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My Antonia. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life earns him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. Saul Bellow. Saul Bellow was born in Canada but brought to Chicago at the age of nine and educated there. He attended the Universities of Chicago, Northwestern and Wisconsin as well as fitting in a wartime stint in the Merchant Marine.
His first novel - Dangling Man - was published when he was in his twenties. He is probably the only man to have received an Honorary Degree from both Harvard and Yale in the same year. He has also written plays, short stories, articles for learned journals, been a war correspondent in Israel and held positions in a number of universities in the United States and elsewhere.
He speaks four or five languages and has travelled extensively. In President Mitterand made him a commander of the Legion of Honour. Search books and authors. View all retailers. New to Modern Classics Bellow evokes all the rich colour and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. About the author Saul Bellow Saul Bellow was born in Canada but brought to Chicago at the age of nine and educated there.
The story is fanciful but purposeful. Somehow the incongruous juxtaposition got me reflecting on my own life and that made it worthwhile. Jan 06, Nathan Isherwood added it.
May 31, lori light rated it it was amazing Shelves: myfavorites. I want? And moreover, it's love that makes reality reality. The opposite ma i loved, loved, loved this book. The opposite makes the opposite. Four thousand five hundred miles more or less, to the core of the earth. No, graves are not deep but insignifigant, a few mere feet from the surface and not fear from fearing and desiring.
More or less the same fear, more or less the same desire for thousands of generations. Child, father, father, child doing the same. Desire the same. Upon the crust, beneath the crust, again and again and again. Well, Henderson, what are the generations for, Please explain to me? Only to repeat fear and desire without a change? This cannot be what the thing is for, over and over and over. Any good man will break the cycle.
There is no issue from that cycle for a man who do not take things into his hands. Jan 13, Betsy Robinson rated it really liked it. This is bawdy, spontaneous, poetic writing. Eugene Henderson, an overblown, twice-married, millionaire pig farmer and violin player is having an existential crisis. I want, I want, I want, I want, I want! This is the geshrei that drives fifty-five-year-old Henderson into and through a spiritual quest in Africa. I think he would be righ This is bawdy, spontaneous, poetic writing.
On one hand, Henderson wants to rescue everybody; on the other, he longs to be rescued: This was a beautiful, strange, special place, and I was moved by it. I believed the queen could straighten me out if she wanted to; as if, any minute now, she might open her hand and show me the thing, the source, the germ—the cipher. The mystery, you know. I was absolutely convinced she must have it. The earth is a huge ball which nothing holds up in space except its own motion and magnetism, and we conscious things who occupy it believe we have to move too, in our own space.
You see, this is our attitude. But now look at Willatale, the Bittah [highly evolved] woman; she had given up such notions, there was no anxious care in her, and she was sustained. Why, nothing bad happened! On the contrary, it all seemed good! Look how happy she was, grinning with her flat nose and gap teeth, the mother-of-pearl eye and the good eye, and look at her white head!
It comforted me just to see her, and I felt that I might learn to be sustained too if I followed her example. With so many references to mind-body medicine and scenes that will resonate for anybody who has practiced alternative therapies or body psychology, this feels like a modern book, although it was first published in But so be it. What he offers is worth the sometimes-exhaustion of the reading effort: a full-blown spiritual quest, from despair to acceptance of our moving gross-body experience of life.
Now I have already mentioned that there was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it got even stronger. It said only one thing, I want, I want! And I would ask, 'What do you want? I've never been to Africa. But in any case, it has had, and still has, a sort of mystical quality of the unknown, of spots which we believe have eluded cartographers and adventurers alike.
There's a romance in the unknown, the untrammeled, and that romance is the central figure of Henderson the Rain King , Saul Bellow's novel about a rich but dissatisfied man who seeks the meaning of life in the African plains. Saul Bellow admonished readers not to look for symbolism, in what is a preposterously allegorical work. It is almost impossible not to see symbolism everywhere in this book, in fact it would take a deliberate skepticism to avoid it.
So why the warning? Maybe it is because the overflowing symbolism reminds us of another novel, taking place in Africa, also brimming with symbols? Maybe one by an author that Bellow admired, like, say, Joseph Conrad? Of course! I saw much of the symbolism of Henderson the Rain King to be a parodic point-counterpoint for Conrad's controversial depictions of Africa in Heart of Darkness , particularly his representation of the natives.
In Bellow's reversal on themes, instead of trying to bring order to the African chaos, he seeks in Africa a stability of meaning in his own internal chaos. While Henderson's expectations of the African experience are clearly influenced by a Conradian view of the continent and its aboriginals, the novel as a whole evades the stereotypical trap by refusing to characterize "Africa" but instead keep it firmly in the backdrop.
Henderson's views are quickly overturned, churned, and reversed as he meets African tribesmen who speak English and are trained in medicine. Following in the philosophical tradition of Emerson and Whitman, Bellow through Henderson argues in favor of the human capacity to transcend state inertia of the Self, to metamorphose to a state unimaginably changed from one's original. Henderson elucidates this change as from a "pig state" to a "lion state," or perhaps he falls short of the leonine ideal, but a fully changed man he is, nonetheless.
This change is brought about masterfully in the sub-Saharan chrysalis of the novel. The change is great, but incomplete, Henderson becomes man qua man: he remains imperfect, but changed for the better - the same man with a violent imagination and a youthful impetus but with a changed perspective, a human optimism which abandons his erstwhile melancholy to the realm of the past.
Without Africa, I feel transcended beyond previous Selves. From the solipsistic and ill-behaved child to the melancholic perturbations of my high school spirit to the Self I have become today, I am a fully different individual, and all has been the result of changes in perspective.
Unlike Henderson, these permutations of the spirit are naturally occurring transitions of youth: Henderson is a middle-aged man, and perhaps it takes so stark a change in venue to spark so vital a change in spiritual vitality. This book is a book of continuous conflict, on the surface it is a conflict between the impetus of the Self and the desire of change ultimately a clash of desires , but deeper questions surface, combative questions of the physical versus spiritual selves, reason versus emotion, death and immortality, body and soul, and Self versus Society.
Is it possible to make a drastic change to the Self in the midst of the the fierce tributary of modern society's desires and temptations?
That question isn't wholly answered, because Henderson is always in a state of escape from Society. He lives outside Danbury on a pig farm before his journey to the African continent, far reclusive from the mainstream of society. When you feel out of sorts, escape feels a necessity for life, no solitude is solitude enough.
But Henderson relents, Henderson finds solace in the masculine companionship he finds in his African guide, Romilayu, and in his spirit guide, King Dahfu of the tribe Wariri. While solitude and remoteness seems an ideal, it seems that change is impossible in a vacuum, we need people to catalyze our changes. Africa doesn't change Henderson, rather the men he meets there help to reveal to him his true capacity of heart, his true capacity for good, his veritable capacity to change.
But there remains in the background a beauty of experience, which commingles a beauty of the natural and a beauty of the human. I love nature, and I find no better escape into myself than to get out into the forest, to go for a run in the glaucous shade along the Charles River esplanade.
But that natural beauty is remote in its purest form, it is a beauty which transcends our complete appreciation and the essence of what it gives to us lies just beyond the ability of our natural language of praise and awe. Natural beauty needs the human element, imperfect analogues and the unnatural beauty of language, to pin it it down, anesthetize it for us to appreciate, like a butterfly on cardstock; Bellow does that for us with a moving ability, but rather than sedating it, he breathes a life into it.
Bellow elucidates our human short-comings to appreciate natural beauty: We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects but endless fire. All beauty: natural, humanistic, aesthetic - all beauty is alive. Our materialist society has an unnatural desire for that which is eternal, but we find those pleasures empty, they don't fulfill us - they are unnatural , they are dead pleasures.
Wallace Stevens in "Sunday Morning," another tribute to the mystical power of a natural spiritualism, ponders: Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall?
The eternal is not beautiful and can never fulfill us. Money, material goods, is immutable, fungible, of an exact value - it lasts forever, so long as we hoard it. Nature cannot be hoarded or safeguarded in our purses and wallets, it slips ever through our fingers if we do not take it into our selves. We must ever grasp for it, appreciate it, love it and preserve it.
All that is beautiful must die, life must end, but I wouldn't trade in life and I wouldn't trade in the beauty of endless fire an allusion to Prometheus's gift for the material glister of "small gold objects. Jul 08, David rated it really liked it Recommends it for: rich white dudes on African safari, rain kings, lions. Shelves: books-to-read-before-you-die , american-literature , literary , owned , s , dude-lit , africa , enviable-prose. Huh — so, the plot of this book, I say to myself, having chosen it at random from Peter Boxall's Books list, is a rich white guy goes to Africa to learn the meaning of life from the noble savages.
Oh, I can see that this will turn out well. Coetzee who I did not love — lots of manly wangsting to the tune of Fond Memories of Vagina. Okay, let me dial do Huh — so, the plot of this book, I say to myself, having chosen it at random from Peter Boxall's Books list, is a rich white guy goes to Africa to learn the meaning of life from the noble savages.
Okay, let me dial down the snark. If you read Henderson the Rain King with your PC glasses off, it's actually a better book than I was expecting, with a certain exuberance and joie de vivre that endeared it to me. I'm pretty sure "joie de vivre" isn't actually what Saul Bellow was going for, as the protagonist is actually a rather depressive fellow, a middle-aged divorcee whose wife and kids don't understand him, a World War II combat veteran with scars of the sort that that generation never admits to, running off to Africa because despite being rich and comfortable, he can't get no satisfaction, a decade before Mick and the Stones.
Actually, Henderson's constant internal refrain is I want, I want, I want , and he spends the entire book trying to figure out what it is he wants. But there is something I liked about that big galoot Henderson, despite the fact that he goes stomping around Africa like the blundering big-nosed American he is. He loves and respects the Africans he meets, referring to them unselfconsciously as "savages" but meaning it in a nice way, and otherwise never displaying any racial prejudices.
Is he a great big schmuck? Yes, especially after his attempt to "help" the first tribe he meets goes disastrously wrong. Like the big impervious dumbass white man he is, he walks away unscathed, feeling very, very bad about it.
He finds another tribe, becomes a friend and confidant of the king, becomes the Sungo, the Rain God, in an improbable feat that had me rolling my eyes okay, seriously? You're gonna go there, Mr. That being said, just as Henderson has genuine affection for the Africans, in his oblivious, patronizing way, they have genuine affection for him — even if they are willing to literally throw him to the lions, should it come to that. Most of the book, though, is taken up with the inside of Henderson's head, which is a more interesting place than it has any right to be thanks in large part to Saul Bellow's writing.
He held the lioness by the head; her broth-colored eyes watched me; those whiskers, suggesting diamond scratches, seemed so cruel that her own skin shrank from them at the base. She had an angry nature. What can you do with an angry nature? Ah, why can't any SF authors write a space opera with prose like that? So this is a book about dudely dissatisfaction, yes, and it is kind of hard to feel sympathy for a millionaire who goes gallivanting off to Africa, deliberately seeking out the untouristed Africa and disappointed that there is so little untouristed Africa left.
As the first tribe he meets out in the hinterlands apologetically explains to him — in English — "We are discovered. Yet I did feel sorry for poor Henderson, and I even liked the guy. He makes a study of his own suffering, but he also tries to do right, ineptly but sincerely. And Saul Bellow paints him in big, bold colors, very much alive, very much complicated, an ultimately puny and comic human figure despite his vigorous strength and enviable wealth.
My rating wavered between 3 and 4 stars, so I give it 3. I didn't love it, but would not be averse to reading another of Bellow's works. Jan 13, Alan rated it really liked it Shelves: american-lit. As I read this novel forty years ago, my comments are dated. But every book on Africa and the West I have read since--including Naipaul's Bend in the River--must compete against this one.
So far, Bellow still trumps the list. What a concept. Move a large stone, You're KIng! Henderson does, and is. For one gratifying sidelight: as King, Henderson gains--what? One hazard, the wives decide on whether he remains king.
Check me on this, it's broadly correct, but I may mis-remember over th As I read this novel forty years ago, my comments are dated. Check me on this, it's broadly correct, but I may mis-remember over the four decades. He wrote this five years before his most popular novel, Herzog, written partly in the Berkshires where I had a house for a decade--or at least, Herzog lives there, or just over the line in NY.
Updike's Bech a Book satirizes the great Jewish writer and his international artistic exchange. Henderson is delightful, provocative, satiric, and amusing cross-cultural engagement and critique. Bellow's novels come imbued with European culture, so this one dramatizes the engagement of Europe in the Third World. Times have changed, and some of the cross-cultural jokes may be stale. I should re-read it--with maybe another hundred books. View 2 comments.
Dec 17, Drew rated it it was ok Shelves: modern-library-top , nobelles-lettres. So far I've only read this and Dangling Man, but I'm convinced that Saul Bellow is the most overrated American author of the 20th century. I will say this for it: the main character is complete, and very real-seeming.
I almost feel like I've met him. But that is just about the only good thing I can say about this book, apart from a few bits of all-right prose. The main difference would be that Saul Bellow creates a schlemiel to do it, whereas Gilbert is the schlemiel herself On the plus side, though, if you're one of the inexplicably huge number of people who enjoyed E.
This lion roar of a novel, by turns deeply felt and comic, certainly ranks with Saul Bellow's best. In "Henderson the Rain King," American Eugene Henderson, a very big man with a very big appetite for life, leaves his wife behind for a questing African adventure, trying to satiate a familiar voice saying, "I want, I want, I want! Henderson, who approaches the continent and its people as a sort of supplicant, first wins the admiration of a community of Africans country unnamed through a wrestling feat, but later overreaches in his zeal and love for these people and causes a disaster.
Henderson and his guide, Romilayu, eventually land with another faraway tribe, where Henderson comes to admire its king and ascends to his own glorified position of the title through the most-welcome consequences of another feat of strength. Henderson deeply admires the king, Dahfu, and his growing, complicated relationship with this man who's not entirely loved by his people forms the heart of this novel. Henderson, filled with Yankee bluster but seeking to become the artist of himself, has long, deep discussions with the college-educated-abroad, English-speaking king, and these scenes, where nothing technically happens, let the novel soar.
Henderson spends time with a lion that Dahfu keeps deep in his palace, in a spiritual sense trying to become one, and the American is deeply involved in Dahfu's own quest that has his continuing power and very life in the balance. But and this seems often to be the case with me; do I not have a good humor sensor? I found it more serious than most people seem to, and thought it best when it got most deep. But we carry around these hearts, these spotty damn mangoes in our breasts, which give us away.
It's a good portent of what lies within. Jan 13, Mitchel Broussard rated it did not like it Shelves: for-college. I imagine that chick from Eat Pray Love owes a lot to this book. Some rich and successful but oh-so-depressed dillhole decides to go to Africa because, you know, foreign countries have ALL the answers because they're SO mysterious! I don't even feel like explaining. Henderson is a grade A asshole, even when he starts to "become" or whatever the fuck that means.
I didn't care about him. I didn't care whether he "became" and I didn't care whether that baby tiger he takes home with him on the plane I imagine that chick from Eat Pray Love owes a lot to this book. I didn't care whether he "became" and I didn't care whether that baby tiger he takes home with him on the plane retaliated against his captors and devoured everyone on board.
Okay, maybe that would have made me like it a bit more. The way it's written is almost stream-of-consciousnesses so Henderson constantly jumps back to compare events that are going on in the present with stuff in the past that we as readers don't even know about yet.
After a while, I skimmed most of it, honestly, and got the plot holes filled in by sparknotes, and will be ready to put the words "I want, I want" as much as possible on my quiz in school. If there is one thing it does well, it rockets boredom to new frontiers. And I now know that everyone that "loves" this book, like The Sound and the Fury , is either A Trying to impress someone into thinking they are a literary scholar who totally love existential crises in fiction because it really shows off our bare-bones human nature, ya know?
May 16, Stacie rated it it was amazing Shelves: books , i-own. But the pursuitof sanity can be a form of madness, too. This book is filled with little gems like these. This is, by far, my favorite Bellow. He plots out the self-exploration of a millionaire with wit and humor, a look at what it is to love and be loved, and most importantly, the difference between what it means to be and become.
We are all looking for the truth, but in that search do we become slaves to our own f We are all looking for the truth, but in that search do we become slaves to our own falsehoods about ourselves and the world around us? This is just one of the questions that Bellow brought to the fore in the book I think you should read it. I think everyone should read it. Feb 23, Marc Gerstein rated it it was amazing Shelves: classics.
Literature has no shortage of male protagonists suffering existential crises and somehow or other trying to find meaning in their lives. But Eugene Henderson, the unfulfilled scorned son of a wealthy father who still left him plenty of money is a seeker with a difference.
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