Character and Narration in the Short Fiction of Saul Bellow (review)

Book Reviews 165 battle of making friends with her dead son's wife, and finds solace in comforting another survivor of the hurricane, a middle-aged woman in search of her own missing mother. The novel ends with Mrs. Bliss at peace: "Because everything else falls away. Family, friends, love fall away. Even madness stilled at last. Until all that's left is obligation." And all that's left for us, grateful readers of Stanley Elkin, are sixteen glorious books that have earned an eternal place in every personal and public library.1 William M. Robins, Ph.D. Director, Dunellen (New Jersey) Public Library Adjunct Professor, Hudson County Community College, Jersey City, NJ Character and Narration in the Short Fiction of Saul Bellow, by Marianne M. Friedrich. New York: Peter lang, 1995. 208 pp. $47.95. The short fiction of Saul Bellow has been pretty much overlooked by critics, and Marianne Friedrich attempts to fill part of the gap by analyzing seven of these works. She succeeds admirably with a readable, scholarly approach that could serve as a model for some authors. She does not attempt too much, she has excellent control of her material, and we close the book with a deeper understanding of Bellow. Dr. Friedrich writes of a "principle of variability," referring to "openness" or the elasticity of Bellow's esthetic concept. She tells us that "the goal of my study [is] to demonstrate in detail how a new evaluation of Bellow's short fiction may be achieved by persistently focusing on [his] general aspect of a correlation of character conception and its narrative representation." The first story examined is "Dora," and its links with Freud's famous hysteria patient by that name are made apparent. A dominant leitmotifof this monologue is unmarried versus married wrapped around threads of loneliness, work, alienation, responsibility, and death. Bellow leaves us with "a definite sense of the unknowable mystery of unconscious." 'This review was first published in The Chronicle (Middlesex-Dunellen, NJ), 14 September 1995. 166 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 "Looking for Mr. Green," Friedrich notes in agreement with other critics, indicates the central role in Bellow's development as an author concerned with the defense of the self. It is a story in which the metaphysician Grebe continuously seeks a mode of existence where being and seeming become identical. Friedrich agrees with Richard G. Stern that "Leaving the Yellow House" is about a female Henderson (referring to Bellow's famed novel) "on her last legs." Four major themes are observed in this tale: "death, identity, spiritual awakening and love." One ofBellow's best-known stories is next: "A Silver Dish." This work, about a son trying to become reconciled with his father on the old man's deathbed-the old man who committed a petty theft 40 years ago which thus alienated him from his son-contains a major theme in all of Bellow, says Friedrich, the father-son relationship. With the exception of Herzog, we read, this affiliation is basic to all of the Chicagoan's fiction. Friedrich examines three other stories. "What Kind of Day Did You Have?" (like"A Theft" more a novella than short story) is a slice of life, a "conspicuously realistic characterization ofaNew Yorker art critic." Artistic and fictional interpretations (by Bellow) are discussed beautifully by Friedrich. "Cousins," about a vision for "a world federation of cousins" (see Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slapstick for a similar idea) "transcends Hegel's insistence on the notion of a national state," among other things. "A Theft" is seen as a shift to romance, fairy tale, myth. Two disparate Western myths form the basis for character conception here: the medieval love myth of Tristan (resisting institutionalization through marriage) and that of Hera, with which it is contrasted. This six-part novella is given much detailed attention. The critic concludes that Bellow's "strategy of turning intellectual concepts or philosophical ideas into categories ofnarration" gives Bellow's work a unique and unmistakable stamp. When we finish this book, we are convinced by the author's unobtrusive erudition that what she has here written is insightful, helpful, and important. Harry James Cargas Webster University ...