Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

A slim novel with huge ideas, and although a great foundation is laid down and much is left undone, underdone or unsaid (to the novel's detriment I must say), it's still a more than worthwhile read, especially considering the later heights Saul Bellow reached.

The protagonist Joseph, the eponymous 'Dangling Man' is, through a bureaucratic mix up caught between American army service during world war II and his life leading up to that. He has quit his job and is simply waiting with his wife in a small and suffocating tenement house for his draft date to come up. That's the basic story and essentially, this is all told in diary format, what happens is fairly linear, Joseph witnesses the fettering of his generation of intellectuals as they try, but mostly just meander, through their lives in an at war America.

Joseph's musings serve as the meat of the novel and for the most part I love them. He posits real and relevant questions regarding the place of man in the world regarding free will, the necessity and simultaneous painful burden of it, as well as backing up his claims and queries with wry observations about what the former 'masters' have come up with in terms of answers before his time, respectful but not above calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that though some things remain constant in the human experience, what remains equally constant is our inherent inability to cope with our surroundings, circumstances, other people, and even (and especially) ourselves.

The book is solipsistic however to the point of rendering of the other characters nearly irrelevant. Hell, in the last quarter of the book Joseph has two conversations with, not a person he knows, but rather what he perceives to be as the manifestation of his 'alternatives'. But that doesn't take too much away from the book as a whole, nor does the fact that the protagonist isn't particularly sympathetic...but then, none of the characters really are, but they are all rendered very humanly (with only slight exaggeratations for effect here and there and, due to the book's short lenght, unevenly).

A rock solid book with some moments of acute insight that will stay with you, Dangling Man shows itself for what it is, the potential for future revelation is there, but here it's not quite achieved. The final moments of the novel wherein (SPOILER..thought not really, you'll know it about half a page in where this story is going to conclude) Joseph resigns himself to military service with a somber sense of relief knowing that his life and the responsibility of it won't be his for a time, is humbling, if a bit incomplete and leaves the reader a bit unfulfilled. It's not that I don't agree with the argument, not at all it makes perfect sense, but Bellow doesn't prepare the reader enough here and the conclusion comes off as a rushed patch rather than any iron clad conclusion about man's freedom and the necessity and even benefits of giving it up.

But still, it's a quick but significantly deep read, check it out to see where one of the apparent greats cut his teeth.