet moving portrait of a visit to Paris by Ravelstein. Then comes Ravelstein's death followed by Chick's dangerous infection, and finally we encounter the subject of Chick's portrait of Ravelstein. Bloom, however, is less the model than the reason for the book. Considers the book's treatment of Bloom's homosexuality important since it raises the question about what constitutes serious conservative thought, what the relation of that thought is to behavior, and what creates Eros—the drive, the love, the urgent passion—that makes a great teacher. On its face, the book is a mess, sadly disjointed, with cobbled transitions, and signs of real tiredness. Paragraphs begin strong and sputter. Reiteration sets in early. These are minor problems, but Bellow forgets that in the end, novels are not good devices for elegy. The novelistic elements create a cruel picture of Bloom. Ultimately, the novel is about the difference between the love of a wife and the friendship of a man. It is an elegy to male friendship, a poem to female love and a declaration about what such love brings that friendship never can. Love lives but friendship dies.

Bradbury, Malcolm. "Just One Great Bellow." Times 20 Apr. 2000, sec. Times 2: 20.

R belongs to a long line of Bellow characters: self-suffering jokers who are a source of mental adventures and clownish excess. Chick is clearly his Boswell with whom he may share his rage a the decline in the world of serious mental work on the part of the intellectuals. The chattering philosopher whose wisdom fades off into silence, his ideas dissolving into feeling, is a figure from all of Bellow's major fictions where extravagant thinkers who pass from head to heart are central. This book proceeds not with the epic splendor of the big novels, but with a sober dignity. The story is told loosely and associatively with playful meditation. It is vivid, funny, chatty, even cranky and charged with sudden and shifting ideas. This is a large new novel from the master.

Breines, Ron. "Ravelstein Shows Bellow Still in Fine Form." Daily Yomiuri [Tokyo] 1 Oct. 2000: 15.

Caldwell, Gail. "Two Matched Men: Saul Bellow's Ravelstein Is Less a Novel Than a Loosely Woven Portrait of Friendship." Boston Globe 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Books, third ed.: D1.

Bellow's long and vast affection for Allan Bloom fits into the Bellovian pattern of those eternally suffering in the moment of modernity. This is hardly a novel, but rather a loosely woven, sometimes pleasant, sometimes irritating portrait of an erudite renegade whom Bellow loved. This is not a disparaging rendering. If anything, the narrator is too enamored of his manly character, and loses sight of the larger aesthetic duty to deliver him through a compelling work of fiction. Though much of Bellow's raw intelligence is here, the thundering beauty of Bellow's voice is missing. R may remind us of Bellovian depths, but it rarely ventures there itself.

Charles, Ron. "With Novelists Like Bellow, Who Needs Biographers." Christian Science Monitor 20 Apr. 2001, sec. Books: 21.

For readers who do not know Bloom's work and come to the book as a novel on its own terms, R seems a self-destructive, manipulative gossip driven by consumerist fantasies. R is like The Great Gatsby in that Ravelstein and Gatsby create themselves through the power of the imagination, and both pursue a lost love of mythic proportions that can't be reclaimed. However, there is no denying the engaging quality of Bellow's reflections on the mystery and power of friendship.

Covert, Martin. "Teaching by Example: Saul Bellow's New Novel Celebrates His Friendship with Allan Bloom." Times-Picayune 7 May 2000, sec. Travel: D7.

R, if one puts the Bellow and Bloom relationship aside, becomes the very sermon of cultural denouement that Bloom said could no longer be understood by vapid Americans (i.e. the course called Culturally Historical Perspective). To keep up with Bellow is to question one's own intellectual failings. Bellow is our Ravelstein, and we are his Chicks. He's pinpointing our inadequacies and demanding our full attention. This is a novel of love and ideas, of friendship and the fear of death, and of the race against time.

Cryer, Dan. "Bellow's Homage to a Friend: A Memoir Novel about a Life Lived with Gusto." Newsday 24 Apr. 2000, sec. Part II: B2.

Although the book's rewards are limited, it is evidence, nonetheless, of Bellow's still-fertile activity. An affectionate and exuberant memoir, R has a discursive, essay-like feel, almost without the benefit of superintending architecture. The overriding tone is joyous. Ravelstein emerges as a gargantuan world-shaper. Future biographers will pay much attention to this Chick-Bellow who sees the world through his mentor's eyes. R is hardly major Bellow, but it is easily his best work in thirteen years. It is full of loving repartee, loving tribute, and modest self-portraiture. Only Bellow could produce a Ravelstein who "laughed like Picasso's wounded horse, in Guernica, rearing."

Curtright, Travis. "Book Review." Interpretation 28.1 (2000): 107–10.

Bellow misses what was best about Bloom—his ideas. Bellow won't limit himself to recording the thoughts, dinner table conversation, tantrums, and ruminations of Bloom. He has to explain his own art, detail his own failed marriage, and his presently successful love life, missing the most important thing about the man for whom he writes this book. Details the three-part structure of the book, and complains that Bellow never relates Bloom's Eros to his ideas—a disappointing flaw. His depiction of Ravelstein is cartoonish, a caricature. The redeeming part of the novel is not Bellow's depiction of Bloom, but rather the artistic style of Bellow's writing, namely, his eye for detail and his ability to place the reader in Bloom's apartment. Bellow's own ruminations of death are more poignant than any of Bloom's ruminations.

Dunkley, Richard. "Bellow." Toronto Star 20 Apr. 2000, ed. 1, sec. Entertainment: page.

Feldman, Adam. "Soulmate in Bloom." Gay and Lesbian Review 7.4 (2000): 46–47.

A series of revealing anecdotes and character sketches, R lurches back and forth in time. An enormous sense of loss courses through its pages. Ravelstein and Chick's relationship is Platonic in the highest sense. With more than a touch of Falstaff in him, Ravelstein is a life-breather, feeding others with his energy and passing on his vital force. Unfortunately, the lovely, intelligent Rosamund has no such force to give; the most she can do is stave off death. It does not seem unfair to conclude that Alan Bloom was the love of Bellow's life.

An insightful interview which covers why Atlas was drawn to Bellow’s life, his generational and cultural affinities with Bellow, Bellow’s enormous struggles to become an artist, his own theories on biography as an art form, his views on the relationship between art, and self-destructiveness, art and disorder in Bellow, Bellow’s great contribution to Jewish American writing, his previous biography of Delmore Schwartz, Bellow and the South, and Atlas’s central assertion that all lives have themes.

Fitch, Janet. "An Intimate Bellow." Star Tribune [Minneapolis] 23 Apr. 2000: 16F.

R is a character study and a meditation rather than a complex fiction. Nevertheless, it offers a remarkable summation of the touchstones of Bellow's career: the preservation and relevance of history, loyalty to truth, and fidelity to individual experience—all the great, familiar themes are there. The conversations between the two men are reminiscent of the restless challenges and paradoxes posed by the great thinkers of Western Civilizations, capturing both the light and dark sides of human affairs in exchanges laced with Bellow's characteristic humor. Most moving, however, is the theme of mortality that lies at the heart of the novel. R is lean, humane, graceful, and witty.

Fitzgerald, Penelope. "When I Am Old and Gay and Full of Sleep." Spectator 15 Apr. 2000: 43–44.

In R, Chick speaks to us in Bellow's old, familiar, puzzled, confiding, and deeply beguiling voice. The book belongs to a mythical world awaiting discovery. Chick and Ravelstein share a great legacy through their Russian Jewish background. It is a book about illness and friendship.

Franscell, Ron. "Close Friends, Saul Bellow Rewrites a Scholar's Famous Life." Denver Post 30 Apr. 2000, sec. Books: F1.

Gives the main details of the plot of R. Speculates that fictionalizing a real-life friendship might have allowed Bellow more flexibility with an intricate, humanly inconsistent subject than a straight biography or memoir would have.

Fulford, Robert. "Eulogy to Genius from a Friend and Fellow Titan." Ottawa Citizen 7 May 2000, sec. Citizen's Weekly: Books, final ed.: C14.

Bellow and Bloom are two splendid pieces of American culture between whom love and energy flowed back and forth. The descriptions of Abe are concentrated and heightened once it is evident that Bloom was the companion Bellow always longed for. Identifies many of the characters with their real-life counterparts. Sadly, the picture of Janis Freedman in the book is too wise, saintly, and pure to be interesting. The novel's repetitiveness is its one significant flaw; otherwise, it reads as swiftly as a thriller. Even readers who don't care about Jewish intellectuals in Chicago in the 1980s will recognize they are in the hands of a master writing and the deliniation of an exceptional human creature.

Giddins, Gary. "For Whom the Bellow Tolls." Village Voice 25 Apr. 2000, sec. Books: 75.

R may be the first novel expanded from a eulogy. There is more talk than anecdote, and the time-warped journey juts this way and that. It is an inquiry into memory, death, friendship, obligation, and longing. Ravelstein is an outsized Bellow hero, a moral type who plays the clown and passes the Dickensian test of sounding good with twinkling and wit. However, the soul of the novel is Chick. His brain, not Ravelstein's, poses the quandaries. Chick is a veteran questioner and his ponderings fill a vacuum created by his amusingly modest refusal to explore Abe's. Chick's vivid autobiographical fragments upstage the man as well. In the end it is difficult to share Chick's pleasure in Abe.

Gillen, Francis. "Ravelstein's Life Defines Inevitable." Tampa Tribune 14 May 2000, sec. Commentary, final ed.: 4.

R asks the questions of what constitutes greatness in our time and how the human spirit discovers its full scope. R is a genre-blending novel combining fact and fiction, and personal memoir. Much of the novel details Ravelstein's refusal to let death cramp his style or lessen his friendships. Like his model, Socrates, he presides brilliantly from his bed. For his part, Chick must now confront the nihilism of the century. Amid nihilism and his own brush with death, Chick rediscovers in the spirit of his friend—that life is too great to give up to death unsung and unportrayed. This portrait, etched with love and admiration, is his final gift to his friend.

Goode, Stephen. "Unraveling Ravelstein." Insight on the News 29 May 2000: 26.

Goulet, John. "Bellow's Ravelstein Celebrates Friendship." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Cue: 6E.

Gray, Paul and Andrea Sachs. "Saul Bellow Blooms Again." Time 24 Apr. 2000: 70–72.

Grossinger, Harvey. "An Elegy from Bellow." Houston Chronicle 14 May 2000, sec. Zest: 16.

Calls R a rich, droll, deeply affectionate book. Avoiding fashionable biography, this novel adopts instead an impressionistic, convoluted framework for the unorthodox life of Abe Ravelstein. It is a multi-textured novel—a counterbalance of sorts to the myriad psychodramas that masquerade as soulful autobiographies in much of contemporary literature. It is familiar Bellow: hilarious, radiant, flamboyant, self-destructive, and bungling. R is a vivid medley of scenes full of uncompromising humor, massive learning and genius. Even in his ninth decade, the Old Master can make us feel privileged that he is still with us. Bloom would have been pleased with the book.

Hitchens, Christopher. "The Egg-Head's Egger-On." London Review of Books 27 Apr. 2000: 21–23.

Bellow presents Ravelstein as a hedonistic kvetch who manifests patience towards none. It is a full out novel which reverses pedantry and is all about life and death. R and Ravelstein are shadows on the wall of Augie March's cave. However, the novel makes heavy weather of the idea that sex is a poor expression of Eros. Reviews a great deal of material in previous novels to identify similar themes in this one.

Hoover, Bob. "Reality Check Novelists Bellow and Roth Create Characters Who Closely Resemble Real People–and Each Other." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 28 May 2000, sec. Arts & Entertainment: G8.

Compares R to Roth's The Human Strain. Argues, after comparing both books, that Roth at least raises some questions, while Bellow is content to give us a charming, superficial portrait of his old friend. Ravelstein's eccentricities, quirks, and generosity receive Bellow's attention, not his philosophy, or the weight and pain of his Jewishness. Unexplained are Ravelstein's political prominence, his influential teachings, and his childlike appetite for gaudy things. R is really a memoir with fictional names and probably should have appeared in a more honest form. As a novel it lacks a story, for starters, as well as a conflict and resolution. It is more of a publishing event than a book and will add little to Bellow's body of work.

Howarth, Brooke. "Bellow Still Engaging, Bold, If Rambling." Plain Dealer 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Arts & Entertainment: 10J.

R is an old man's book, its plot is loose, and its characters odd. Chick wanders in his reminiscences about his old friend. R is not Bellow's best work; rather, it is self-indulgent and rambling. Digressions and redundancies provide padding, not characterization. Yet Bellow's voice continues to prove engaging, and his lack of interest in plot is more than compensated for by his willingness to speak eloquently and boldly about things that matter—our culture, our values, and our hopes for the future.

Iyer, S. R. B. "Bellow at His Best." Columbus Dispatch 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Features—Accents and Arts: 7G.

Jacobs, Rita D. "Ravelstein." World Literature 74.4 (2000): 813.

R fails to transport the reader beyond the autogiographical facts of both Bloom's and Bellow's lives. Ravelstein emerges as a Rabelasian figure larger-than-life, with huge appetites. Chick is his intellectual and emotional touchstone. The novel is an easy read, the minor characters are noticeably flat, and Rosamund comes off as an old man's handmaiden.

Kakutani, Michiko. "Books of the Times: Bellow Plays Boswell to a Most Extravagant Johnson." New York Times 20 Aprl 2000, sec. Arts: E1.

R is a chatty, intermittently engaging work that feels more like a fictionalized portrait than a fully fashioned novel. Minor characters and plot feel tentative and flaccid, as though he isn't sure what he wants to make of his hero's story. The tensions between the two men in many ways embody the tensions which have always animated Bellow's work—the actual and the private realm. The book increasingly devolves into a looping and repetitious monologue by Chick, and is not sustained by the mini portraits. In the end, Ravelstein is decentered and the book loses energy and focus. Mr. Bellow should have written a straightforward memoir.

Kellman, Steven G. "Books: From Bellow, Memoir Disguised as Fiction." Atlanta Journal and Constitution 16 Apr. 2000: 10L.

Calls R an attempt to capture a large and large-souled man through a thinly disguised, short novel. As a character-sketch, it is a meandering, repetitive one which is written piecemeal.

Kramer, Larry. "Empty Except for Insult." Lambda Book Report July/Aug. 2000: 14–15.

R presents many problems for the gay reader not only because it is a peculiar, but because it is not good enough. Bellow writes his portrait of Bloom with bold, violent, unsympathetic strokes. It is an unpleasant book. The writing is oddly clumsy, sloppy, sparse, and repetitious. The novel raises questions about Bellow's homophobia. Bellow has written of an Abe without homosexuality and without AIDS. States briefly up front, these two monumental facts are left dangling throughout the entire book which is mostly filled with details about Chick's heterosexual life. Sadly, Chick's near death from food poisoning is meant to equal Abe's death through AIDS. Rosamund is the heroine caregiver, not Nikki. When you look beneath all the blankets all that is there are two once-admired emperors who have unwittingly shown us they have no souls.

Leader, Zachary. "Books: The Closing Curtains on a Great American Mind." Independent 22 Apr. 2000: 9.

R is a profound and luminous novel. Ravelstein himself is a mixture of high and low culture and it is he who asks, "With what in this modern democracy will you meet the demands of your soul?" His answer is sought for in the literature of Athens and Jerusalem. Chick's portrait of Ravelstein mostly steers clear of ideas, concentrating instead on pictures—and to picture Ravelstein, Chick himself must be put in focus. The experience only confirms Chick's sense that something lives on after the body's dissolution, that the pictures might continue after death. The novel is suffused with sharp-eyed, hard-edged love.

Leith, William. "Death Become Him." Independent 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Features: 42.

In R, death has taken on new properties—it has become fast, witty, and comically sharpened. Death is not just the end of human life, but the point of it. These two old, Jewish guys are much more interested in each other than in anyone else, and their principal conversations are about death. This is late, late Bellow, and as one would expect, Ravelstein is drawn with great beauty. Although death is humiliating, there are consolations. R is a brilliant novel.

Levi, Jonathan. "Tabletalk: Ravelstein, a Novel by Saul Bellow." Los Angeles Times Book Review 23 Apr. 2000: 16.

The most enlightening revelations in R are not about Ravelstein, but about the fiction-making memoirist himself. Ravelstein is a Frankenstein monster created from pieces of the dead. Its power originates from Bellow's complex affection and unjealous admiration energized by love and friendship. Ravelstein is a worthy successor to Charlie Citrine and Herzog. Both Chick and Ravelstein believe in the abiding power of love. Ultimately, the intellectual pleasures of the Greeks give way to the nostalgic memories of the Jews. This is who these two men really are. Slowly, Ravelstein wakens Chick to the horror of his friendship with Grielescu, the former Nazi sympathizer, and to his awful marriage to Vela. Slowly, he outs the Jew in Chick, as surely as Bellow "outs" Bloom.

Leviant, Curt. "Saul Bellow's 'Biography' of a Friend." Midstream May/June 2000: 42–43.

R is a superb novel written in thinking man's suede-supple prose. It has a perfect melange of erudition and hang loose. The structure is not linear, but rather shifts, curves and folds around itself with forward and rearward thrusts of memory. There are many memorable lines and passsages, and this older writer is even better.

Lim, Richard. "Bellow's Betrayal–or Act of Friendship?" Straits Times [Singapore], sec. Sunday Plus: 4.

Loh, Mary. "Unravel the Real Ravelstein." Straits Times [Singapore] 29 July 2000, sec. Life: 20.

The friendship in R is stranger than fiction. This memoir is a thinly disguised novel of ideas full of insider's jokes and private reminiscences. The two things which make it a masterpiece are Bellow's craft and his intention. He cleverly writes a memoir without writing a memoir. The gossamer-like anecdotes seem insubstantial but pieced together, they give a fully fleshed-out characterization of a Bellow personality. Bellow's true tribute to Bloom consists in his memories of this greater humanity and uncompromising beliefs in the powers of Eros. It is a clever, anti-novel, a memoir masquerading as a portrait of a fiction. Its greatest weakness is that its subtlety can melt into obscurity for many readers.

Mabe, Chauncey. "Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow." Sun-Sentinel, Florida 7 May 2000: page.

Argues that R is not a memoir, but a novel. Dismisses critics who hold Bellow accountable as a biographer, and insists R is a tragi-comic meditation on friendship and death, and that although it may not be on par with the author's acknowledged masterpieces, it does capture more of his wit, charm, and seriousness than might be expected at this late date. Calls Ravelstein a brilliant, undisciplined, larger-than-life academic celebrity who comes to full life on the page. The novel, with its absence of plot, is a beguiling achievement done in a sly, polished manner. This is not a novel of ideas, but a novel of that inevitable melancholy that falls upon even the most successful of lives. Questions whether anyone in the nation at large really cares about Allan Bloom and wonders why we should care. Criticizes those who assail Bellow for outing Bloom and insists that this is a novel, not a memoir. Ravelstein comes to life on the page, and the lack of plot is beguiling. Sadly, Chick is not as interesting, but at least he gives us a sensitive, mature point of view. The account of the friendship is moving and inclusive.

Marchand, Philip. "Bellow in Full Bloom." Toronto Star 30 Apr. 2000: D13.

Argues that what drives this novel is not the hero's political philosophy, which is only sketchily presented, but Bloom's extraordinary personality. He becomes one of Bellow's most engaging and curious creations. But this is not a satisfying novel with its scatter-brained restlessness and digressions, even though it impresses the reader with tender and selfless expressions of love by Rosamund.

Mars-Jones, Adam. "Books: Life and Saul." Observer 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Observer Review: 11.

R is a quietly wayward piece of work which deals with illness, impending death, and other last things. There is no real plot, just a meditative structure allowing for repetition and refinement of insight. There is much discretion here. The muffled dialectic between the two men gives the book its whisper of drama. This mouring might be seen as an act of acquisition by Bellow. Bloom's last great gift to him was to allow him to relinquish the role of sage.

Massie, Allan. "Small Steps from a Literary Giant." Scotsman 8 Apr. 2000: 11.

Describes the first half of the book as joyous in its portrayal of Ravelstein's splendor. But that said, the picture of Ravelstein's enthusiasm, extravagance, love of gossip and high politics in invigorating. Oddly, Bellow does not make you feel Ravelstein's intelligence. In the last part of the book, the meditation on death and what lies beyond the grave contains the belief in the hereafter. This book brings three great strands of American writing together: the artist, the storyteller, and the teacher. It is written with astonishing vitality which makes it utterly gripping.

McCann, Sean. "Failed Promise" Book: Magazine for the Reading Life Mar./Apr. 2000: 72-73.

R is a novel of said truths which mourns the passing of a great intellect, laments the decay of American civilization, and discusses the inescapability and decline which are a part of death itself. However, R turns out to be a curiously lifeless book. Bellow's old, darkly comic satire, uproarious humor, and brilliant comic vignettes found in his earlier fiction, combined with high philosophy, are only shadows of their former selves here. The book's method is haphazard and the fragments never seem to come together. Perhaps Bellow loves his subject too much. At his best, Bellow is a far better novelist than Bloom was ever a philosopher. Sadly, this book does not show it.

Menand, Louis. "Bloom's Gift." New York Review of Books 25 May 2000: 17–20.

There is a character based on Bloom in Ravelstein. Bellow chose this name because there is something to unravel. Chick, for his part, can never get at his subject, Ravelstein. Chick is a very complicated character who is guarded and in denial. It is Ravelstein who tells him truths about his friendships and his bad marriage to Vela. Ravelstein is everything Chick is not—klutzy, intellectually imperious, and homosexual. He even manages to take his revenge on Vela in this book. Though this book masquerades as a memoir celebrating friendship it is a book about the brittleness of the male heterosexual ego, like all Below's other books. It is also hard not the read the book without realizing that every character x is related to a real life y. Bellow had no idea what made Ravelstein tick. He had some idea about himself, though, and he worked it up with subtle but unsparing honesty.

Ming, Chuang Peck. "Scholar, Big Spender and Friend." Business Times [Singapore] 16 June 2000, sec., Executive Lifestyles: 4.

Comments on Bellow's depiction of Singapore and of Nikki, who is not merely a homosexual. In fact, they seem more like father and son. Both love expensive clothes and high living. Bellow's masterful writing will carry readers through to the very end. However, Bellow's goal to portray Ravelstein's intellectual brilliance does not come off. Failing to acquaint readers with Ravelstein's ideas, Bellow ironically also deprives the novel of the greater depth it is capable of.

Mullan, John. "Write Me up When I'm Gone." Guardian 22 Apr. 2000: 9.

The appeal to Bellow of Ravelstein's extravagance and excitement is characteristic: the big-souled intellectual meeting up with the material world is the situation of most Bellow comedy. With its mixtures of the elevated and brutally comic, Bellow's still inventive prose possesses a great energy. Chatty and improvisational, his prose is still thick with mostly unacknowledged quotation and misquotation. It is a structureless, digressive, almost whimsical, novel which circles around the idiosyncracies of its central character. Chick's wife is too good and too often complimented to have any life at all as a character. Bellow needs his re-imagined version of his friend to look death in the face. He is winning fictional space to talk about last things—to wonder unabashed about the soul while biology sucks at them both.

Nelson, Andy. "Saul Bellow and the Big Ideas; Author Brings Thoughts to Life with Character." Kansas City Star 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Arts: 18.

R is a novel of ideas, a close character study and a catalogue of radiant, descriptive prose all at once. His method of choice is anecdote. The Ravelstein who emerges is a man who espouses ideas from antiquity to the present moment and who is a hilarious mix of European refinement and American Casual. His gift in R is to live among big ideas, and put into motion a picture of Ravelstein, complete with all his queerness and sublimely entangled in mind and world.

Nesvisky, Matt. "Never Tell a Friend What You Wouldn't Want an Enemy to Know." Jerusalem Post 26 May 2000, sec. Books: 12B.

R is a wonderful book in spite of itself. It is an odd contraption which should not work as well as it does. Unfortunately, Ravelstein is depicted as narcissistic, vain, rude, gross, racist, arrogant, and autocratic. Though we are told he is witty, wise, and generous, we do not see it. What we do see are his frailties of character. Whether it is something to be shared with the world is another question. How does one explain the popularity of R? Its opening is a tour de force of comic writing, and the closing section is a meditative report and an unabashed valentine to a young wife. Suddenly, all the worthy revelation about Ravelstein falls into place, protecting this valedictory from the sabotage of sentimentality. Ravelstein was too smart to choose the wrong Boswell. He would have been charmed and even moved, as is this reader.

Pakenham, Michael. "Saul Bellow's Ravelstein: The Heart of a Life of Wisdom." Baltimore Sun 9 Apr. 2000, sec. Arts & Society, final ed.: 11F.

R is vibrant with life, love, and joy—as well as abrim with wisdom. Craft has not ebbed with age. It is a poem to the importance of true friendship and to the indomitability of lives intelligently and passionately lived. Ultimately, Ravelstein, both character and novel, is a celebration of the accumulation of genuine human knowledge and insight. The tale is told in a wonderfully chatty voice with the counterpoint of grand ideas. Yet there is discipline and distance present in that adoration as well as Chick's descriptions which are fluently and unflaggingly celebratory, and yet cleanly reportorial. A consciousness of spiritual matters concerning the afterlife, the Holocaust, and European anti-semitism runs through the narrative. As Jews, they both know that not teaching Jewry is an impossibility, and they also know that the world was created for each individual. R is a book in which Bellow has come with great and honorable age to a depth of wisdom, blissfulness of spirit, and a recognition of dignity. Neither Ravelstein nor Chick sets aside the notion that love is the highest function of our species.

Patner, Andrew. "Allan Bloom, Warts and All: Did Author Betray a Friend?" Chicago Sun-Times 16 Apr. 2000, late sports final ed.: 14.

Payne, Doug. "Right, Out, Loud: Saul Bellow Blooms Anew in Cagey, Warm Ravelstein." San Diego Union-Tribune 30 Apr. 2000, sec. Books: 8.

R is intriguing, annoying, funny, strange, and engaging. The treatment of Bloom is entirely celebratory and lets us imagine how a supremely self-confident intellectual took Eros as his central theme. Ravelstein is a creature of contradictions, and passionate about his consumption of luxury goods. While reveling in Ravelstein's eccentricities, and possessions by exploring male friendship and death without concern for doctrinal consistency, Bellow re-creates a world stranger. It may not be good politics, and is probably not great art, but R is undoubtedly fascinating.

"Ravelstein." Globe and Mail 29 Apr. 2000: D16+.

"Ravelstein." Jewish Book World 18.2 (2000): 68.

"Ravelstein." New Yorker 1 Nov. 1999: 96–107.

Romano, Carlin. "Public Intellectuals' Private Lives: Who's In on Who's Out?" Chronicle of Higher Education 16 June 2000: B7.

Details much of the controversy centered around Bellow's revelations about Bloom's homosexuality and death from AIDS. Also explores the responses of several acquaintances of Bloom's concerning the book's accuracy, and whether or not Bloom really deserved his reputation. Looming over this book and others is the question of whether an intellectual who seeks the limelight is fair game for disclosures about the most private aspects of life.

Rothstein, Edward. "Saul Bellow on Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between." New York Times 13 May 2000, late. ed.: B9.

R is a version of Ivan Illych heading toward death, but with none of the hypocrisy, possessing a rapid sensuality, a devotion to luxury, unstated erotic longings, and nervous, trembling fingers. Ravelstein believes nothing is more bourgeoise than the fear of death and that the essence of things is to be found only in the material world, which, in Ravelstein's view, can lead to philosophical knowledge as well as sensual pleasure. Clearly, Bellow sees our identities and appearances as a code to be misread. It is a book full of melancholic tenderness.

Shechner, Mark. "In Ravelstein, Bellow's Word Machine Is in Fine Form." Buffalo News 9 Apr. 2000, sec. Book Reviews, final ed.: 6F. Rpt. as "Autumn Blooms." Boston Book Review June 2000: 41.

Calls Bellow and Bloom Nietzche and Groucho engaging in slashing dialogues that cut rapidly from theories to digressions to punchlines. Bloom was a professor of deisre and a priest of misbehavior. His readiness to be pleasant in the service of honesty is a moral bedrock. Abe and Ravelstein are great talkers and passionate comedians. Bellow's is that rare voice of Levitas and gravitas, or cornball humor that assumes familiarity with Picasso. Bellow may be diluted down to 40% proof here, but the tang is unmistakable. It is Saul Bellow's heart you see beating on the sleeve of Abe Ravelstein's Lanvin coat.

Smith, Dinitia. "A Bellow Novel Eulogizes a Friendship." New York Times 27 Jan. 2000, sec. Arts: E1.

Ravelstein is a larger-than-life figure, a brilliant sybarite and a homosexual who dies of AIDS. Written in Bellow's inimitable hortatory style, rich with learning and puns, R is the account of Bloom's living out of the principles of Plato's dialogue. R is also about the art of biography. In the end, the book is a tribute for a friend whom Bellow believed understood him completely.

Smith, Wendy. "Ravelstein Author Touches on His Perennial Themes, but with Less Energy." Chicago Sun-Times 16 Apr. 2000, late sports final ed., sec. Show: 1.

Bellow's voice in R is unmistakably self-mocking, self-knowing, intellectual, earthy, sharply funny, and deeply serious. Only the energy that crackled in H, HG, and HRK is missing from the autumnal work. R is a meditation on the nature of friendship and the imminence of death. We are meant to savor Ravelstein's contradictions while admiring the integrity of his beliefs. Unfortunately, these are only sketchily described and Bellow's piecemeal approach works against him in this endeavor. Only after Chick's brush with death does his attachment to Ravelstein emerge with enough depth to engage the reader.

Snider, Norman. "Unraveling Ravelstein." Globe and Mail 29 Apr. 2000: D16–D17, D26–D27.

Calls R a gently rambling roman à clef. Details plot and contents. Argues that the extraordinary question of what actually defines greatness, and what qualities define Aristotle's great-souled man, lies at the center of the novel and remains unanswered. Sees R as a sombre little duet which features Bellow's undimmmed power of insight and that even though his literary ranking in the canon of U.S. literature is unclear, Bellow is Aristotle's great-souled man.

Staples Brent. "Editorial Observer: Mr. Bellow Writes on Wrestling with the Ghost of Edward Shils." New York Times 22 Apr. 2000: A12.

Calls R a slender epic. Claims that the experienced Bellow watchers are more interested in the portrait of Edward Shils in the novel. Describes Shils at considerable length and his onetime friendship with Bellow. Argues that Shils cast an enormous shadow over Bellow's life as a mentor, character model, and editor. Presents the idea that Shils was outraged over his caricature as Durnwald in HG, and that the animosity has reached lethal proportions with the publication of R where he appears and Rakmiel Kogon.

Stephens, Bret. "A Posthumous Portrait." Wall Street Journal 14 Apr. 2000, eastern ed., Wll.

A reminiscence about Bloom's teaching reputation at the University of Chicago. Argues that the characters and setting of the novel are are correct, right down to the colony of parrots that made their nest in the campus neighborhood. Wonders if Bloom, had he lived, would have appreciated his "outing" and his depiction as a spendthrift and slob, his cultivation of groupies, and his unseemly interest in their sex lives. However, at the end of the portrait the reader is aware that Bloom is concerned for the complete care of his students' souls, and is completely committed in friendship. Bellow's portrait of Bloom brilliantly captures his humor and brilliance.

Strawson, Galen. "Books: A Local Hero in Bloom." Financial Times [London] 15 Apr. 2000, Saturday London ed.: 1, 5.

R is a Nobel-worthy novel and Ravelstein himself is a born Bellow hero, one of his fortunately flawed magi, a man of powerful intelligence poised somewhere between Athens and Jerusalem. R is a book preoccupied with Sehnsucht, longing. Its Plato's Symposium and Love is the highest function of our species. It flows from the ethos, the verve, the odd eudaimonia of his life. Argues that the best memoir that Bellow could possibly have written would hardly have differed from the one he has created in R. It is a rare achievement to produce such a high-order narrative with a speculative tone flowing from the personal material of one's own recent life. In a way, R was the final joint venture between Bloom and Bellow, and is worthy of them both.

Sutherland, John. "In Tribute to a Friend, Settle Some Scores." Sunday Times 16 Apr. 2000: 9/44c. [sec. Tabloid, 20] .

R covers only the last years of the hero's life. Not much happens except hospitals and talk. It is like overhearing two old codgers rabbit on about what it is like to be two old codgers. They reminisce, bitch, and tell their favorite old Jewish jokes over again. They latch onto Vela, relentlessly and savagely. Mircea Eliade and Edward Shils are lampooned. Bellow has created a monumental likeness of his friend, Bloom, for posterity to admire. But R offers more than funery portraiture. It explores, in its attractively rambling way, two dauntingly large and touchy themes: death, and American Jewishness. What is it to die? the old men ask each other. Chick argues that as a Jew you are an American, but somehow you are not. The downside is the inextinguishable curse of anti-semitism. The upside testifies that Jewish intellectual activity has a unique ability to broker the old cultures of Europe for the new world.

Tandon, Bharat. "Boswell on Gatsby." Times Literary Supplement 21 Apr. 2000: 21.

R feels like familiar Bellow territory. A meditation on biography, an autobiography that allows Bellow to focus on the question of what is most worthy of emphasis among an individual's actions since human beings are radically mysterious. The name Abe Ravelstein signifies his Jewishness and the sense of him as something to be unraveled. This unraveling is Chick's task. This novel is written in Bellow's inimitable style, a mixture of streetwise comedy and highbrow disquisition, aimed self-consciously to match the big nineteenth century novels which he so admires. R is a twilight book, constantly reminding the reader that its two protagonists are housed in frail, decaying bodies. R is a chamber piece.

Tanenhaus, Sam. "Bellow, Bloom and Betrayal." Wall Street Journal 2 Feb. 2000, eastern ed.: A26.

Reminds readers that a writer is often one who hones his blade and plunges it into his victim's back. Has Bellow abused a friend by "outing" him? Details Bellow's other harsh portrayals of living people in his novels. However, Allan Bloom is a different story. Bellow does not cut Bloom down to size but portrays him lovingly. Bloom's lifestyle was known, his partner is depicted respectfully, and both Bloom and Bellow have both thought long and hard about Eros and its divinatory powers.

Taylor, Alan. "Rock of Ages." Scotland on Sunday 23 Apr. 2000, sec. Books: 13.

R is a novel of wit, exuberance, and fireball intelligence. Bellow is still performing at his highest level. The first one hundred pages could have been written by Bellow at the height of his powers, pulsating as they are with metaphor and mischievousness, and an unadulterated, unquenchable appetite for life, both physical and intellectual. R is another in a long line of Bellow's great comic creations. Towards the end, it may flag, and a sharper editor may have eradicated its repetitiousness. That said, it is still a book that most young writers would die to have written, for it is Bellow near his very best.

Upchurch, Michael. "In Ravelstein Saul Bellow Leaves a Lot about Allan Bloom Unsaid." Seattle Times 23 Apr. 2000: M7.

If Bellow fans are expecting Humboldt Redux they may be disappointed. Bellow's rat-a-tat-tat wisecracking prose is intact, and the new book's Chicago and Paris setting are rendered with vigor. But R does not fully tap the resources of fiction as HG does. R boasts numberous lively episodes and conversations, but has little sense of shape or momentum. While we get many comic and unflattering depictions of Ravelstein, the book is sketchy on his sexual habits. What we really have is an appearance of character, a temperament and a set of attitudes. As a caricature it is incomplete, however fondly intended. The result is an almost-novel about an almost-character. It is surprising that Bellow-the-novelist doesn't want to take a chance, go deeper, get messy—especially when he has chosen the speculative medium of fiction over the eyewitness confines of memoir.

Valiunas, Algis. "Eros on 59th Street." American Spectator July/Aug. 2000: 82–85.

Details the relationship between Ravelstein and Chick, and Ravelstein's depiction in the novel. R is not a betrayal of Allan Bloom, but is a fine novel. Bellow is after some larger truth than the sum of both firends. One might wish there were more of Bloom's heroism in the portrait of Ravelstein. Wonders why the novel makes no mention of Bloom's final book, Love and Friendship, dictated in the last months of his life. Suggests that including this would have added to Bloom's stature as Ravelstein. Rosamund is the character in whom Rousseauian romantic love and Platonic Eros combine. Groomed for love by her teacher, Ravelstein, Rosamund is Eros perfected who surpasses her master. To Chick, she gives her greatest gifts. The life at the heart of R contains profound ideas. For Bloom and Janis to have inspired such a great book is almost as much of a triumph as to have written it.

Vulliamy, Ed and Vanessa Thorpe. "Bellow's Betrayal Blots His Copybook." Observer 23 Apr. 2000: 15.

Discusses the literary storm which has blown up around R, and suggests that perhaps Bellow himself feels he should not have had Ravelstein die of AIDS. Repeats Bellow's comments to the press about his sorrow over exposing Bloom's sexual life. Summarizes various pro and con comments from a variety of sources. Concludes that since Martin Amis is about to bring out a memoir of Bellow called Experience (2000), Bellow ought to be on his guard.

Weinstein, Kenneth R. "The Real Allan Bloom: A Memoir." Weekly Standard 8 May 2000, sec. Books & Arts: 33, 35.

R reopens the wounds of loss by those who have sharply felt his loss. Commends Bellow for "not easily giving up a creature like Ravelstin to death" (R?). Ravelstein is almost, yet not quite, every inch the real Bloom. Pays tribute to Bloom's intense caring for his students. Describes Bloom's classroom performances while teaching Plato. Criticizes Bellow's trivializing of Bloom in the descriptions of consumerism. Argues that Bloom viewed Paris as the failing heart of a once great culture, the place on earth where remnants of greatness could best be sensed. The chief distraction in the book is the fact that R shatters the dignity with which Bloom maintained the privacy of his personal life. Bloom was extraordinarily complex and this novel cannot capture the great teacher who shaped so many souls.

Wildman, Kathleen. "Ravelstein." Antioch Review 59.1 (2001): 118.

Wilson, Jonathan. "Bloom's Day." New York Times Book Review 23 Apr. 2000: 6.

R is Bellow writing in his gold-standard prose as an antidote to mindlessness, in a lively, lovely and haunting novel that caresses Allan Bloom's life. R is alive to irony and relishes it. Bellow, a lifelong intellectual and bandit-trickster, presents a novel with selective imagination and the burnished sentences of an accomplished novelist. It is a novel that celebrates a much maligned item—American male friendship—and especially its Jewish version. However, it is a relationship of fractured ambiguities of differing sexual preferences, and variations in age and philosophy. Chick ultimately resists his "younger brother in need of reality instructor" role with Ravelstein. R is Bellow's most Jewish novel, and as such it is a cause for celebration. This is a deep, rich, and unnervingly entertaining novel. R is proof of Chekhov's theory that great art can never be depressing.

Woolfe, Angela. "Books: Paperback of the Week: Ravelstein." Observer 22 Apr. 2001: 18.

Yanofsky, Joel. "A More Mellow Bellow." Gazette [Montreal] 29 Apr. 2000, sec. Books and the Visual Arts: J1.

R is part fictionalized biography, part personal debt, and an affectionate and thinly veiled portrait of the late Allan Bloom. This is a short but sweet novel. Bellow turns out to be a fulsome Boswell and receives the tribute he was convinced he deserved. The clue to Bellow's approach in R is in the title character's pitch that he do it in an after-supper reminiscence manner. The pace is leisurely and elliptical, full of intended repetitions and circling around in search of a plot. Short on action and long on talk, what we get in R are two nearly dead white males kibbutzing and complaining about a society that is irredeemably silly, that values therapy over intellectual honesty, and self-esteem over the heard facts. Bellow's simple secret in being a writer is to make readers laugh and cry, and that is what Saul Bellow can still do.

Yardley, Jonathan. "Bellow's Gift." Washington Post Book World 9 Apr. 2000, final ed.: X1.

R is a rich, loving, affecting book. At times it is as funny as anything Bellow has ever written. It has no plot to speak of and it is less a novel than a portrait. The result is impressionistic though the vigor of Bellow's prose and the raucous humor echoes through the pages. Ravelstein is an extraordinary character, one to take his place alongside Augie March, Henderson, and Humboldt. Bellow, midway through his ninth decade, still feels with the intensity of youth, and here he shows us that friendship, however platonic, can provoke longing and passion just as does love. It is a memoir that would please his subject As for the reader, it is hard not to feel privileged at being allowed a glimpse into a human connection as intimate and rewarding as this one.

Return to Top