open Democracy News Analysis - Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and 'Ravelstein', - Comments

RonPrice on "Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and 'Ravelstein'"

RonPrice — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:21:28 +0100

Although this posting is not directed at this particular aspect of Saul Bellow, his life and work, I would like to add the following as a sort of belated eulogy. It has been more than a year since the last posting in this thread, so my prose-poem below might serve to close this thread on an appropriate note. ___________________________ WITHOUT GENITALIA In 1959, the year I joined the Bah' Faith, American novelist Saul Bellows novel Henderson The Rain King was published. Like most novels there are many lines of interpretation to describe the meaning of this work. One explanatory line is that the novel seeks to explain the fate of the self in modern life, to describe the journey to find the self. Bellows hero, Eugene Henderson, lives actively inside his own mind. His inner voice is ceaselessly crying: I want; I want. He has lots of money but he seeks wisdom; he seeks the answer to who he is; he seeks psychological and spiritual health and freedom from lifes endless distractions, from his temper and from his wants. Henderson is seeking, in what may well be Bellows most loved book, something I had found in that same year 1959. Without any effort I had attained the goal Henderson sought; I had attained the object of my quest, although the beauty of my Beloved I still had not really beheld. I was wrapt, at the age of fifteen, in the veil of self,1 viewing life, as most children and adolescents do, as one long indulgence.-Ron Price with appreciation to Bah'u'llh, Hidden Words. #22 Arabic. It was a bi-polar culture back then,1 back in the fifties, back when my bi-polarism first emerged with a chemical efficiency far beyond any social determinism. Culture has always been bi-polar for me and every atom in existence was quintessentially a mystery, far beyond any empirical analysis and prediction. Although, I.. must say that the mask of the fifties was drawn aside about 1959/60 and a changing face, regretful, doubting and looking for a type of rebirth in rock-n-roll was waking us up from Doris Day, Mr. Clean, Ike Eisenhower, luxury without stress, life without negroes and certainly without the unspoken genitalia.2 1 M.A. Quayam, Bellows: Henderson and The Rain King as An Allegory for The Fifties, American Studies International, Vol.33, No.1, 1995, pp.65-74. 2 D.T. Miller and M. Nowak, the Fifties: The Way We Really Were, Doubleday and Co. Inc., N.Y., 1977, p.18. Ron Price May 25th 2006

agingqueen on "Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and 'Ravelstein'"

agingqueen — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:54:10 +0100

wow... that was a great idea... I'm sorry I missed it.... Talk about a range of diversity! News flash May 10TH: The essay subject is here! On May 21st You will have to write an essay of approximately 1500 words. We would like you to begin by giving a short description of a typical day in your life. Then we would like you to write the essay with these 4 questions in mind as inspiration.

martinml on "Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and 'Ravelstein'"

martinml — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:22:53 +0100

hi everybody Please go to this website www.worlddiary.dk and sign up if you like to represent your country on May 21 this year.

Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom and 'Ravelstein',

douglaskmurray@yahoo.com — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 17:11:22 +0100

I would just like to add, if I may, a small leveller to Tom McBrides comments on the sadly late Saul Bellow and his friend Allan Bloom on whom Ravelstein is based. I merely wanted to mention the fact that Ravelstein is not as Mr McBride portrays it a portrait of a sybaritic homosexual whose life is shown up in all its garish materialism. Such an ungenerous synopsis fails to even nod to the books genius (for once the word is not inappropriate). For Ravelstein is, as Martin Amis wrote, numinous. It constitutes an act of resuscitation, and in its pages Bloom lives [Experience, p.226]. Read the rest of this post...