The Adventures of Augie March

I wonder how picaresque a life of any individual may look from the outside. A little man in a big world, all alone and lost in a crowd – how to find one’s walk of life and what way to choose? Friends, human pals, men and brethren, there is no brief, digest, or shorthand way to say where it leads. Cru......more

Original Review: In Pursuit of Exuberance I first read this in the mid-to-late 70's. For a long time, I would have rated Bellow as one of my favourite three to five authors and Augie as one of my top three novels. I haven't re-read it, but intend to. I am working from long distant memories now, but what......more

Notes (not a review) 1. This novel is superb. It has near-perfect tonal consistency throughout. The story is set in Chicago between the wars. It is profoundly vivid in its characterizations. It feels like everything you’d like to know about Chicago and its environs at that time is here. 2nd reading. 2......more

Saul Bellow's the Adventures of Augie March is one of three things; it's either Saul Bellow's most verbose novel, a piece of fiction that almost stands as an historical document of Chicago during the Great Depression, or one of the best contemporary examples of the picaresque novel. Either way it's......more

This book seems to be an underrated classic. From its opening lines, it takes along the heady projectory of Augie March in Chicago and elsewhere - not quite a Horatio Alger but perhaps a less burlesque Ignatius J Reilly whose author must have had Bellow's book in mind when he wrote a Confederacy of......more