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bibliotequeish's review
2.0
This book tested my patience.
I am not against a slow moving book, some of my favorite books are slow and long winded.
But this book was so dry and at times incredibly boring.
I guess I hold the "Great American Novels" to a higher standard, I know it's never a good idea to go into a book with expectations, but I do and when they don't live up, it disappoints me and makes it even harder for me to enjoy whatever it is I'm reading.
While often beautiful, this book and these characters lost me time and time again over the course of its almost 550 pages.
I am not against a slow moving book, some of my favorite books are slow and long winded.
But this book was so dry and at times incredibly boring.
I guess I hold the "Great American Novels" to a higher standard, I know it's never a good idea to go into a book with expectations, but I do and when they don't live up, it disappoints me and makes it even harder for me to enjoy whatever it is I'm reading.
While often beautiful, this book and these characters lost me time and time again over the course of its almost 550 pages.
wolfdan9's review against another edition
3.0
“Mr. Sammler had a thing about these unprofitable instants of clarity. Seeing the single human creature demand more when the sum of human facts could not yield more. Sammler did not like these instants, but they came nevertheless.”
“Both knowing and not knowing—one of the more frequent human arrangements.”
Mr. Sammler’s Planet is my second Saul Bellow novel, and like Henderson the Rain King, it features a character attempting to understand himself by first understanding the world around him (and seemingly vice versa). Set in the late 60s, at the cusp of the sexual revolution and Moon landing, both of which are heavily referenced throughout the story, an ordinary elderly man, who is portrayed as a caricature of ordinary to the degree that he is actually quite zany to the reader, has a misadventurous several days (weeks?) that lead to an epiphany. Mr. Sammler’s Planet is less of a story in the traditional sense than a meandering episode of Artur Sammler’s life. This includes a long running narrative that alternates among the very thin plot, dialogue, wandering thoughts and philosophical musings, and numerous flashbacks.
Some of the story’s turning points include the deeply knowledgeable Holocaust survivor Mr. Sammler being heckled by students about George Orwell; Mr. Sammler catching a pickpocket stealing and being cornered by him, and upon being cornered, mysteriously being flashed by the man’s genitalia; and simultaneously preventing the theft of a scientist’s manuscript of a book about the moon landing and the theft of his nephew’s secret fortune by his grandnephew. Listing the events like this does not really do any justice to the story — it’s actually a very thoughtful and sensible, but humorous, picaresque novel — but it does illustrate the strange circumstances of Mr. Sammler’s life that drive his inner conflict.
The crux of this conflict is the changing attitudes toward sex by the younger generation, which is embodied by Angela, Sammler’s promiscuous and scantily dressed grandniece. Sammler, who is guided (and frequently haunted) by his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust, and who was partially blinded and forced to kill during it, is mostly indifferent toward the many instances in his life where blatant perversity and sexual hedonism rear their head, but at the novel’s end, moments before Angela’s kindly father suddenly dies from an aneurysm, Sammler suggests that she apologize to him for her overall behavior. It seems to me that Bellow concluded that traditional conservative values are somewhat necessary in the face of changing times. He reveals in the final words of the novel that people possess an implicit moral understanding of what is and is not appropriate. He seems to criticize society for betraying this intrinsic knowledge of what’s good and right (namely, perhaps, God or God’s law — if only Bellow could see the world today). I don’t agree at all with what appears to be Bellow’s final conclusion, but I admire his portrayal of Sammler and Sammler’s journey. I don’t see Bellow discussed often, but he ranks as one of the most difficult writers that I’ve enjoyed personally.
“Both knowing and not knowing—one of the more frequent human arrangements.”
Mr. Sammler’s Planet is my second Saul Bellow novel, and like Henderson the Rain King, it features a character attempting to understand himself by first understanding the world around him (and seemingly vice versa). Set in the late 60s, at the cusp of the sexual revolution and Moon landing, both of which are heavily referenced throughout the story, an ordinary elderly man, who is portrayed as a caricature of ordinary to the degree that he is actually quite zany to the reader, has a misadventurous several days (weeks?) that lead to an epiphany. Mr. Sammler’s Planet is less of a story in the traditional sense than a meandering episode of Artur Sammler’s life. This includes a long running narrative that alternates among the very thin plot, dialogue, wandering thoughts and philosophical musings, and numerous flashbacks.
Some of the story’s turning points include the deeply knowledgeable Holocaust survivor Mr. Sammler being heckled by students about George Orwell; Mr. Sammler catching a pickpocket stealing and being cornered by him, and upon being cornered, mysteriously being flashed by the man’s genitalia; and simultaneously preventing the theft of a scientist’s manuscript of a book about the moon landing and the theft of his nephew’s secret fortune by his grandnephew. Listing the events like this does not really do any justice to the story — it’s actually a very thoughtful and sensible, but humorous, picaresque novel — but it does illustrate the strange circumstances of Mr. Sammler’s life that drive his inner conflict.
The crux of this conflict is the changing attitudes toward sex by the younger generation, which is embodied by Angela, Sammler’s promiscuous and scantily dressed grandniece. Sammler, who is guided (and frequently haunted) by his experience as a survivor of the Holocaust, and who was partially blinded and forced to kill during it, is mostly indifferent toward the many instances in his life where blatant perversity and sexual hedonism rear their head, but at the novel’s end, moments before Angela’s kindly father suddenly dies from an aneurysm, Sammler suggests that she apologize to him for her overall behavior. It seems to me that Bellow concluded that traditional conservative values are somewhat necessary in the face of changing times. He reveals in the final words of the novel that people possess an implicit moral understanding of what is and is not appropriate. He seems to criticize society for betraying this intrinsic knowledge of what’s good and right (namely, perhaps, God or God’s law — if only Bellow could see the world today). I don’t agree at all with what appears to be Bellow’s final conclusion, but I admire his portrayal of Sammler and Sammler’s journey. I don’t see Bellow discussed often, but he ranks as one of the most difficult writers that I’ve enjoyed personally.
lesserjoke's review against another edition
1.0
DNF at 50%. I should be all about this misanthropic Holocaust survivor, but I'm honestly just bored to tears.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
5.0
One of Bellow's best. Up with "Herzog" and "Augie March".
rc90041's review against another edition
4.0
An occasionally intriguing but often shambolic meandering that seems to cobble together bits of Bellow’s life, with altogether too many characters thrown in, and producing a general sense that the book is searching for a reason to exist. Feels a little like a season of a TV show where the writers aren’t sure what to do next, so they just throw in a series of improbable events. The late 60s were apparently a different time for writers like Bellow: They could stitch together the most improbable and flimsy plots, and get away with multi-page digressions on “What It All Means.” It’s maybe most intriguing as a time capsule of late 60s Literary Deep Thoughts. Still, oddly compelling, despite the general lack of effort or coherence on the actual story.
eklsolo's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Misogyny
greatgodbird's review against another edition
1.0
An interesting read. Bellow (the author) presents to the reader the dichotomy between innovation and archaism through several symbols and analogies for American dreams and humanity-induced decline of civilisation. Unfortunately, some of these key philosophical representors accomplish their tasks only through reductive writing and profiling; knowing even a little of how people of colour, women, and queer individuals and groups have been and continue to be viewed and treated in America makes some of this writing abhorrent.
On the topic of racism, the key black character remains unnamed, yet is described in animalistic terms - such descriptions convey this man to be an oppressive beast, and the black population of New York to be unable to understand white speech. Hideous slurs are used casually by characters and narrator, and extend to the way leading male characters (Mr Sammler, Elya, Wallace, Feffer) refer to women and queer people living in Manhattan in the late 60s. The cornerstone character in the short plot, an Indian biophysicist (Govinda Lal) is reduced to descriptions of his vocal timbre, his hairiness, and crude exoticised ideas of "littleness", and demonic and primitive paganisms - all in the midst of Lal's eloquent discussions on human invention and innovation.
Women, especially, are reduced to paragons of negativised sexual liberation - sexual beings for men at the forefront, and spoiled, vapid idiots used to facilitate intellectual monologues second. This is truly a shame on behalf of the male characters, as the actual descriptions of the lead women (Shula, Angela, and Margotte) demonstrate that the men are oblivious to their keen interests in politics, equality, ethics, and global matters adjacent to their discovery, or rediscovery, of sexuality following global economic crises and depression, escape from WWII, and religiously oriented marital abuse.
It is difficult to know where lies the line between Bellow's actual ideas on non-white, non-male, non-straight demographics, and the opinion infused into characters to emphasise his ideas. There is a distinct contrast in this book between the Self and the Other - though this results in antagonisation between ideologies, cultures, races, and sexes, it is also highly encouraged that the Other be a goal. For instance, one grand symbol recurrent in 'Mr Sammler's Planet' is the moon, and the new sciences allowing for moon travel coupled with American capitalism selling space travel tickets to the rich. Having escaped the Holocaust, having grappled with mortality in murder, his dying friend's aneurysm, and the legacy of H.G. Wells, Mr Sammler's planet is a confused den of depravity, where humanity must progress, or, as he sees it, it begins to perish.
In the penultimate chapter, which appears to be the crux of the book (despite the previous chapter being much more exciting!), Mr Sammler opens up to his new intellectual companion, Govinda Lal, and expresses his confusion at the pace of social evolution, wars, and rekindling humanity and identities following abrupt and violent expulsion from the things we know. He acknowledges changes have occurred, and feels guilty of his boundary-crossings into once-innocent, now offensive territories, yet is conflicted by the Self (known and right) and the Other (unknown and... is it also right?) - at which point do they intersect?
In any case, human progression, invention, innovation, and greatness are covered in this book through positive and negative analogical characters and events. My favourites were Wallace - he does not wipe properly, stinks, and is a treasury of failed business ventures - and Margotte - the aspiring horticulturist, avid reader, and a widow who is free to spill her thoughts and philosophies to her absent-minded Uncle Sammler, and not simply "shut up" anymore.
On the topic of racism, the key black character remains unnamed, yet is described in animalistic terms - such descriptions convey this man to be an oppressive beast, and the black population of New York to be unable to understand white speech. Hideous slurs are used casually by characters and narrator, and extend to the way leading male characters (Mr Sammler, Elya, Wallace, Feffer) refer to women and queer people living in Manhattan in the late 60s. The cornerstone character in the short plot, an Indian biophysicist (Govinda Lal) is reduced to descriptions of his vocal timbre, his hairiness, and crude exoticised ideas of "littleness", and demonic and primitive paganisms - all in the midst of Lal's eloquent discussions on human invention and innovation.
Women, especially, are reduced to paragons of negativised sexual liberation - sexual beings for men at the forefront, and spoiled, vapid idiots used to facilitate intellectual monologues second. This is truly a shame on behalf of the male characters, as the actual descriptions of the lead women (Shula, Angela, and Margotte) demonstrate that the men are oblivious to their keen interests in politics, equality, ethics, and global matters adjacent to their discovery, or rediscovery, of sexuality following global economic crises and depression, escape from WWII, and religiously oriented marital abuse.
It is difficult to know where lies the line between Bellow's actual ideas on non-white, non-male, non-straight demographics, and the opinion infused into characters to emphasise his ideas. There is a distinct contrast in this book between the Self and the Other - though this results in antagonisation between ideologies, cultures, races, and sexes, it is also highly encouraged that the Other be a goal. For instance, one grand symbol recurrent in 'Mr Sammler's Planet' is the moon, and the new sciences allowing for moon travel coupled with American capitalism selling space travel tickets to the rich. Having escaped the Holocaust, having grappled with mortality in murder, his dying friend's aneurysm, and the legacy of H.G. Wells, Mr Sammler's planet is a confused den of depravity, where humanity must progress, or, as he sees it, it begins to perish.
In the penultimate chapter, which appears to be the crux of the book (despite the previous chapter being much more exciting!), Mr Sammler opens up to his new intellectual companion, Govinda Lal, and expresses his confusion at the pace of social evolution, wars, and rekindling humanity and identities following abrupt and violent expulsion from the things we know. He acknowledges changes have occurred, and feels guilty of his boundary-crossings into once-innocent, now offensive territories, yet is conflicted by the Self (known and right) and the Other (unknown and... is it also right?) - at which point do they intersect?
In any case, human progression, invention, innovation, and greatness are covered in this book through positive and negative analogical characters and events. My favourites were Wallace - he does not wipe properly, stinks, and is a treasury of failed business ventures - and Margotte - the aspiring horticulturist, avid reader, and a widow who is free to spill her thoughts and philosophies to her absent-minded Uncle Sammler, and not simply "shut up" anymore.
mark_friedman's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Celebrating humanity's potential but challenging our comforts and our politics, hopes, and assumptions. A vivid critique of its time and place yet universal enough to evoke the Holocaust and today's flavors of illogical and fraught democracy. A modern Jewish masterpiece by the greatest Jewish writer of his day.