Mention Regarding Books Humboldt's Gift

Title	:	Humboldt's Gift
Author	:	Saul Bellow
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 487 pages
Published	:	June 1st 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published 1975)
Categories	:	Fiction. Classics. Literature

Humboldt's Gift Paperback | Pages: 487 pages

Description Concering Books Humboldt's Gift

The novel, for which Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's own creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course.

List Books Conducive To Humboldt's Gift

Original Title:	Humboldt's Gift
ISBN:	0140189440 (ISBN13: 9780140189445)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Charlie Citrine, Von Humboldt Fleisher, Renata Koffritz, Rinaldo Cantabile, Pierre Thaxter, Denise Citrine, Demmie Vonghel
Setting:	Chicago, Illinois(United States) New York City, New York(United States)
Literary Awards:	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1976), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1976), Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction (1976)

Rating Regarding Books Humboldt's Gift

Ratings: 3.86 From 8059 Users | 541 Reviews

Commentary Regarding Books Humboldt's Gift

This novel is divided into sections of uneven length, each section probably best described as a chapter, unnumbered. The narrative is in the first person, told by the writer Charlie Citrine, the erstwhile friend and protégé of Von Humboldt Fleisher, a poet whose greatest fame occurred in the Thirties, after which the friendship shattered as Humboldts reputation declined and Charlies rose. The syntax, at the beginning, is simple declarative sentences, but it becomes far more florid during long

"Wrestling match between Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa" Lets be honest! Humboldts Gift is exhausting. It is a masterpiece, a brilliant study of a man fighting the world and his inner demons by withdrawing from active participation, but it leaves the reader frequently frustrated with the narrator, Charles Citrine, and his non-response to the problems he causes by contemplating life rather than living it actively. Using a similar idea to the one explored in Dangling Man, it goes further,

I have mixed feelings about the overall literary quality of this book, but I'm glad I read it because Bellow is a good teacher, very good at mixing abstract thought (here death, the soul, and the possibility of a vital American poetry are the biggest concerns) with the plot, action, character, and the other stuff of life and novels. Really, Humboldt's Gift reads like a clinic on this novelistic skill, but more in the way of an exercise book than a masterpiece. The two writers I thought of most

Of the three times I have now read Bellow, my initial first reactions have always been the same, that this could flourish into the quintessential great American novel, where he even gives me a larger proportion of encouragement over the likes of DeLillo and Roth. In the end, I found Humboldts Gift better than 'The Adventures of Augie March', but not quite as good as 'Herzog'. At least I can say I found myself a decent pulitzer winner, of which, my record isn't exactly that positive. One thing I

A masterful rendition of the narrator being; passive, studious, and tangled in an intellectuality that renders him apart from life and experience. How to hold this readers involvement for an entire novel through these set of eyes? Yet, Bellow does. He shows the narrator hustled into his own net trapped and at times suffering. Intellectuality a costly defense from the aggressive tumult of life; unmitigated experience. At the same time Bellow crafts this man as representing the life of imagination

This is the first Bellow I have read and I enjoyed the experience. It concerns Charlie Citrine, a chap in his 50s, a writer and intellectual who has an ongoing divorce, an unpredictable girlfriend, an acquaintance in the mob who decides he quite likes Charlie, various bloodsucking lawyers, friends who want money for hare-brained schemes and his relationship with his old mentor (now dead), the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer. It is an erudite book with lots of ideas in play and Bellow has great fun

SB knows Chicago and he knows its speak, streets, neighborhoods, hoods and peeps so that his stories leap and bound like a winter's blast. He always seems to be chewing on some philosophical root after pulling it out of dark soil examining it in light of day. Here it's death, its realm and those who've gone before whilst their memories remain to haunt our main chap Charlie Citrine, a woman chaser and ass-kisser who can't quite get enough of a good thing even when it always bites him raw in doing