Ravelstein

Abe Ravelstein – ferocious intellectual, bestselling author, confidant of presidents and prime ministers and possessor of tastes that would bankrupt a king – is celebrating his success in Paris. He and his friend Chick trawl the Parisian streets in search of haute couture, fine foods and fresh arguments. But Ravelstein is dying and, in challenging Chick to record his life, he sets in motion their last great debate. A tale of philosophy, love, friendship, ancient Greek recipes, mortality, vaudeville routines and $4,500 suits ensues as the two old rogues come to scrutinize their very existence. Saul Bellow’s first novel for 13 years is an insightful, brave and funny funeral song to friendship and life. In terms of richness, fecundity of ideas and sheer undiminished curiosity, there's still no one to beat him. The Mail on Sunday Bellow's return, with Ravelstein, to an earlier, freer, more voice-driven exuberance is an astonishment to me. I have to keep reminding myself that the author was born, not in 1950, but in 1915. Martin Amis in Experience How extraordinary that Bellow's substantial new novel should be so full of the old, cascading power, its prose displaying that august raciness one remembers from Herzog and Humboldt's Gift darting with metaphor and wit. James Wood, The Guardian The book rings with laughter and joy ... Ravelstein is an extraordinary character ... it is hard not to feel privileged at being allowed a glimpse into a human connection as intimate and rewarding as this one. Washington Post Book World His heart warmed such connoisseurs - lovers of elegance. The admiration of black adolescents helped Ravelstein to offset the hatred of his colleagues, the professors. The popular success of his book drove the academics mad. He exposed the failings of the system in which they were schooled, the shallowness of their historicism, their susceptibility to European Nihilism. A summary of his argument was that while you could get an excellent technical training in the U.S., liberal education had shrunk to the vanishing point. The older generation saved towards the education of its children. The cost of a BA had risen to $150,000. Parents might as well flush these dollars down the toilet, Ravelstein believed. No real education was possible in American universities except for aeronautical engineers, computerists, and the like. The universities were excellent in biology and the physical sciences, but the liberal arts were a failure. The philosopher Sidney Hook had told Ravelstein that philosophy was finished. "We have to find jobs for our graduates as medical ethicists in hospitals," Hook had admitted. Ravelstein's book was not at all wild. Had he been a noisy windbag he would have been easier to dismiss. No he was sensible and well informed, his arguments were thoroughly documented. All the dunces were united against him (as Swift or maybe Pope expressed it long ago). If they had had the powers of the FBI, the professors would have put Ravelstein on "most wanted" posters like in those federal buildings. He had gone over the heads of the Profs and the learned societies to speak directly to the great public. There are, after all, millions of people waiting for a sign. Many of them are university graduates. When Ravelstein's outraged colleagues attacked him, he said he felt like the American general besieged by the Nazis - was it at Remagen? When they demanded his surrender, his answer was "Nuts to you!" Ravelstein was upset, of course; who wouldn't have been? And he couldn't he couldn't expect to be rescued by some academic Patton. He could rely on his friends, and of course he had generations of graduate students by his side as well as the support of truth and principle. His book was well received in Europe. The Brits were inclined to look down their noses at him. The universities found fault, some of them, with his Greek. But when Margaret Thatcher invited him to Chequers for a weekend, he was "aux anges" (Chequers was heavenly: Abe always preferred French expressions to American ones; he didn't say "a chaser" or "a womaniser" or "ladies man" - he said "un homme a femmes"). Even bright young left-wingers felt strongly for him.