Now Augie March, was: TRP-related (by me at least)..from a review

[Carvill John]

Augie March is fantastic. I really love Bellow's books, despite my ambivalence about Bellow the person. Actually, of all teh Bellow books I've read, Augie most resembles Against the Day, in a number of ways: the Trotsky angle, Mexico, etc. But also in that Bellow's book contains a lot od sections which some (readers or editors) might argue should have been cut or shortened. Some sections do go on and on; all that stuff with the eagle he keeps in the toilet, for instance. Not that I would want to cut them, you understand.
I don't know how 'realist' AUgie March actually is, though. For one thing, it's maybe, arguably, a bit too stylised; another factor is its self-conscious sense of its own virtuosity. Again, *I* wouldn't complain about those aspects, but I could see others doing so.
Since I read Augie (on holiday in Dubrovnik), I've always felt it could do with being published in some sort of annotated version, something like Penguin's Annotated Lolita, say. Sure are a lotta references in there.

<< I'm right in the middle of Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March"which is decidedly about "real [fictional] people."   The book hassuch an even feeling.  People evolve, events happen, time moves on,new adventures appear, but the drama level is very toned down.  Thestar of this show is the first-person narrator of the title, and he'sthe star mainly because every event is filtered through hisperception, and he has a pretty good opinion of himself as he looksback on the times of his life.  Once in a while he'll describe thingsin obtuse ways, but it feels right because you get the sense that(although he doesn't jump forward in his story) that he's ended up asa writer.>> 		 	   		  
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