- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Open market ed edition (28 May 1998)
- ISBN-10: 0140273182
- ISBN-13: 978-0140273182
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.9 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"A mature distillation of Mr. Bellow's work . . . a gem."
-"The New York Times"
" The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time."
-"The New York Times Book Review"
" [A] wonderful book . . . fully worthy of a place in its author's vastly esteemed oeuvre."
-"Chicago Tribune"
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
-"The New York Times"
" The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time."
-"The New York Times Book Review"
" [A] wonderful book . . . fully worthy of a place in its author's vastly esteemed oeuvre."
-"Chicago Tribune"
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
The story behind The Actual belongs to Harry Trellman, an aging, astute businessman who has never belonged anywhere.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Harry Trellman is the narrator and the story is essentially one of recuperating a long lost love, of making amends over lost opportunities. In between the reader is introduced to various characters from a morally dubious world and is treated to various wry observations from Harry.
As others have already pointed out, not much happens in this novella. It's the first work I have read by Bellow and really isn't the best introduction. The narrative is clevery woven together and it is well written. However, upon finishing it, one is left with the distinct impression that there really was not much point to it.
There are a few glimpses which suggest a far more interesting novel could have been written if it had been fleshed out a little more.
As others have already pointed out, not much happens in this novella. It's the first work I have read by Bellow and really isn't the best introduction. The narrative is clevery woven together and it is well written. However, upon finishing it, one is left with the distinct impression that there really was not much point to it.
There are a few glimpses which suggest a far more interesting novel could have been written if it had been fleshed out a little more.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Although Bellow (as usual) manages to navigate a perfect course through the nebulous region between material, modern life and the life of the mind, he leaves us with what I thought was a curious, romantic ending. Ironic as a wedding proposal at an ex's disinterment may be, I'm not sure how Trellman was finally able to participate outwardly in the emotional world he seemed able only to observe and catalog. There's certainly some value in understanding the meaning of this final puzzle in what is a rich, engaging read.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In The Actual, Bellow touches on the major intellectual themes of the late twentieth century: materialism, capitalism, existentialism, nihilism, and postmodernism. Bellow once again, consciously or unconsciously, tells a great story placed in the philosophic world of actuality, where the individual, the particular, the personal triumphs over modernism's desire to subsume the part into the whole. Bellow uses the romantic genre to discuss these themes while flashing the caution light of pragmatism. A pragmatism that says existentialism can be nihilism, materialism creates numbness, captialism demands consumption, and love becomes a carnival unless anchored in the heart and objectified in an "other".
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Ignore the blurb
My Penguin edition of this short novel has a quote on the cover from some Daily Telegraph reviewer telling us that this is 'an apoplectically funny book'. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Phil O'Sofa
Bellow: In it for the money?
Nothing much happens. As you'd expect from Bellow, this purposeless aimless meandering is well observed and well written... Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2000 by g.s.ashdown@student.salford.ac.uk
A novella that passed me by
The synopsis above says it all. Many people consider Bellow to be one of the world's greatest novellists, but this one passed me by. I think I must have missed something. Read more
Published on 14 Jun 2000
I was disappointed
I was very excited to be able to sit down and read this book last night, but found myself an hour later with the book finished before I felt that it had started. Read more
Published on 2 July 1998
An engaging book for the modern old-folk in us
A man moves back home to Chicago and into semi-retirement. We all have ghosts from our past, but Harry's ghosts, we come to understand, revolve around a lady he has known since... Read more
Published on 2 April 1998
Brilliant, until the last line
While there is little disputing Saul Bellow's remarkable gifts at capturing reality and creating amazingly dense and believable characters, I find it a bit disheartening to believe... Read more
Published on 28 Mar 1998
This book makes me homesick for Chicago in the winter!
I've never read Saul Bellow, and my lit-geek friends have made me feel self-conscious. So I decided to give this novella a try. Read more
Published on 21 Jun 1997
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