Ravelstein
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| Ravelstein | |
 Ravelstein cover |
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| Author | Saul Bellow |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Publication date | 24 April 2000 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-84134-X (hardback edition) |
| Preceded by | The Actual |
Ravelstein is Saul Bellow's final novel. Published in 2000, when Bellow was eighty-five years old, it tells the tale of a friendship between two university professors and the complications that animate their erotic attachments well into old age. The title character is based on Allan Bloom, who taught with Bellow at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought.
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[edit] Controversy
The novel was controversial in its frank depiction of Ravelstein as a gossipmonger, frivolous spender, influence peddler, petty complainer, promiscuous panderer, and homosexual dying from AIDS-related complications in a relationship with a much younger man. Despite all these faults, Ravelstein remains a valued friend and colleague whose illness and passing is considered a tragic loss to his friends and admirers, but never diminished his own love of life.
Upon publication, Bellow claimed that Bloom, a philosopher and social critic aligned with many American conservative ideas and ambitions, was anything but conservative in his private life. Accordingly, some took the book as a betrayal; however, Bellow rigidly defended his claim, citing private conversations between Bloom and himself where, Bellow insists, the subject urged Bellow to tell it all, ‘warts and all’. Bloom was not a 'closeted' homosexual: although he never spoke publicly of his sexual orientation, Bellow claims that friends, colleagues, and former students knew of it. He was a bachelor and never married or had children. Due to Bellow's death in 2005, however, references to private conversations and the testimony of unnamed 'friends' remain accusations that could never be proven.
In his most famous book, Closing of the American Mind, Bloom criticizes “the homosexuals” in American universities on an issue relating to his core concern - liberal arts education, or 'Great Books' liberal arts curriculum, making a difference between a politically self-defined group of homosexual activists and homosexuality per se. Although Bloom, in the wake of his literary stardom, stated, at a Harvard University gathering, published in Giants & Dwarfs, that he was not a conservative, he was much admired by right-wing publications, like William F. Buckley, Jr's National Review.
[edit] The text
Typical of Bellow's most accessible fiction, like the short novel surrounding a father-son relationship and the New York Stock Exchange, Seize the Day, Ravelstein is a crisp mix of dialogue, narration, and unanswered questions. Abe Ravelstein is a parodox - the serious and mundane, the corporeal and spiritual, the conservative and radical. The one constant is the kindness and friendship between "Chick" and Ravelstein. Few intellectual or personal subjects are taboo; although Ravelstein's philosophical insights are not part of the story. Chick makes it clear Ravelstein thinks he is too old to become a philosopher. Thus, a comparison can be made to Xenophon's Socratic works and dialogues, such as Memorabilia, where a non-philosopher describes the outward life of a philosopher, for Chick most definitely believes Ravelstein is a great thinker, even if he cannot judge the merits of the man's wisdom.
The story follows the physical decline of Ravelstein, a University of Chicago professor, and how his recent literary fame and financial success impacted his life. After Ravelstein's death, the remainder of the work deals with the narrator's own illness and hospitalization. Ravelstein is not aloof or uninterested by the Heideggerian 'fallen-ness' of everyday life. He is a consumer of goods and gossip, eagerly meeting people where they exist, without constructing artificial barriers based on presumed superiority. His friendships do not solely revolve around his own interests and concerns. Thoughts and opinions expressed by Ravelstein are often humorous, precisely because they are so 'common' and 'clichéd'. Upon lighting a cigarette to open a class, he mentions that students who dislike tobacco more than they love ideas will not be missed. He even rearranges the love lives of his students, often without being asked, going so far as to ask them to return with any gossip that isn't treason to repeat.
In this virtual roman à clef, Ravelstein's mentor 'Davarr' is based on a real figure, Leo Strauss, his friend 'Morris Herbst' on Werner Dannhauser, and the narrator's friend 'Rakhmiel Kogon' has elements in his character of German sociologist Edward Shils – as well as Polish political philsopher Leszek Kolakowski. 'Radu Grielescu' seems based on Mircea Eliade.
In many ways, Bellow depicts Ravelstein- and by association himself- as one of the few remaining Renaissance men in modern universities. Although the difference between the two is that Ravelstein would enthusiastically agree with being called a Renaissance man, and Chick would blush. The professor, turned best selling author, works to counter the impoverishment of the contemporary "market place of ideas", even if he is a little too attached to his own passions and personal vanity. Chick contrasts with Ravelstein as an older fellow more cautious and predictable. When he claims he is saving Finnegan's Wake for the nursing home, Ravelstein asks why wait? Intellectual honesty binds these friends.
[edit] Interpretation
Bellow asks via inference in Ravelstein how one is best remembered: for contributions to the general knowledge; for contributions to humanity via one's fellow-treatment of one's friends, intimates, and strangers; or for the rate at which one's notoriety attracts mass attention and thereafter decays. That last theme is poignantly exhibited in two instances: early on in a chance encounter between Ravelstein and Chick with pop star Michael Jackson and his entourage at Paris' Hotel Crillon, and later when Ravelstein recalls following Elizabeth Taylor through an airport terminal as a sudden and quickly departing obsession. Bellow, in Ravelstein, reveals the cross cuttings of purpose and truth in the trajectories of remembrance. In this pattern of coming and going, Bellow seems to imply, the best recollection of a man is a complete depiction of complication and chance painted against the higher ambition of shared existence. What is left out of this story is any reckoning with eternity in the face of impending death, or the religious element of human life. This is consistent with Bellow’s modernization of the Jewish experience in North American 20th century culture.
[edit] External links
- Robert Fulford, a former host of TV Ontario's Realities where Bloom was a frequent guest, published his take on the book and controversy in a 1999 Globe & Mail. article.
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