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A review by holodoxa
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
4.0
I am a bit of a novice when it comes to the work of Saul Bellow. This is a bit of an educational travesty or unforgivable ignorance on my part. I completed an English literature major in the early-to-mid 2010s and never recall a single professor or student ever mentioning Bellow. I only discovered his work because I was already acquainted with Philip Roth's novels and have become a regular reader of Commentary. So a few years after discovery of Bellow, I read Herzog, which appeared to be his most enduring work and now have moved on to Mr. Sammler's Planet. My reaction to both works was much the same as both works share significant similarities. Both have aging intellectual type protagonists who are bewildered by the people and changing world around them, and a dense, introspective prose style. Although I know only a limited amount about Bellow, I've heard that his characters, especially the leads, tend to be facsimiles of himself in someway, which of course is quite common for many writers but still aids in interpretation of the work.
Mr. Sammler's Planet has been characterized as "an erudite and fastidious meditation on the decline of liberal America" by Tablet writer Howard Johnson, and "the first neoconservative novel" byDominic Greenhttps://newcriterion.com/issues/2018/11/mr-bellows-planet of The New Criterion. I think Green and Johnson's takes are reasonable and represent at least some of the psychological journey of Bellow's titular lead, but it doesn't quite capture everything about Bellow's moral messaging. Because this seems certainly to be a moralizing novel, and in some ways it is an old-fashioned morality that Bellow is an apologist for, but it is also a surprisingly strong rebuke to nihilism and cynicism about humanity. This is why I think this book resonates with readers (though this may no longer be true for contemporary readers). Bellow gazes into the moral abyss (e.g. the portions about Sammler's horrific WWII experiences) and what he sees as the derangement of American social mores, but he turns away toward the horizon. Bellow still thinks the proper response to barbarism of all kinds is humane endurance.
Bellow's central idea, emphasized by the concluding lines (“The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.”), is that there is a clear, intuitive, and universal moral sense shared by all humans, but there are many other forces (especially of the late American 1960s in this work) that try and interfere with the obligation to follow those intuitions. One of the forces Bellow identifies is fear and is vividly captured with the dapper Black pickpocket character. So I feel that a lot misidentification of purported reactionary sentiment in Bellow's book. What is seen as Sammler's bigotry or retrograde ideas by reviewers past and present is Bellow laying himself bare so as to improve himself. Through Sammler, Bellow appears to be honestly exploring his own anxieties (and those of many others similar to and different from him) and subsequently confronting them so as to be a better human. He is working toward a better humanism, especially when he is forced to recognize what the giving in to his fear and weakness can do.
Unfortunately, I think Bellow novels will not find an eager audience today or the near future in the academy or with popular audiences. His style and thematic content will be read as anachronistic, unrewardingly difficult, and malignantly reactionary today. I certainly struggled a bit with the prose style and think a re-read would benefit me. Moreover, Mr. Sammler's Planet may simply be a bit too much a work of its time. I'm not sure the subtleties of its commentary will be grasped by a younger generation of readers who have little to no awareness of the zeitgeist of two decades ago let alone six!
Mr. Sammler's Planet has been characterized as "an erudite and fastidious meditation on the decline of liberal America" by Tablet writer Howard Johnson, and "the first neoconservative novel" by
Bellow's central idea, emphasized by the concluding lines (“The terms which, in his inmost heart, each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that is the truth of it — that we all know, God, that we know, that we know, we know, we know.”), is that there is a clear, intuitive, and universal moral sense shared by all humans, but there are many other forces (especially of the late American 1960s in this work) that try and interfere with the obligation to follow those intuitions. One of the forces Bellow identifies is fear and is vividly captured with the dapper Black pickpocket character. So I feel that a lot misidentification of purported reactionary sentiment in Bellow's book. What is seen as Sammler's bigotry or retrograde ideas by reviewers past and present is Bellow laying himself bare so as to improve himself. Through Sammler, Bellow appears to be honestly exploring his own anxieties (and those of many others similar to and different from him) and subsequently confronting them so as to be a better human. He is working toward a better humanism, especially when he is forced to recognize what the giving in to his fear and weakness can do.
Unfortunately, I think Bellow novels will not find an eager audience today or the near future in the academy or with popular audiences. His style and thematic content will be read as anachronistic, unrewardingly difficult, and malignantly reactionary today. I certainly struggled a bit with the prose style and think a re-read would benefit me. Moreover, Mr. Sammler's Planet may simply be a bit too much a work of its time. I'm not sure the subtleties of its commentary will be grasped by a younger generation of readers who have little to no awareness of the zeitgeist of two decades ago let alone six!