Humboldt's Gift

I just finished reading Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Bellow is not the kind of author I would reach for, and he's the kind of author you would know about, maybe read a review of one of his books - maybe know a few details that would help you with a pub quiz - that kind of thing.I still don't know why I picked up Humboldt's Gift. Maybe it was the cover of the edition I found, tucked away in one of the shelves in Blossoms, reminiscent of the bestsellers of the 70s and 80s - Irving Wallace, old Harold Robbins editions before they became standardized with covers of attractive women. Plus there was this bit on the cover: “#1 bestseller”, while the back cover told me that the book had been “6 months on the New York Times bestseller list”.

It begins with the narrator Charles Citrine, now a fit, middle-aged man, taking a bus from the Midwest to New York's Greenwich Village to meet a poet who had just written an acclaimed book of poetry. From there, the narrative loops and whorls around – to Humboldt's squalid death in a cheap hotel, through Citrine's interactions with minor mobster, his ongoing divorce case with a venomous wife, his abject passion for a voluptuous(that word seems so dated, but I can't think of anything that fits better) woman named Renata and his worries with money. But it keeps returning to certain themes – Humboldt's fall and the role of poetry in America, and anthroposophy.I had to look up anthroposophy – and also Rudolf Steiner, who is mentioned several times during the course of the book, and frankly, it seems like a lot of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo. It's not that I consider mysticism ridiculous – I am, after all, a Hindu, and believe in the mystic experience as transformative, but anthroposophy just sounds silly to me. And if I want Western takes on mysticism, I prefer Hesse.Of course, how you respond to books is as much a function of where you find yourself in life, as much as the content of the book. Maybe I would have been more receptive to anthroposophy when I was a college student, but then I was able to find profundity in TSKV Iyer's textbook on circuit theory because I was stoned out of my mind most of the time.Citrine himself, I found boring. Quite appropriately – because boredom is a big deal to him. His opus was supposed to do to to boredom what Marx had done to capitalism or Malthus had done for population. He is self absorbed, led by his dick, passive – a bystander, but unattractively so. People have called the book funny, but looking at Citrine, its more about ridiculousness, in terms of the things that happen to him. He's like a punching bag – his beloved Mercedes is trashed by baseball bat wielding goons, he's taken for a hitman when Cantabile threatens a lawyer, he's left looking after his beloved Renata's son while she is enjoying herself with her undertaker boyfriend.Given that Citrine is supposed to be Bellow himself, it's an incredible act of self mockery. But there also seems to be genuine rage in the depiction of his divorce. Humboldt doesn't fare much better – abuser, drunkard, and eaten up by envy. In fact, the only people who seem to have their shit together are George Swiebel, Citrine's childhood friend, and Citrine's brother Julius. Julius, who is mentioned occasionally through the book, makes an appearance towards the end – and the description of him, and his wife, as he prepares himself for surgery, is one of the best parts of the book.And the book does have a lot of good parts. There's a beautiful section, early on, as Citrine is being driven through Chicago, and he describes, among other things, a skyscraper under construction. The letter that Humboldt writes Citrine at the end made me surprisingly emotional, as emotional as Citrine himself felt.One thing that struck me was Bellow's power of description – most forcibly at the Russian baths, especially of the man whose job is to pour water on the hot stones – but its not just there. Cantabile's nostrils “reminded me of an oboe when they dilated”. Demmie Vonghel's large collarbones form hollows, which Demmie, and her similarly built sister, would fill up with water and race. But sometimes, it feels too much, it's constant and unrelenting, and draws too much attention to itself.There's the other theme – that America loves its poets only when they fail, that America is too hard a country, too businesslike for sensitive poets.

It makes me wonder. How true is this? Was this the feeling of a moment in time? Yes, apart from Poe and Crane and Berryman, there was Sylivia Plath (who isn't mentioned at all), and Robert Lowell, who struggled with bipolar disorder all his life.  Of course, I don't know much about American poetry, but Ginsberg died surrounded by family and friends. Langston Hughes died an elder statesman, adored by younger Black poets.  And Americans - and people from around the world - mourned the loss of Maya Angelou, who not only lived and died well, but had a large circle of friends and well wishers. When John Ashbery died at 90, he was still working. Robert Frost may have had a traumatic personal life, but as far as public life was concerned, he was honoured so many times, and he died an American sage. But then again, my knowledge of American poets and poetry is negligible, and Bellow's is an interesting point of view. Despite being celebrated "a poet can't perform a hysterectomy or send a vehicle out of the solar system. Miracle and power no longer belong to him". Personally, that feels off. People - not everyone - but there are always people who are moved by poetry. What moves them will vary, but words have and will always have power. Ultimately, it was an interesting experience. It was worth reading the book, but will I read another Bellow? I'm not sure. But I will not seek them out. And as for the roman-a-clef part, about Humboldt and Delmore Schwartz? I'm curious about Schwartz now. And will probably look his poetry up. (But that, despite my love hate relationship with U2, could also be the fact that the song Acrobat from Achtung Baby was dedicated to Schwartz, and that Lou Reed wrote this about him.)