Great American Novels

I recently read The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow and it's hard to describe it as anything else than The great American novel. I'm not quite sure what it means for something to be an American novel, let alone a great one, but it certainly has features that make it distinctly American beyond its author and setting.

When one looks at Augie March, Gatsby, Steinbeck novels, and perhaps Streetcar Named Desire (which i'm aware is not a novel), there is definitely something unifying. Of note, they're all reasonably bleak - presenting chracters that live almost an antithesis of the American dream: down on their luck, unable to escape circumstances and history. I found it interesting to read that A Clockwork Orange was edited when published in America, removing the final chapter (the happy ending). And then you can even think of other important episodes in the American psyche like Gone with the Wind - it's American to leave things unhappy, and yet it's also American to make a Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (maybe not everyone in America is the same? who knows...)

When beginning to read Augie March, I wondered whether Saul Bellow was one of those authors that I could not relate to, writing characters that are shallow and conceited. It was a nice surprise to find that every one of those suspicions, arising throughout the book, were quashed by some rejuvenating or explicating passage. I felt like the narrator grew with Augie March, i.e. that reflection was minimal in earlier passages, Augie seeming almost like a blank slate (indeed, it's a running theme of the book that that's what people take him to be) but with no opinion of his own, innocent and undiscerning. Later, however, he started to pronounce his opinion, bringing out his full character.

The book is somewhat episodic, and the emotions conveyed in some are unbelievably authentic (oxymoron?). After so much description, it is so easy to feel and empathise with the distress of his mother who's mentally slow son is taken away from her. Further on in the book, a break-up is described that articulates so well the complexity of run-down relationships that I couldn't help but feel a little sick to my stomach : that complex mixture of emotions where one has no right to feel betrayed, and yet the betrayal is felt all the more poignantly.

I guess part of the Americanness comes from the character's adventure, being able to sample many careers, lifestyles and people, something that was taken to the extreme in Forrest Gump! Augie reminds me somewhat of Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, with his descriptions of events touched by a melancholia that one cannot quite locate until the end. Some of the episodes are told Gatsby-style, where Augie really just sings everything he sees. Despite him seeming a bit naive and shallow in parts, the breadth of insight we are given into his character makes him human, and therefore forgivable for human faults. I was very glad to have read this book.