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 enlarge | Author: Saul Bellow
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $11.99
You Save: $17.96 (60%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  116 reviews
Sales Rank: 1085043
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.4 x 2.1
ISBN: 1565114280
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9781565114289
ASIN: 1565114280
Publication Date: August 6, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Condition: New, unused book.; bkcs
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| Customer Reviews:
Slight Work of Great Writer October 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you love Bellow as I do, this is both thrilling and disappointing. Thrilling, because it is Bellow. One is reminded throughout of his voice, his humor, his zest for life, his oddball modesty, his thrilling observations. Disappointing, because this is not a great work of fiction, but rather a disguised biography of a friend, lovingly remembered. Bellow succeeds partially in laying bare his subject, but his strategy of avoiding Ravelstein/Bloom's ideas creates a barrier to the sort of breakthrough work one might have hoped for. It is fun to hear again and again about Ravelstein's preferences in music, crystal, ties, and the rest, but in the end this material goes nowhere. Bellow is not about to criticize his beloved friend, but without insight, irony, or both, these descriptive passages become shallow observations. Ravelstein's ideas, had Bellow tried to do something with them, would have added to the portrait by showing the man's value to civilization. Simply stating his greatness is not enough. This is especially true when we take into consideration the fact of Ravelstein/Bloom's enormous influence, which Bellow makes reference to on numerous occasions. The gossipy, rude, sloppy, effete snob portrayed here does not seem to be a great loss at all.
The most brilliant cigarette smoker since Edward R. Murrow August 21, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Abe Ravelstein, who taught political philosophy at an American university, was one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. Ravelstein was a truly larger than life man. So what if, against his doctor's orders, he continued to chain smoke a day after he was admitted to the hospital?
The real problem is that Ravelstein is dying of AIDS. Ravelstein comissioned a close friend of his, Chick, the task of writing Ravelstein's memoirs after Ravelstein died. Rather than choosing an individual well-versed in political philosophy, he picks Chick, who would present Ravelstein from a more personal viewpoint.
Ravelstein was fortunate in having a large coterie of admiring students around him. Perhaps the major reason for his loyal following was related to Ravelstein's prime requirement for someone becoming his student would be to forget everything that his parents heretofore taught him. No reason for a pupil's mind to be clogged with useless and extraneous information. Interestingly, one of Ravelstein's students, the lovely Rosamund, marries Chick and proves to be a loving and extremely helpful partner to Chick.
I am more than a little disappointed that Mr. Bellow omitted Chick's actual memoirs of Abe Ravelstein from this memorable book. Or, could it be that the book that I just finished reading is...?
 Remembering Ravelstein. July 7, 2007
"You don't easily give up a creature like Ravelstein to death" (p. 253).
Ravelstein (2000) is Saul Bellow's (1915-2005) final novel. Written in the form of a memoir, Bellow's short novel struggles to address the legacy of its title character, Abe Ravelstein, and--like Walt Whitman--sees the death question as the question of questions. It offers a compelling character study of Ravelstein told primarily through dialogue and anecdotes arising out of a friendship between two academics, Ravelstein and "Chick," both University of Chicago professors. Bellow modeled the friendship on his own friendship with Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind). The novel opens six years after the AIDS-related death of Ravelstein, during which time Chick has been unable to complete his memoir until only after surviving a life-threatening illness of his own.
Like Bloom, Ravelstein was an intellectual critic of the dumbing down of America, and became both famous and wealthy by writing a bestselling book in the same genre as the Closing of the American Mind. (Bloom basically asserts in the Closing of the American Mind that, in a society ruled by public opinion, and preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race and War, higher education places greater value on commercial pursuits than the philosophic quest for truth or the pursuits of honor and glory.) In writing his memoir, Chick remembers Ravelstein as a complicated man, a great thinker, a Renaissance man, and most of all, as a true friend with a love for cigarettes, espressos, erudite dialogue, and Paris (where Bellow's novel is set, in part).
Professor Bloom (1930-92), a conservative philosopher and social critic, was a bachelor who never married. By revealing Bloom was gay and likely died of complications from HIV-AIDS in 1992, Bellow's novel caused a stir when it was published in 2000. Bellow defended his novel by saying Bloom always encouraged him to tell it all.
G. Merritt
Read another's review June 21, 2007
Anyone interested in interesting reviews should check out Michael Davis' interpretive essay of this book in his Wonderlust.
Friendship and love June 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It was easy for him to write a popular book. Indeed, teaching was a sort of popularization. Abe Ravelstein, through informal means, sent the narrator, Chick, back to Plato's SYMPOSIUM. Ravelstein believed the sprited were drawn to love and the bourgeoisie feared violent death. He wanted his students to cast aside their parents' beliefs. Chick's wife, Rosamund, had been one of Abe's students.
Ravelstein had entered the University of Chicago at age fifteen. Two decades later he returned as a full professor. Now, the large man from Dayton, Ohio, HIV postive, was dying. Abe had visited Chick in New Hampshire even though he didn't like the country. On such visits he had told Chick about affairs conducted by Chick's then wife, Vela.
It was a characteristic of Abe Ravelstein that he was very interested in the domestic arrangements of his students and his friends. In illness, in dying, there were many visitors. In the end the students waited, but Abe was no longer teaching, no longer holding court.
Abe Ravelstein had felt that his friend Chick had failed to consider his existence, his place, as a Jew. A mad form of nihilism had prevailed in Germany and other countries in the twentieth century. Chick believed that it had been hard for him to be a Jew amidst American language. American language was so hopeful.
When Ravelstein died, Chick discovered that it had been his habit to tell Abe new things whenever the men met. Chick had been chosen to do the portrait, the memoir of Ravelstein. The task was completed six years later.
The real-life model for Abe Ravelstein is Allan Bloom. One of the supporting characters is evidently based on Isaiah Berlin. This late work of Saul Bellow is both amazingly erudite and funny. I guess another appropriate adjective is exuberant.
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