SOURCE: Cassidy, T. E. “From Chicago.” Commonweal 58, no. 26 (2 October 1953): 636.

In the following review, Cassidy characterizes The Adventures of Augie March as a series of narrative vignettes and contends that “there is no real power here and no tremendous insight that Bellow certainly was striving to achieve.”

Augie March lives quite a life [in The Adventures of Augie March]. Up from the depths of poverty to the heights of success, back down, back up, and all in most peculiar fashion. Jobs, journeys, jolts—and women, women, women. Crime and college, labor unions and athletic clubs, Chicago and Mexico, slums and society, thievery and high honor: these form the panorama for Augie. And that's the book. It's a chronicle of an age and a case history of assorted human beings, most of whom are engaged, in one way or another, in using their fellow-men and helping or hurting their families...