The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Classics)
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If there's a candidate for the Great American Novel, I think this is it. (Salman Rushdie)
Product Description
Augie March is a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression. A 'born recruit', he latches on to a wild succession of occupations, then proudly rejects each one as too limiting. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, is his independence seriously threatened. He goes on to recruit himself to even more outlandish projects, but always ducks out in time to continue improvising his unconventional career. Augie March is the star performer ina richly observed human variety show, a modern-day Columbus in search of reality and fulfilment.
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First Sentence
I am an American, Chicago born-Chicago, that somber city-and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I am an American, Chicago born-Chicago, that somber city-and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had never read any Bellow before I opened this book, but it blew me away, and I can't wait to read more. It is the story of Augie March, a poor kid brought up by his overbearing grandmother and downtrodden mother in 1930s Chicago. As he grows into maturity, he starts to make ends meet on the very edge of the law, doing odd jobs, working for a series of well-meaning but self-important grandees who try to make him into a big success. But Augie has "opposition", and though he is smart and handsome, finds his ambitions unsatisfied by the big bucks that his brother begins to amass. Again and again he rejects other people's plans to make something of him, until he falls wildly in love with the beautiful, rich and free-spirited Thea, who carries him off to Mexico to hunt iguanas with an eagle. Bellow's language is sometimes difficult, but always exuberant and expansive, full of detailed description and colour, bursting with throwaway ideas. The novel has an abundance of hilarious minor characters, who appear and reappear as Augie muddles his way through his Bohemian and vaguely Bolshevik circles, making a buck here and there, more or less legally, and observing everything with a wry sense of humour, dauntless optimism and quiet integrity. I have not enjoyed a novel this much for a long time. It starts slowly, building up characters gradually, but pretty soon it is unput-downable. The ending is a bit weak, like so many of these rites-of-passage novels, and it becomes a bit glib and conceptual. But the first 350 pages represent some of the finest twentieth-century writing in English that I have read. It is a novel about the limits of the soul and the growth of a mind, about the trade-offs between adventure and pain, happiness and security, and the search for fulfilment in a time of global depression, when the world was doing everything it could to dampen the human spirit.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow gives us an insight into the reality of the life of the all american kid. March is a jewish kid growing up on the wrong side of the tracks during depression time Chicago. He strives to do his best by all around him whilst also trying to get a grip on the american dream. The two tier american society of the very rich and the also rans is exposed for possibly the first time in 20th century literatue. March tries to work both within the system and from without, with varying degrees of success. He flirts with education, crime, marriage and travel, all with startling results. The Adventures of Augie March is as accuarte a portrayal of the difficulties of growing up underprivliged in the US today as it was sixty years ago. An excellent read and a brilliant introduction to the fine prose of Bellow.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A brilliant portrayal of a young man trying to learn to live within his world. The experiences and encounters of Augie are vivid and richly colored. There is a wonderful freshness, almost vivaciousness, imparted to a tired and economically depressed Chicago. The very idea of adventure in an urban setting seems almost puerile perhaps to many, but Bellow perceives the existence of challenge and life in the run-down and dilapadated. It is perhaps old-fashioned to be inspired by a book but if such a thing can still exist it can be found in 'The Adventures of Augie March'
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Pure joy
At the old age of 47 having read my way through most 20th century famous authors, I had, because of many misconceptions avoided Bellow. Read more
Published 18 months ago by O. Sheehan
20th Century American Picaresque
When Saul Bellow finished the Adventures of Augie March around 1953, he'd created a revolution in modern prose. Read more
Published on 5 Feb 2010 by Mr. C. Johnson
Bellow's genius manages to shine through the laboured language
The style of this novel was quite off-putting after reading more elegant and accomplished later works such as Ravelstein and Humboldt's gift. Read more
Published on 1 July 2009 by Ted Frost
A poor kid from Chicago wades through the 1930s questioning life, love...
The recollections of the novel's narrator, Augie, take the reader on a lengthy but engaging journey through the America of the Great Depression and, towards the end of the novel,... Read more
Published on 4 Jun 2008 by Ruffian McRuffian
A verbal feast
Saul Bellow uses Augie March's fairly extraordinary saga to allow us all, and probably himself too, to muse our ways through a succession of reflections on the human predicament. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2006 by Philip Mayo
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