the pencil reads

Ravelstein was written by Saul Bellow in 2000. It was his last novel. He died in early April this year.

Ravelstein is dense, powerful, and seamless. I’ve never read a novel like it. The sinewy connections this novel has with real life are intriguing – in the novel, Chick is a old man writing a memoir as a promise to his friend Ravelstein; in real life, Bellow is writing his last novel in honour of the political philosopher Allan Bloom.

Like Ravelstein, Bloom wrote a best-selling book on Bellow’s recommendations titled The Closing of the America Mind. He too was a lecturer, a man of vast intellect and strong opinions; a man with awkward stutters and trembling hands; a man who loved his Cuban cigars, Armani suits and Mont Blanc pens.

Because of these tenuous links with reality, I cannot help but consider the morbid – How did Bellow die? Did the “pictures stop”, as aptly described by the Bellow-character Chick? Did he become more and more preoccupied with Jerusalem rather than Athens in his last days, squaring off with the cruelty of mankind, the “meat hooks”, and the essence of being fully man? Bellow was 89, married for the fifth time.

Even if there were no Allan Bloom, merely the descriptions of Ravelstein would be enough. I can see him – bald, melon-headed, pointing his students with sharp irreverent intellect towards the light in Plato’s cave, smoking Marlboro after Marlboro, himself a hodgepodge of oddities and contradiction. Merely the description of his rich textiles, the expensive bedding, the coffee stain on the $4,500 Lanvin jackets, together with his overarching historical ideas and frankness are enough to propel me into his world.

I was initially afraid that I would mix up the main character in Henderson the Rain King and in Ravelstein. Boy was I wrong.

Posted on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 at 10:22 AM. :)