The Adventures of Augie March (50th Anniv. Edition)

by Bellow, Saul

• ISBN13: 9780670032426
• ISBN10: 0670032425
• Edition: 50th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-09-15
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

Among the names in the papers in 1953-from Khrushchev to Charlie Chaplin, from Dwight Eisenhower to the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth-was Saul Bellow's, whose The Adventures of Augie Marchattracted enormous attention for its fresh, bold, exhilarating voice and thrust Saul Bellow into the international literary limelight. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication, Viking is reissuing Bellow's landmark novel in a beautiful new hardcover edition, with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. The Adventures of Augie Marchset the stage for Bellow's Nobel Prize Award in 1976 and established him as a crucial voice that demanded to be heard. Fifty years later, it remains the best loved of Bellow's works as new readers discover this vital, truly American masterpiece.

Author Biography

Saul Bellow, author of twelve novels and numerous novellas and short stories, is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift and, in 1976, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. A longtime resident of Chicago, Mr. Bellow now lives in New England.

Excerpts

INTRODUCTION THE GREAT AMERICAN AUGIE by Christopher Hitchens Augie March stands on the Chicago lake-shore at dawn on a New Yearis Day in the 1930s: I drank coffee and looked out into the brilliant first morning of the year. There was a Greek church in the next street of which the onion dome stood in the snow-polished and purified blue, cross and crown together, the united powers of earth and heaven, snow in all the clefts, a snow like the sand of sugar. I passed over the church too and rested only on the great profound blue. The days have not changed, though the times have. The sailors who first saw America, that sweet sight, where the belly of the ocean had brought them, didnit see more beautiful color than this.Nick Carraway stands on the Long Island shoreline at the close of The Great Gatsby:And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailorsi eyesoa fresh green breast of the new world...the trees that had made way for Gatsbyis house had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent...face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. One man is reflecting at dayis end, and one at dayis beginning. Both have just been put through it by flawed and wretched humanityoCarraway has been to several funerals and Augie has had a close shave while helping a girl who isnit his girlfriend to survive an illegal abortion. (I pause to note that one is a belly man, while the other favors the breast.) Both draw strength from the idea of America. But Carraway derives consolation, while it might be truer to say that Augie finds inspiration. Reflecting on Gatsbyis futile questohis idreamioCarraway decides that: iHe did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.i Augie doesnit take much stock in dreams, and he is about to venture on to those very fields. I do not set myself up as a member of the jury in the Great American Novel contest, if only because Iid prefer to see the white whale evade capture for a while longer. Itis more interesting that way. However, we do belong to a ranking species, and thereis no denying that this contest is a real one. The great advantage that Augie Marchpossesses over Gatsbylies in its scope and its optimism and, I would venture, in its principles. Or its principleoin the opening pages Augie states it clearly and never loses sight of it: What did Danton lose his head for, or why was there a Napoleon, if it wasnit to make a nobility of us all? And this universal eligibility to be noble, taught everywhere, was what gave Simon airs of honor. Simon is Augieis older brother, but ithis universal eligibility to be noblei (eligibility connotes being elected as well as being chosen) is as potent a statement of the American dream as has ever been uttered. Simon doesnit imake iti; thatis not the point. Augie doesnit exactly make it either; well, itis an ideal not a promise. He decides to match himself against the continent, seeking no oneis permission and deferring to no idea of limitation. His making, like his omnivorous education, will be his own. This was the first time in American literature that an immigrant would act and think like a rightful Discoverer, or a pioneer. The paradox of the American immigrant experience had hitherto been exactly that so many immigrants came to the New World not in order to spread their wings but to adapt, to conform, to fit in. When we are first introduced to Augie he is in cramped conditions; a poor Jewish family semi-stifled by its own warmth and replete with dreads