I'm Not Even Hungry

Quote of the Fifty Years Ago: I'm a Saul Bellow Whore Edition

"The Adventures of Augie March is concerned with Augie's quest to learn his own character and destiny. Novelist Saul Bellow (Dangling Man, The Victim) has handed over his typewriter to his hero, to let him tell his own story in his own way. As a result, the book, which has a kind of self-generating power and authenticity, reads more like fictionalized memoirs than a novel. Self-educated, slum-bred Augie writes with a combination of raw, breezy slang and literary allusion that is often bouncy and effective, although too frequently his over-enthusiastic prose is merely bloated. Despite it's faults of narrative, style and taste, the story is good enough to push 38-year-old Saul Bellow to the forefront of the younger, postwar U.S. novelists." - Time, 1953

posted by Tim @ 8:29 PM