Humboldt’s Gift, by Saul Bellow
Latent Book Club Review #2306
Bellow’s observations on life, on intellectualism, on literature, on Chicago, and – we suspect – on himself, are the driving forces behind this nuanced work which yields insights by the tonne.
Humboldt’s Gift is a dense, but easy-to-read novel, with deep characterisation and relationships to navigate. Ultimately it is a book in which little happens in terms of actual action, but that’s not really the point. Rather, Bellow’s observations on life, on intellectualism, on literature, on Chicago, and – we suspect – on himself, are the driving forces behind this nuanced work which yields insights (and neuroticism) by the tonne if we are prepared to look for them. Small wonder it steered Bellow towards a Pulitzer Prize and, ultimately, the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In Humboldt’s Gift, our protagonist is Charlie Citrine, an author who, is charting both his present situation, and his life’s relationship with Von Humboldt Fleischer; a friend and mentor of Citrine, a comrade, writer and intellectual, but lately deceased. This double helix of a plot: reminiscences about Humboldt, interposed with the tribulations of Citrine’s personal life – serves as the vessel by which the story is propelled forward.
Citrine is something of a has-been, a braggart, and a dreamer, as is evident in his reminiscences, in which the reader must question how reliable a narrator he is. He is dissociated with his life, pontificating on it, but refusing to actively engage with it for the majority of the novel. And despite having made it big with his writing, most notably in the forms of a play and a movie, Citrine’s career is now in a downward trajectory.
As we open, it becomes apparent that Citrine is in dire financial straits. He owes money to his ex-wife, his divorce attorney, and is being chased for even more in alimony. He also owes money to a wannabe mobster, Rinaldo Cantabile after losing to him at a (Citrine believes) fixed poker game. Cantabile, eager to save face at not being paid, smashes up Citrine’s Mercedes, a machine he can scarcely afford to repair. Citrine, afraid, and suffering from a decidedly taciturn streak, decides to pony up to Cantabile. Cantabile accepts the cash, but not before he parades Citrine all around Chicago to make a great show of his contrition, in order to save face. This initial hook alone was very compelling; and some of the greatest character development in the novel occurs when Citrine ultimately grows the ability to tell Cantabile exactly where he should go.
Interposed with this, as we have mentioned, are reminiscences of Humboldt. These involve expositions into Chicago, which Bellow called home, and Jewishness, which Citrine, Humboldt and of course Bellow himself was. These introspective moments form some of the most momentous parts of the novel. Here are a few we particularly enjoyed:
1. On the perspicacious, but self-destructive tendencies of poets:
So poets are loved, but loved because they just can't make it here. They exist to light up the enormity of the awful tangle and justify the cynicism of those who say, If I were not such a corrupt, unfeeling bastard, creep, thief, and vulture, I couldn't get through this either.
This latter comment: the bastard, creep, thief and vulture, resurfaces in several guises throughout the novel, notably after Humboldt is committed to a sanitorium, an event in which Citrine fails top intervene. Humboldt, enraged, accuses Citrine thus:
‘You're a traitor, a liar, a phony and a Judas. You had me locked up while that whore Kathleen was going to orgies. I'm charging you with embezzlement’.
2. On aspects of being an American-Jew, and neuroticism:
'I want you to feel as insulted as I feel, not stick me with the whole thing. Why don't you have any indignation, Charlie - Ah! You're not a real American. You're grateful. You're a foreigner. You have that Jewish immigrant kiss-the-ground-at-Ellis-Island gratitude. You're also a child of the Depression. You never thought you'd have a job, with an office, and a desk, and private drawers all for yourself. It's still so hilarious to you that you can't stop laugh-ing. You're a Yiddisher mouse in these great Christian houses. At the same time, you're too snooty to look at anyone.'
3. On the sexual proclivity, perceived magnetism, and irrepressibility of poets, who are perhaps prepared to go too far:
‘Humboldt rushed downtown by cab to visit a certain Ginnie in the Village, a Bennington girl to whom Demmie Vonghel and I had introduced him. He pounded on her door and said, 'It's Von Humboldt Flesher. I have to see you.' Stepping into the vestibule, he propositioned her immediately. Ginnie said, 'He chased me around the apartment, and it was a scream. But I was worried about the puppies underfoot.' Her dachshund had just had a litter. Ginnie locked herself in the bathroom. Humboldt shouted, 'You don't know what you're missing. I'm a poet. I have a big cock. And Ginnie told Demmie, I was laughing so hard I couldn't have done it anyway.’
4. On the need for ephemerality and philosophy:
‘Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything. Every perception causes a certain amount of death in us, and this darkening is a necessity.’
5. On power, and boredom:
‘power, is the power to impose boredom’
Citrine and Bellow have a lot to say on the topic of boredom, which is interrogated at length throughout this novel.
6. On the power of the mundane to frustrate – something we can all relate to:
‘Against the wall was a sofa bed covered in green chenille. As soon as I saw this object I knew it would defeat me. I was sure I would never be able to get it open.’
7. There are also some notable lines about what comes after life. Bellow himself was somewhat agnostic in his attitudes, but professed a belief, recorded by Martin Amis in Inside Story, that there would be something after death, and in the undiscovered country, he would be reunited with his family. This attitude is captured by Citrine in the novel:
‘Suppose, then, that after the greatest, most passionate vividness and tender glory, oblivion is all we have to expect, the big blank of death. What options present themselves? One option is to train yourself gradually into oblivion so that no great change has taken place when you have died. Another option is to increase the bitter pas of life so that death is a desirable release. (In this the rest of mankind will fully collaborate.) There is a further option seldom chosen. That option is to let the deepest elements in you disclose their deepest information. If there is nothing but nonbeing and oblivion waiting for us, the prevailing beliefs have not misled us, and that's that. This would astonish me, for the prevailing beliefs seldom satisfy my need for truth. Still the possibility must be allowed. Suppose, however, that oblivion is not the case? What, then, have I been doing for about six decades? I think that I never believed that oblivion was the case and by five and a half decades of distortion and absurdity I have challenged and disputed the alleged rationality and finality of the oblivion view.’
8. On the need for precision:
‘Words should have a definite meaning, and a man should believe what he said. This was Hamlet's complaint to Polonius when he said, 'Words, words, words.' The words are not my words, the thoughts not my thoughts. It's wonderful to have thoughts. They can be about the starry heavens and the moral law, the majesty of the one, the grandeur of the other.’
Having gone this far into these expositions, it must be noted that one cannot read this novel without raising an eyebrow – or perhaps two – as to how much of Bellow’s personal life made it into this novel. Bellow, a famous author, serial womaniser, intellectual and at times straight talker, comes across as Citrine in spades. A pressing interest for most readers remains the thirst to know what parts are based on Bellow himself: there’s so much of his own character that bleeds into the page. And that isn’t even to mention the grittiness of Chicago either, which also finds itself enmeshed into the novel and is currently in vouge with shows like The Bear in the popular imagination.
As the plot progresses it becomes evident that Humboldt loses touch with reality. To what extent is hard to determine; whether he is a tortured genius or an insane alcoholic, or perhaps both, is debatable. His relationship with Citrine becomes strained; they both spurn one another over an incident where they each give each other a blank cheque, which Humboldt actually cashes. Humboldt is institutionalised, after his chair at Princeton is defunded, and he attempts to run over his wife in a car.
Meanwhile, Citrine finally becomes successful after he sells a movie of his own in which a caricature of Humboldt features. He evidently enjoys his fame:
It was my turn to be famous and to make money, to get heavy mail, to be recognised by influential people, to be dined at Sardi's and propositioned in padded booths by women who sprayed themselves with musk, to buy Sea lsand cotton underpants and leather luggage, to live through the intolerable excitement of vindication.
Christopher Hitchens fondly evokes this line regarding being ‘propositioned in padded booths’ after finally striking it big in his memoir Hitch 22.
Citrine is also infatuated with a younger woman, Renata, who wants to marry desperately. Citrine is aware of this, but is battle-scarred by his first marriage, which is still bankrupting him, and wary. Renata is a plainly unsuitable partner, who appears more interested in spending his money in any way possible rather than caring for him. She also has a child, which she thrusts upon him in the latter portion of the book. Critics have derided Bellow’s portrayals of the women in this book, and it must be conceded there is a taint of the misogynistic in Renata, beautiful and the object of Citrine’s lust, but whose driving compulsion appears to be liberating Citrine from the contents of his wallet. That said, Citrine is not the most reliable of narrators in any event, so perhaps we should not place too much stock in his impressions of the women in his life.
The Gift in Humboldt’s Gift does not actually make its appearance until page 348 of this approximately 500 page book, which is, in a way, a stroke of genius. The readability of Citrine’s thoughts propels a reader to this point without much trouble, even though they may be tempted to glance at the cover and wonder ‘when are we getting to the gift?’ its emergence is unnecessary any sooner.
The ‘gift’ (whether this is the sole gift Humboldt imparts is debatable), or more accurately ‘Humboldt’s Legacy’ turns out to be in his will, which bestows a poor quality treatment for a movie script upon Citrine, in which Humboldt evidently has misplaced confidence, being convinced it is a work of genius.
In reality it is a cringeworthy treatment: a man has an intense affair in a serendipitous setting, believes he can turn it in to a movie, and in an attempt to disguise the adulterous component from his wife goes around reliving the experience with her, except on the second time around it is not enchanting. It casts Citrine himself as the adulterer, partly in response to Citrine’s movie which featured a fictionalised Humboldt as a protagonist. Renata derides this treatment; Citrine is ambivalent, and the reader is left to work out for themselves whether this would in fact this would make a good movie. The reader is forced to agree with Renata, as it does not appear that it would.
After making excuses to Renata as to why he cannot accompany her on a trip to Madrid, Citrine ultimately follows her there, but is too late. Renata, having no faith that Citrine will commit to her ends up marrying Citrine’s love rival, Flonzley, the undertaker that Citrine has derided throughout the book. This rejection hurts Citrine on several levels. He is notably sexually jealous. Citrine has spent a significant portion of the novel reflecting on how aroused Renata makes him, how the sound of her legs rubbing together, even her smell, is a turn on – and vividly describes an episode in which Renata ‘stimulates’ him using her feet under a table. The wound is compounded when Renata’s mother turns up in Madrid and dumps Renata’s son off on Citrine in an unspoken au pair arrangement as some sort of punishment that would be almost unthinkable in this day and age.
To everyone’s surprise, Humboldt’s widow manages to sell the movie treatment, with the promise of more lucrative prospects from Humboldt’s unsold archive to come. Partially restored to his erstwhile success, Citrine finally cuts Cantabile off when he demands a portion of the proceeds for the sale of the film, and returns to Chicago: to bury Humboldt properly alongside his mother; and to split the proceeds of the sale with Humbodt’s Uncle Waldemar.
The absolute genius of this book is the way that Charlie Citrine’s arc mirrors that of Humboldt, although Citrine’s undergoes a last-minute redemption. Both Humboldt and Citrine have made it big at one point, but the careers of both have spiralled since their zenith. In Humboldt’s case, he dies in penury, and is considered something of a crank. Most notably, he is shunned by Citrine on the last occasion he sees Humboldt in New York. This spurning haunts Citrine throughout the novel, but the reburial of Humboldt in the final act, orchestrated by Citrine means he redeems himself from having spurned Humboldt so disturbingly on the last occasion he saw him.
Indeed, it is the renewed sense of purpose that Citrine seems to get from virtually hitting rock bottom, to making a comeback with Humboldt’s movie treatment that provides the release to the tension in this novel. He is able to finally let go of Renata, tell Cantabile to leave him alone, and even perform some reconciliatory steps with his ex-wife.
Humboldt’s Gift is a wonderful, dense, intellectual novel, with so many layers to unravel it is probably impossible to do on the first reading. In this way its own ambition slightly eclipses what it can achieve. But it’s so readable, it is difficult to mind when you miss an allusion or two. If you haven’t read it, you probably should. And, much like reading Nabokov, it is hard to even comprehend where you would look to improve this work, if you could. Perhaps you can’t. Perhaps you shouldn’t.