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Review [published June 2000]
Saul Bellow: Ravelstein
Stephen Mitchelmore
“I stood back from myself and looked into Amy’s face.
No one else on all this earth had such features. This was
the most amazing thing in the life of the world.”
These sentences come from the final page of Saul
Bellow’s previous novel The Actual, which, I seem to
remember, he said would be his last. Perhaps, instead,
it should be classed as a novella; it ends after only
104 pages. His latest novel Ravelstein, at 233 pages,
safely reaches novel-length. Perhaps this is the last. But
maybe not, because it doesn’t feel like a novel. There is
a famous reason for this, and the reason is fame.
Abe Ravelstein, the eponymous character, is the late
Allan Bloom, political philosopher at the University
of Chicago and close friend of the novelist. In 1987,
Bloom published a book called The Closing Of The
American Mind, a singular polemic against what he
saw as the betrayal of American values in the realm of
Higher Education. The book became a surprise bestseller
and made Bloom millions of dollars. Saul Bellow
contributed a foreword to the book, and, it turns out,
was the one who suggested he write it in the first place.
Bloom died young in 1992, but before he died asked
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Bellow to write about him ‘warts and all’. This novel
is the result.
So why doesn’t he call Ravelstein by his famous
name? After all, Martin Amis, Bellow’s wrong-headed
protégé, hasn’t changed the names in his recent autobiography
Experience. In his book, Bellow can’t be
hoping to deny the link. And he isn’t: he has been quite
open about who Abe really is. That’s not the reason.
The reason goes to the heart of the novel, and ‘the
novel’ in general.
The short explanation is Amy’s face, which Harry,
the narrator of The Actual, sees, as if for the first time
as the coffin containing her husband is lowered into
its plot. Harry realises that Amy has always been ‘the
one’ (that is, The Actual), and asks her to marry him.
The novel ends before she answers, restraining the
sentimentality inherent in such a scenario. Before she
can say anything, the plot is lowered, as it were, into
its coffin. But read his sentence again: he sees Amy’s
actual face only in standing back from himself. We, the
readers, don’t actually see her face but we sense the
unique, mysterious, revelatory moment. Her distance
071
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