Description: "Never has Saul Bellow's unsurpassed genius for creating
full-blooded characters been so penetrating, so charged with exuberant
vitality, as in Humboldt's Gift. Here Renata, all woman and then
some...Rinaldo, junior-league Mafioso tough...and Charlie, living legend with
a frenzied past...live out destinies complicated by the unforgettable
Humboldt. And Humboldt - drinker, lover, sometimes bum, and lifetime shadow
of Charlie Citrine - plots a dubious revenge for services rendered in the name
of friendship."
Mr. Sammler's Planet
Description: "Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and
occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City is a
'registrar of madness,' a refined and civilized being caught among people
crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities).
His Cyclopean gaze reflects on the degradations of city life while looking
deep into the sufferings of the human soul. 'Sorry for all and sore at
heart,' he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human
suffering. To Mr. Sammler - who by the end of this ferociously unsentimental
novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap
between himself and his fellow beings - a good life is one in which a person
does what is 'required of him.' To know and to meet the 'terms of the
contract' was as true a life as one could live. At its heart, this novel is
quintessential Bellow: moral, urbane, sublimely humane."
