In the following review, Fitzgerald proclaims Ravelstein a novel about friendship.
Old age, on the whole, is not a time to be recommended, but very old novelists are allowed to write about what the...
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In the following review, Yardley contends that Ravelstein is less of a novel than a portrait of Bellow's friendship with the writer Allan Bloom.
It is by now common knowledge in literary and...
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In the following review, Levi discusses the insights and revelations found in Ravelstein.
Ever since the publication of the Inferno, in which Dante betrayed his beloved teacher Brunetto Latini to a...
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In the following review, Hitchens provides a thematic analysis of Ravelstein and calls the book “a novelistic and realistic memoir” of the late author Allan Bloom.
Novelists can be lu...
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In the following review, Menand argues that Ravelstein is a novel not only about friendship and mortality, but also focuses on the male heterosexual ego.
Saul Bellow and Allan Bloom were friends. T...
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In the following review, Leonard contends that it is the differences—not only the friendship—between Saul Bellow and Allan Bloom that animate Ravelstein.
You will recall that when Aug...
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In the following favorable review of Ravelstein, Feldman examines Bellow's friendship with Allan Bloom, asserting that evidence presented in the novel could potentially lead readers to conclude...
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In the following review, Phillips asserts that Ravelstein is not a biography, but rather “a fiction about biography.”
In Diana Trilling's memoir The Beginning of the Journey sh...
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In the following review, Jacobs maintains that Ravelstein “is a minor exercise, albeit with an occasional flourish of mastery.”
The art of the novel often involves transporting the re...
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In the following essay, Webb investigates Bellow's invoking of John Maynard Keynes in Ravelstein.
Ravelstein is a celebrated professor [in Ravelstein] of political philosophy—a charac...
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In the following unfavorable review, Tandon asserts that Ravelstein does not live up to its potential and that the book fails to captivate readers.
When is a choice not a choice? This is a question...
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In the following essay, Nichols deems Ravelstein a book about ideas, contending that “the biggest mistake that reviewers make is their failure to appreciate both the political and intellectual ...
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In the following essay, Davis discusses Ravelstein as a comic tragedy.
Ravelstein begins with the word “odd”; it introduces a reflection on the amusing character of the benefactors of...
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Saul Bellow, Nobel laureate and dean of Jewish-American fiction, passed away on Tuesday, April 5. He was 89. Bellow, in such novels as Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King...
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Critical Review by Penelope Fitzgerald
Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
