Cultural Americana: Stories with Depth and Texture

books:

	• Collected Stories Saul Bellow Penguin (Non-Classics), 2002 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

'The Old System'

There is one story in this collection 'The Old System' which is one of the best stories I have ever read. I love it in part because it captures the spirit and feeling of two worlds I know well, one is the upstate New York Troy- Albany area world, the other is the world of Jewish religious Yiddish speaking immigrants to America. But I think even more than this what I find in this story is a story of family love and hate, of passion and intensity in human relationships. The story is fundamentally of the relationship between a brother and sister who ostensibly become estranged over a family inheritance, a ring. The brother a master maneuver and real estate mogul has risen from poor origins to wealth, and a world and a level beyond that of his resentful sister. She cuts him off. But in a dramatic reconciliation scene at the close of the story there is an incredible depth of tenderness and resignation and wisdom.
My abstract words are a poor summary of this remarkable story. It carries such a weight of meaning in it, said and unsaid, that I cannot possibly describe it.
In my judgment it is a very great story, one of the greatest.

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Mr. Bellow, One of Our Living National Treasures

It would be superfluous to add anything to Mr. Wood's introductory essay. The story "The Bellarosa Connection", for my part, is worth the price of the book.

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Often wicked fun

Most of these stories are vintage Bellow continuing his themes, particularly difficult relatives or just plain screwing up with family. Poignant and funny and plenty of what lies in between.

Cultural Americana: Stories with Depth and Texture

Saul Bellow selected the stories in this anthology which span the era of the late 1940s to mid-1950s. It includes a broad range of people, places, and topics. Each story is a richly textured, deep memory file of detail, depth, and description making every sentence and paragraph a work of artistic merit. Saul Bellow shares his Chicago roots and delving further, his ancestral Russian Jewish heritage. Other settings for his stories are New York, New Jersey, and New England. He uses densely packed carefully chosen, correct words to paint a colorful reality with many shades and hues ... He can pinpoint the important life issues of his characters describing their personality and behavior to maximum effect. His use of time is highly effective, the main character could be an adult, whose memories of specific events and people which had an impact on his life are woven throughout a story. The memory could be an everyday occurence but it takes on meaning and value because as life unfolds and one ages ... the mind naturally connects emotions with one's personal history.

This Nobel Prize for Literature winning author provides winding caverns of reality which the reader enters ... to explore the unforgettable life experiences of characters whose philosophical, ethical, and moral outlooks are described.

Here is a small sample of the above,
from "Cousins": "Disorder if it does not murder you brings certain opportunities. You wouldn't guess that when I sit in my Holy Sepulchre apartment at night (the surroundings that puzzled Eunice's mind when she came to visit: 'All these Oriental rugs and lamps, and so many books,' she said), wouldn't guess that I am concentrating on strategies for pouncing passionately on the freedom made possible by dissolution. Hundreds of books, but only half a shelf of those that matter. You don't get more goodness from more knowledge ..." [p. 234] In this story, Bellow discusses the relationship between love and hate with some startling but very accurate conclusions.

There is a kind of nostalgia and sentiment for the past in his stories where memories, places, and people are thoroughly examined and explored, few authors can match this writing style and achieve the same results. These memories about the past take on a kind of sacredness. Saul Bellow examines sentiments and feelings to create a dynamic story by unraveling the complex emotions associated with past relationships. Each thread in every story is woven neatly, tightly, and with consideration for all the senses, sight, sound, touch and taste. Indeed, all the stories are so enormously rich and dense, each is a book unto itself.
Erika Borsos (erikab93)

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reviews: page 1, 2

Nobel Prize-winner Saul Bellow has deservedly been celebrated as one of America's greatest living writers. For more than sixty years he has stretched our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with his exhilarating perceptions of life. Now collected for the first time in one volume and chosen by the author himself are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?," "Leaving the Yellow House," and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence." With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. This is a volume to treasure for longtime Bellow fans, and an excellent introduction for new readers.

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