"”I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.��

When I worked in a bookstore in Phoenix, there was this judge who frequently came in, usually late at night to buy stacks of books. He was a voracious reader. He had been in the OSS in WW2 and was one of the officers involved in the arrest of Hermann Göring. As he said, “I actually laid hands on the man.�� Needless to say, the judge was one of the smartest and most interesting guys I’ve ever met. One slow night, I hadn’t seen a customer in over an hour. I was lounging at the register, reading Saul Bellow, and the judge came in. He was so tickled I was reading Augie March, the best book he’d ever read about growing up in the depression. The Odyssey of the modern era. What baffled me the most was when this ultra successful guy says to me...I wish I’d had March’s life.

Success lays its own traps for us. We find ourselves frog marched along until the next thing we know the whole world would think we were insane to want to be anything other than what we have become.

I found the going tough in March, and even though this guy I admired so much had endorsed it so vigorously, at some point, I set the book aside, not to return to it for 33 years.

Judge, wherever you are now...I finished The Adventures of Augie March! The weight of this reading indiscretion has been lifted from my shoulders.

I don’t know that Bellow set out to write a masterpiece as he started stacking the pages of this novel. He might have just been having a lot of fun. The whacky, freewheeling style of the novel has me comparing certain aspects of it to Catch-22. The comedic elements, subtle but constant, keeps even the most tragic of circumstances that Augie finds himself ensnared from becoming too heavy.

Throughout the novel Augie is encouraged to go to University and does frequently consider it, usually when events have conspired against him. Going to school is frankly just too rigid a system for him. It is why he can’t hold down a regular job and why he is attracted to skilless jobs as long as he has more freedom of movement. He starts working for a man he would admire for the rest of his life, named Einhorn, while still in high school. ”’What would Caesar suffer in this case? What would Machiavelli advise or Ulysses do? What would Einhorn think? I’m not kidding when I enter Einhorn in this eminent list.�� Einhorn is far from being on the up and up. He is a cripple who manages his affairs from a wheelchair but seems to be able to see the workings of the world very clearly, even if he isn’t able to see it for himself.

Another example of a nontraditional job that Augie holds for a while is stealing books. He is supposed to sell them on to the customers who requested them, but he refuses to give the books up until he has read them. He suffers from a spat of bibliophilia that is nearly impossible to shake off. His partner in crime even offers him his library card. He wants him to check the books out of the library instead. ”But somehow that wasn’t the same. As eating your own meal.�� Ahh yes, there is a difference. There is, in my experience, always a stronger bond established between a reader and a book they own.

Augie falls in love/lust over and over again. His first big love/lust was Esther Fenchel. ”I say, without a push of love and worship in my bowels at the curve of her hips, and triumphant maiden shape behind, and soft, protected secret. Where, to be allowed with love, would be the endorsement of the world, that it was not the barren confusion distant dry fears hinted and whispered, but was necessary, justified, the justification proved by joy. That if she would have, approve, kiss, use her hands on me, allow me the clay dust of the court from her legs, the mild sweat, her intimate dirt and sweat, deliver me from suffering falsehood--show that there wasn’t anything false, injurious, or empty-hearted that couldn’t be corrected!��

Does anyone else have the urge to fix those sentences?

Of course, he is basing all this rather courtly devotion to her on her most shallow attributes. Her sister Thea circles around the love sick Augie unnoticed in the glow emanating from her sister. She realizes his desires for her sister are hopeless, and she feels she is the better match for Augie. In a book full of crazy decisions, probably one of the most insane that Augie gets himself involved in is a wild trip to Mexico, featuring Thea and Caligula the eagle. It is a cocked up mess from beginning to end.

“‘You’ve lost a tooth.�� I nodded. I knew where the gap was. But sooner or later you’re bound to lose some teeth.��

Augie has a chance to be rich more than once, but if there is one thing that he can be counted on to do��.it is to make the wrong decision. A rich couple even offers to adopt him as their son. This would have made him a rich man for life. He refuses, unwilling to be a family pet, even if it does mean a lifetime of financial security. Honorable? Well yes, you could make that case, but given the staccato bizarreness of his life, it might have been a very prudent offer to accept.

During the war, the army doesn’t want him. He joins the Merchant Marine to do his bit. Of course, he doesn’t know that the Merchant Marine suffers the highest casualty rates of the war, and sure enough his ship is bombed by a torpedo. Augie finds himself in a raft with an insane genius who doesn’t want to be saved but only wants to find an island to continue his research. Only Augie, out of the hundreds of men on the ship, could end up in a boat with the most barmy of the lot.

The book ends with Augie living in France with Stella. She is trying to make a go of being an actress, and Augie is involved in some shady dealings. I can sense that Augie is looking towards the horizon, dreaming about the experiences and adventures that await him just over the curve of the earth.

Wikipedia has a great summary of this book. ”With an intricate plot and allusive style, Bellow explores contrasting themes of alienation and belonging, poverty and wealth, love and loss, with often comic undertones.�� Because Augie is so free spirited, impossible to chain down in any profession or relationship, Bellow has an opportunity, through this character, to evaluate every nugget of human experience. Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, and this book was mentioned as his greatest contribution to literature. Masterpiece? Of course, it is. The Judge couldn’t possibly be wrong.

”In yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.��

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"مغامرات أوجي مارتش

في عمل عملاق يتمدد على ستمئة صفحة من القطع الكبير، يأخذنا النوبلي سول بيلو إلى أمريكا بدايات القرن العشرين مع بطله (أوجي مارتش) والذي يشبه في شخصيته وصفاته الملايين من البشر، فأوجي إنسان منضوٍ في مشاريع الآخرين، لا يمتلك مشروعاً شخصياً، ليس لديه رؤية واضحة لحياته ولا ما يمكن له أن يفعله، لهذا يجد نفسه في كل مرة جزءً من مشروع شخص آخر، وفي كل مرة ينتهي هذا بشكل سيء، حتى أن أوجي نفسه وفي لحظة تنوير مهمة في نهايات الرواية يكتشف ذلك:

"فزعت وأصابني الذعر... لأنني لمحت من جديد تلك الإشارة التي ولدت تحتها، أن أكون تابعاً، عنصراً منضوياً ضمن خطة شخص ما".

وأوجي ليس وحيداً في ذلك، فالأرض تفيض بكل المنضوين في مشاريع كبيرة أو صغيرة، ربما هو ذلك الشعور المريح، عندما يكف الإنسان عن سؤال نفسه الأسئلة الكبرى، ويترك للآخرين قيادته وتقرير الحقائق عنه، ربما هي كذلك وسيلة لإلقاء اللوم على الآخرين عندما لا تسير الأمور كما يجب.

كلنا منضوون بشكل أو بآخر، سياسياً واقتصادياً واجتماعياً وثقافياً، وعينا ذلك أو لم نعه، وجل ما يفعله البعض منا هو محاولة مقاومة الانضواء في أحد هذه المشاريع بشكل أو بآخر.

لا توجد قصة كبيرة في (مغامرات أوجي مارتش)، القصة الكبيرة هي أوجي وعلاقاته، بجدته الديكتاتورية، وأمه المسكينة وأخيه المخبول جورجي، وسايمون الأخ الآخر الذي يحاول النجاح والفرار من قدر العائلة، علاقاته كذلك مع الأشخاص والنساء، المشاريع الغريبة التي يساق إليها من تربية الكلاب فسرقة الكتب وصيد السحالي في المكسيك بواسطة نسر.

هذه رواية لا تنسى، تصطف في ذاكرتي مع الروايات الأمريكية العظيمة والتي قدمت لي شخصيات غريبة ومميزة من (ستونر) فـ (بابت) و (تحالف الأغبياء).
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