A really great read. Bellow is a master class in description using simile and metaphor, and evokes the time period for which he is writing in an absolute avalanche of description. Worth reading just to catch a flavor of the times. Halfway through this book I had to watch Radio Days, an old favorite of mine for its wonderful evocative milieu and story telling. It has much in common with Augie March. ( )

Huckleberry Finn and this outstanding book are comparable in terms of significance and creative writing abilities. A significant book to appreciate for its exquisite writing. ( )

It's amazing to me that people argued about Great American Novels as recently as 2003, fifty years after Augie March settled the question. It even starts with "I am an American" and ends with "America"! How can it not be the GAM?!

I'll never tire of this book, the only modern inheritor of the picaresque tradition and the first since Huck Finn. It's different from everything else I've read by Bellow, consciously visceral and eclectic, a multisensory kaleidoscope of the American century. It's a goddamn long novel but somehow the creativity never lapses and the voice never wavers and never sounds writerly, despite being intensely literary as in this streetcar trip:

It was stiff cold weather, the ground hard, the weeds standing broken in the frost, the river giving off vapor and the trains leghorn shots of steam into the broad blue Wisconsin-humored sky, the brass handgrip of the straw seats finger-polished, the crusty straw golden, the olive and brown of coats in their folds gold too...

Or this description of the coalyard manager Happy Kellerman:

He was a beer saufer; droopy, small, a humorist, wry, drawn, weak, his tone nosy and quinchy, his pants in creases under his paunch; his nose curved up and presented offended and timorous nostrils, and he had round, disingenuous eyes in which he showed he was strongly defended.

Bellow is brilliant at punctuation; his sentences move not like rivers but like traffic, interruptedly, with trams and big shots' cars and stumblebums syncopating the flow. The novel is profoundly planted in the picaresque tradition: in its rambling plot, of course, the story of an American trying on everything for size, but also in its assertion of the primacy of the real, the tangible, the sensual world:

Everyone tried to create a world he can live in , and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

This is the reality-preferring, the reality-delighting, creed of the picaresque. It's an ironic inversion of Hamlet's spiritualist finger-wagging to Horatio. The world has more in it — more actual people, more dreams — than are dreamt of in your philosophy — turning the "philosophy" from the original "science" to the modern, hand-waving sense. Of "people generally": "they dug for unreality more than treasure, unreality being their last great hope because then they could doubt what they knew about themselves was true." This from the most hard-headed character in the novel, Mimi, who embodies resilience and pragmatism.

And the language here is such a treat, such a multifarious delight, it adds up to an alternate, better, reality of its own. Bellow stacks nouns like a gourmet burger chef: "...if I chose to be a lawyer, I wouldn't need to be a mere ambulance chaser, shyster, or birdseed wiseguy and conniver in two-bit cases." And he knows the power of the monosyllable: "blue gas stink in this hot brute shit of a street". Language is tactile, pungent, impinging on the ear: a band "began to pound and smite" and shortly after "clashed, drummed and brayed". These verbs are of the construction trade or the military, and they describe Bellow's tactile technique in this book.

The overriding theme of Augie's life (until he runs out of paper) is his clientism, his being serially adopted in his fatherlessness, his dependence on others as he gropes for his own identity: "Admitted that I always tried to elicit what I hoped for; how did people, however, seldom fail to supply it so mysteriously?" This is something I identify with — maybe in part 'cause of my race and gender, but even within the world of the story, and my world, Augie's and my caromings seem fortunate. But to what extent do Augie and I over-appreciate our dependence on others, our status as objects of fate? The novel take Heraclitus' "fate is character" for its leitmotif. To what extent is that true? Less and less I think so.

But I'll always love this book. It's a humongous beating heart of human sympathy, of love and trying to make things better. It's weird and sad (like at the end of chapter 4 when they commit Georgie to the institution — I cried) and full of dead-ends and wrong turns and schemes and capers. Rereading it caused me to fall five books behind schedule for my 2022 reading goal, and I don't regret a single second. ( )

This is a tough read. There's probably a hundred different characters in this book. i thought several times that I couldn't believe kids in high school have to read this. ( )

This story starts off in Chicago and is set mostly during the 1920s, Great Depression, and World War II. It is a coming-of-age story for the titular Augie. We get to know his family, including his practical elder brother, Simon, slow brother, George, and overbearing grandmother. He drifts through life not knowing what he values or wants. He forms a number of relationships, jumps from job to job, and gets involved in a series of escapades, largely at the request of his relationship du jour.

This picaresque book has been touted as a contender for the “Great American Novel.” It is a must-read according to the Boxall List. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I do not think it has aged well. I like parts of it, especially Augie’s adventures in Mexico, but the story feels antiquated, especially it is depiction of women. It was published in 1953, so perhaps it is representative of its time, but young women are the described by their body parts and older women are said to be shrewish. It was hard for me to get past these segments. It is long and detailed. It meanders. The writing is fine, but reading it felt like a chore. ( )

The plot, if that’s the term, isn’t exactly linear, its parts aren’t always connected, and the language is angular, usually not flowing and sometimes awkward, which often works but sometimes doesn’t. I realize it’s partly an early Jewish-American cultural position, but the language in a work of literature has to stand on its own. Not that it’s a bad story or that there isn’t some excellent writing, but the former’s a pretty random sequence and the latter’s uneven. Still, there’s a strange depth and an odd, world-weary optimism that are compelling, with more than a few insightful moments that make you stop and reflect. These form a glue and purpose and maybe even a structure that substitute for the equivalents you’d usually expect to come more from plot and language. It ends up working pretty well. I also like the fact that, while it seems everything today is either nihilistic or in denial, or just dumb, and while this unfortunate situation was well advanced when the book was written, it isn’t nihilistic, it’s plenty aware and it's anything but dumb. ( )

This book is a classic piece of American literature, the breakout novel by Saul Bellow. But I didn't like it.

The book follows Augie March, told in the first person, through his childhood in depression-era Chicago and eventually elsewhere, though I didn't get that far.

The book is characterized by lengthy paragraphs of description of characters being introduced, but there are so many, and some of the characters so peripheral, that I found it hard to follow. The writing style just didn't grab me, and the story moves too slowly.

I can't help comparing Bellow to Philip Roth, a fellow Jewish-American novelist from a similar era. Roth is much more readable, funny, and poignant. ( )

Actually only about 200 pages and then I stopped. I loved it but it was for a book club and the book club voted it down mid book! ack- dumb book club.

https://applemcg.github.io/#The%20Adventures%20of%20Augie%20March ( )

Augie March becomes a wanderer through the America of the 1930's, though he keeps telling himself he is not a drifter. Just as soon as he gets through this current difficulty, usually caused by a woman, he will get down to making a sucess of himself. We leave him at a fairly stable point, while he is still a work in progress, though he has already been in and out of most of the circumstances of the adventure story, and the "how I became a sucess." tale. Mr. Bellow, has a firm grasp of English, and is a very good plotter. ( )

Saul Bellow had been on my list of authors to try for years. Truth be told, I was scared of him. Winner of the Nobel and the Pulitzer, I imagined Bellow’s writing to be dense and academic, or too experimental. And, yes, there is something one could call experimental about The Adventures of Augie March , a departure from the more “traditional” forms of storytelling, however it was so accessible and engaging, drawing me in almost effortless.

I actually listened to this book in audio format but I find it interesting that my perception and recollection of it is very visual. As Augie narrates his story, I felt as if I was flipping through an old album of photography. Augie pinpoints one or another of the people around him, old eccentrics, crooks, immigrants, the new-rich, with such great detail and insight, and as he talks about this of that character, a bigger picture of Chicago during the depression starts to form. Eventually even Chicago becomes too small of a canvas for such a story and it spills out, first south, towards Mexico, and then East, to Europe.

I have at times drawn a parallel between a book and a painting, and although I cannot think of a specific painting at this moment, it certainly would be a Picasso: bits and pieces of characters and plot, all with multi-facets, creating a much bigger picture of a time period. Not exactly pretty, but captivating and intriguing. Certainly distinctive, but somewhat vague.

I should stop now; as I realize that my description may do this book a disfavor. Anyone reading this review may think it is after all a difficult book, when really it is not. It was a great story to listen, with a remarkable narrator. I cannot recommend it enough.

( )

I want to read this again. It is a rambling picaresque set mostly in Chicago (and Mexico) in the years before and during WWII. The writing is complex, and notable for
1. long, dense descriptions of characters and setting
2. characters that are shrply observed
3. similes and metaphors that are arresting: wait, what, let me reread that, oh, I'd never have seen that but it is so very apt! (on almost every page
4. allusions, both direct and indirect, to legend, myth, literature and philosophy that made me want to stop every two or three pages to learn more (but not pedantic)

The picaresque form is somewhat antiquated, but the writing more than holds one's attention and admiration ( )

I wasn't going to finish it, but then I got determined to do so. I'm glad I did, but only because I accomplished that. ( )

I've only read two books by Bellow, arguably one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. (The first was Herzog, which I read 50 years ago. I have no memory of it, and I suspect that at 16 I did not have the experience to appreciate it.) Augie March, written about 15 years earlier than Herzog, is a fascinating, but often exasperating, novel. My-husband-the-English-major, who listened to it a bit earlier, opined it was a Bildungsroman, but I saw precious little Bildung happening during Augie's Adventures. I would agree with some other Goodreads reviewers that it was more a picaresque novel -- that is, one damned thing after another. Various friends and family members tell Augie that he just lets things happen to him and will follow anyone who flatters him, and I'd agree with them, too.

Although there are major segments set in Mexico and afloat in the Atlantic, the majority of the novel is set in Chicago from the 1920s to the late 1940s. There's plenty of atmosphere, and Bellow has a good memory for the slang of the period. (At least, I assume so, as Bellow came up in this time and place.)

Others have reviewed this book better than I (Steve Sckenda here on Goodreads, for one) but I would like to mention some thoughts I had while listening.

I wish I had a dollar for every adjective Bellow used -- he loved to string them together, especially when describing people's physical appearances. He also seemed a bit fixated on handicaps and imperfections. Not only the obvious major characters -- Georgie, his developmentally-disabled brother; his weak-eyed and eventually blind mother; Einhorn, the near-quadriplegic employer -- have their handicaps pointed out. He points out the physical imperfections, great and small, of many characters. Only Augie and his girlfriends seem exempt -- and even Augie gets two teeth broken in a fight in Mexico and mentions the broken teeth several times afterwards.

Some other twentieth/twenty-first century writers -- John Updike and Richard Ford come to mind -- have revisited the same character multiple times. I almost wish Bellow had written a "Further Adventures of Augie March." He is a character almost too self-aware, but it doesn't seem to get him anywhere, and when the book ends, he is barely even 30 if I read it right. What would Augie become in 10, 20 or 30 years? Sadly, we'll never know (although he may appear in other books under other names?) Although this wasn't my favorite book of all time, I would still recommend it, and if you like audiobooks, the narrator, Tom Parker, does a great job with this one. ( )

Not an easy read with lots of digressions and no overall plot. Some great writing and good bon mots. ( )

- easy to read
- it's long, wow, it's long
- like a decompressed Cormac McCarthy. Mr McCarthy would have studied Bellow's work closely. Bellow is much closer Cormac McCarthy that is Faulkner.
- lots of great lines, great aphorisms and ideas.
- his descriptions are not over-long. He just quickly sets detailed scenes and tries to do it in one or two sentences
- doesn't really go anywhere.
- I now know more about Augie March than about 2/3 of the people I have ever met. ( )

Manic, wordy, beautiful, almost successful attempt at the Great American Novel. Sometimes Bellow's jazzy, Beat-inflected language irritated me, and sometimes I was enraptured. I can imagine Bellow writing this in a frenzy on a roll of toilet paper, in the same way that Kerouac wrote [b: On the Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439197219s/6288.jpg|3355573], though I am almost certain he didn't.

I enjoyed the Audible version; although the inability to go back after the fact and savor language is a downside of an audiobook, I don't think that I would have had the patience to read every word if I had been reading a physical book. But that enforced patience (I listened to it on 1x speed, which I reserve only for books which I love) allowed me to savor Bellow's poetry.

I enjoyed Augie's adventures all over Chicago, Mexico and France, but maybe picaresque novels create a little bit of an emotional distance. There is no sustained plot which allows you to really love all of the characters... I am not sure about that. [b: Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1364958765s/3836.jpg|121842] is one of my favorites, but maybe that is just in a different class. ( )

Rated: B+
I love Saul Bellow. First read Henderson, the Rain King; now this book. Written in the first person narrative, his descriptions and references are picturesque taking Augie from childhood in Chicago in the 1920's to after WWII world travel. Just a fascinating montage of scenes and adventures. Highly recommended. The author is simply brilliant and masterful with words. ( )

The second of four great American novels I am committed to reading this year (Moby-Dick was the first, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn next), Augie March is noteworthy for me as a Chicagoan for its scenes on the South Side, the rough and tumble realism of a great Chicago author and his connection to Hyde Park. In an unusual twist, I saw the recent play in Hyde Park at Court Theatre before reading the book and seeing the play enhanced my enjoyment of the book---and the book was better. ( )

This novel was decent, but I felt the scope was a bit too wide and the prose not clear enough to give it a higher rating. The story was in the style of the Bildungsroman style that appeared, much earlier in Europe, except it was set in the United States instead. It is a novel of growth and self-exploration- as much for Bellow as for the reader themselves. Overall, a satisfactory book, but one that I only enjoyed in moderation.

3 stars. ( )

One of those books that’s easier to appreciate afterwards than during! It’s understandably a classic given where it slots into the timeline of Great American Novels, its influence on Roth and the more recently wave of non-Jewish immigrant stories etc, but I’m not a huge fan of picaresque generally, or this one in particular. The eagle passage in Mexico was a particulate drag. One for the English students... ( )

Like an awful lot of American novels too long by half. Some credible characters and good scenes , such as the hunting with eagles, losing his rich fiancée because of helping a neighbour with her abortion. But great screeds of philosophising, well opinionated ranting describes it better. Events are a pretty random chain, no plot or sense of direction; you could stop reading at any point; the author seems to have done the same - the ending comes as a surprise: it just stops. Has the feel of a Bildungsroman as he starts out as a bright naive youngster, but doesn't get much Bildung, just more opinions! ( )

This book was a bit of a "mix"....very good writing and some nice/funny stories about Augie's youth and early adulthood. Some very nice insights. However, I felt that the episodes failed to hang together and progress into an integrated whole. As I've experienced with other award-winning books, I 've concluded that the award of for the "author" rather than for the specific book being honored. ( )

Another Bellow, another fellow. This time it’s Augie, a Jewish kid from the ghetto who we follow entirely randomly as he grows and flows out into the world and all it has for him.

Now, I know very well that Bellow won a Nobel prize and that this is regarded as one of the best novels of the 20th century. However, I remain to be convinced that anyone actually regards this as one of the best novels they’ve read.

Augie is a tempestuous figure and events come at him thick and fast once he leaves home. There’s no real rhyme or reason. He ends up with various women on various continents doing things as varied as being a salesman and hunting iguanas with an eagle.

But this is a Bellow novel; the events are simply stimulus for the psychotherapy. As is typical, you, the reader, are trapped inside Augie’s head. You don’t feel as claustrophobic as you do in Herzog‘s

head. And there isn’t as much angst to battle with as in Henderson‘s head. In fact, at times, it’s darkly comic.

But overall, and as is typical with Bellow, it’s exhausting. It never rests and, for as much retrospection and reflection as Augie makes, you wonder where on earth he finds the time to act on it all. ( )

This book is very hard to read because of Bellow's writing style. He likes to give a long list of vocabulary when describing things, and you get lost in the middle of the passage. I've had to re-read many passages in order to get what he is saying, and sometimes I still don't. Nevertheless, he does write beautifully. This sentence I like best - "Said not in order to be so highly significant but probably because human beings have the power to say and ought to employ it at the proper time". ( )