Now it's true that I have been savouring some of the densely-packed prose, but I'm afraid the slow pace of my reading also relates to a problem I encountered with Bellow all those years ago when I first read Herzog: I don't relate to his characters at all. I suppose I believe in them but I can't summon the interest in them to bother myself with what all the fuss is about - and there is a lot of fuss in this novel.
This brings to mind a brief exchange I had with the guy who was teaching the course on the Contemporary American Novel on which I first read Bellow. We had been reading Mr Sammler's Planet and he was praising Bellow for the brilliant caricatures that stalk that text. (Oddly I cannot picture this scene at all,. or relate it to any kind of wider context. I just remember the exchange.) I think I snapped out something along the lines of: If he can't write about people with any sort of charity I can't see why he bothers writing at all. (I wasn't in a good mood.) The lecturer looked stunned and that was it. No reply. I suppose my supposition that writing required some sense of charity towards others to work was so naïve as beyond further discussion. Or possibly I was failing to recognise the positive qualities in Bellow's characters and my comment just reflected extremely shallow reading.
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty much the same way towards Bellow today as I was all those years ago. But I'll be soldiering on having acquired a little more patience than I possessed at that time.
In the meantime, still on the topic of soldiering on, I'm just working out what would be a good time to call Mum. It's her birthday today but as of now morning in England and she's not at her best before noon. On my count she hits eighty-nine this time around. And they say that smoking is bad for your health!
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