Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

Gloria Cronin (Brigham Young University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1975

Places

Canada (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Humboldt’s Gift

(1975) represents a distinct change in tone and focus from

Mr. Sammler’s Planet

which preceded it. It is a comic novel that portrays the spiritual plight of Charlie Citrine, a Chicagoan with a taste for low pursuits, gangland excitement, pneumatic young women, and a poetic gift he has almost lost. This “Chicago condition”, which has destroyed his poet friend, Humboldt, engages Charlie in the same kind of dialectal contest fought by Joseph and

Tu As Raison Aussi

Dangling Man

; or, Tommy and Tamkin in

Seize the Day

, or Henderson and the lioness in

Henderson the Rain King

, and by Herzog and the modern philosophers in

Herzog

. On the surface it is a serious religious discussion couched in a deflecting comic idiom, while underneath it focuses on Bellow’s many…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

603 words

Citation: Cronin, Gloria. "Humboldt's Gift". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 November 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4618, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback