my consuming soul

If you were like Saul Bellow's Henderson, wealthy and plagued with a
voice that said, "I want I want. I want!", you get to be in a book.

If you were poor like mis_nomer and had that tormenting voice, all you
get is an inexhaustible list: breakfast, garmin, broadband, macbook,
macbook, Bali, flat, you... where each ticked off item generates
twenty more, spiralling ever out of reach.

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The Island

Quite a fun movie. Caught the 5:30pm show. We probably chose to watch `The Island' because neither of us knew the first thing about the movie. Sometimes not knowing anything about a movie adds to its appeal. The other choices were `Bewitched', `Wedding Crashers', `Mysterious Skin', and `Land of the Dead'. So, armed with a colleague's recommendation and the ticket seller's summary (`cloning lah'), we bought our tickets. No regrets. :)

Update: One of the themes of The Island is that humans would do anything to survive, similar perhaps to the concept of "Grun-tu-molani" in Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. "Grun-tu-molani" is roughly translated as "Man wants to live." But The Island is not completely damning in its protrayal of the survival instinct of human beings (afterall it is a hollywood flick). The heros in the movie make the selfless decision to save the rest of their friends from certain death. I think that is why the idea of a selfless hero, or Christ for that matter, is so appealing to humanity. It goes against our human nature, therefore we are drawn to the heroism, the way opposites attract.

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Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow

I read this novel in two parts due to unforseen circumstances. But I finally finished it this weekend, and it was a wonderful read.

The setting of this novel is really quite something. Ralvelstein is set in New York and Paris; Herzog in the suburbia and countryside, Henderson is set in the heart of Africa. The textures and smells of this novel are fascinating. Bellow's descriptions of the two tribes E. H. Henderson encounters in his journey of self-discovery are so life-like that I googled the two tribes in the novel -- "Arnewi" the cow lovers and "Wasiri" the lion tribe -- to see if they had any ties with real tribes, but the search came to naught. I also googled "Grun-tu-molani", translated as "Man wants to live."

Typically, this novel by Bellow is deep. Bellow alludes to links between things you don't normally associate with one another. For example, one of the ideas in this novel is that you can take on the characteristics of the animals that you associate with -- that even inanimate object and animals have souls. Along these lines, Dahfu, the king of the Wasiri tribe, postulates that there is a link between our personality and our external features -- that we are our own authors of our faces, our noses, our bellies. Henderson is described as grunting, with a paunch between his belly, an extraordinary nose, and very strong. It is as if Bellow is trying to say that the world we live in is more alive with connections than we know.

Another interesting element in this novel is the journey Henderson makes to find himself. He is driven into Africa by a voice that says, I want I want I want! But the voice never says what it wants. Later in the novel, there is this passage:

"I had a voice that said, I want! I want? I? It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want..." (286)

"All you hear from guys is desire, desire, desire, knocking its way out of the breast, and fear, striking and striking. Enough already! Time for a word of truth. Time for something notable to be heard. Otherwise, accelerating like a stone, you fall from life to death. Exactly like a stone, straight into deafness, and till the last repeating I want I want I want, then striking the earth and entering it forever!" (297)

Henderson is like a microcosm of the world we live in. He takes on the desire, the fear, the preoccupation with death, and the suffering of the entire world. He suffers more than anyone else, perhaps like how Christ suffered for the sake of the whole world, except that Henderson contained within himself both sin and redemption. Dahfu alluded to the great figures of history as model forces:

"Do you think that Jesus Christ is still a source of human types, Henderson, as a model-force? I have often thought about my physical types, as the agony, the appetite, and the rest, to be possibly degenerate forms of great originals, as Socrates, Alexander, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus..." (303)

Even with dead persons in the past there are connections! Gmilo the lion is Dahfu's father, as Suffo the lion is Gmilo's. It is altogether extremely thought-provoking.

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Herzog by Saul Bellow

Moses E. Herzog is a modern-day hero. As his life crumbles about him -- his wife leaves him for his best friend, he gives up a scholarly career -- he writes unsent letters to both the living and the dead, revealing his innermost thoughts. At the edge of sanity, Moses' words are startingly true, deep with thought and emotion. At the end of the book, Moses thinks:

I will do no more to enact the pecularities of life. This is done well enough without my special assistance...

Anyway, can I pretend I have much choice? I look at myself and see chest, thighs, feet -- a head. This strange organization, I know it will die. And inside -- something, something, happiness... "Thou movest me." That leaves no choice. Something produces intensity, a holy feeling, as oranges produce orange, as grass green, as birds heat. Some hearts put out more love and some less of it, presumably. Does it signify anything? ...

Is it idiot joy that makes this animal, the most peculiar animal of all, exclaim something? And he thinks this reaction a sign, a proof, of eternity? And he has it in his breast? But I have no arguments to make about it. "Thou movest me." "But what do you want, Herzog?" "But that's just it -- not a solitary thing. I am pretty well satisfied to be, just as it is willed, and for as long as I may remain in occupancy." (340)

Bellow is a master with language. I will leave only one example:

Herzog felt nothing but his own human feelings, in which he found nothing of use. What if he felt moved to cry? Or pray? He pressed hand to hand. And what did he feel? Why he felt himself -- his own trembling hands, and eyes that stung. And what was there in modern, post ... post-Christian America to pray for? Justice -- justice and mercy? And pray away the monstrousness of life, the wicked dream that it was? He opened his mouth to relieve the pressure he felt. He was wrung, and wrung again, and wrung again, again. (240)

Will have to re-read this book, preferably after I pick up a little French!

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Ravelstein

Ravelstein was written by Saul Bellow in 2000. It was his last novel. He died in early April this year.

Ravelstein is dense, powerful, and seamless. I’ve never read a novel like it. The sinewy connections this novel has with real life are intriguing – in the novel, Chick is a old man writing a memoir as a promise to his friend Ravelstein; in real life, Bellow is writing his last novel in honour of the political philosopher Allan Bloom.

Like Ravelstein, Bloom wrote a best-selling book on Bellow’s recommendations titled The Closing of the America Mind. He too was a lecturer, a man of vast intellect and strong opinions; a man with awkward stutters and trembling hands; a man who loved his Cuban cigars, Armani suits and Mont Blanc pens.

Because of these tenuous links with reality, I cannot help but consider the morbid – How did Bellow die? Did the “pictures stop”, as aptly described by the Bellow-character Chick? Did he become more and more preoccupied with Jerusalem rather than Athens in his last days, squaring off with the cruelty of mankind, the “meat hooks”, and the essence of being fully man? Bellow was 89, married for the fifth time.

Even if there were no Allan Bloom, merely the descriptions of Ravelstein would be enough. I can see him – bald, melon-headed, pointing his students with sharp irreverent intellect towards the light in Plato’s cave, smoking Marlboro after Marlboro, himself a hodgepodge of oddities and contradiction. Merely the description of his rich textiles, the expensive bedding, the coffee stain on the $4,500 Lanvin jackets, together with his overarching historical ideas and frankness are enough to propel me into his world.

I was initially afraid that I would mix up the main character in Henderson the Rain King and in Ravelstein. Boy was I wrong.
more on Ravelstein

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The Actual

On daryl sng's recommendation, I picked up two books by Saul Bellow from the library this weekend, The Actual (a novella) and Henderson the Rain King. Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer, and the National Book Award three times. Whoa.. My only regret is that I left Henderson the Rain King in the backseat of my friend's car and so my reading has been put on hold.

Very. Thought. Provoking. The Actual is by no means one of Bellow's canonical works but it made me hungry for more. It is written in the first-person and yet it had such a fluidity of prose that other minor characters were enlivened as well. The idea of Amy Wustrin being so ingrained in Harry Trellman's consciousness is intriguing. It may be more true of life than I like to admit. As Henderson's inner tormenting voice said (before I misplaced the book), "I want! I want! I want!"

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