SOURCE: Bradbury, Malcolm. “The Fifties Novels: The Adventures of Augie March, Seize the Day, and Henderson the Rain King.” In Saul Bellow, pp. 48-66. London: Methuen, 1982.

In the following excerpt, Bradbury perceives The Adventures of Augie March to be a turning point in Bellow's literary development, noting that the novel abandons the European angst of his earlier works.

I looked in at an octopus, and the creature seemed also to look at me and press its soft head to the glass, flat, the flesh becoming pale and granular—blanched, speckled. The eyes spoke to me coldly. But even more speaking, even more cold, was the soft head with its speckles, a cosmic coldness in which I felt I was dying. The tentacles throbbed and motioned through the glass, the bubbles sped upward, and I thought, ‘This is my last day. Death is giving me notice.’

(Henderson the Rain...