Humbolt's Gift - Saul Bellow

Tom Wolfe made this story a culutral examination with two of his novels. Saul Bellow makes it a personal one. The story is of the man who searches for great heights but has to come great pain before he can understand the beauty of simplicity in life. Charles Citrine is a version of Bellow's Herzog, but he keeps his thoughts to himself instead of sending them to everyone. His self importance clouds his ratonality with others and leads him to clustered situations of confusion and plight. Bellow is masterful with detailing the bulk of his excesses. He's so good that this examination of Citrine is almost too detailed. The point of view is from Citrine so we are privvy to all of his excessive thinking. Bellow doesn't focus enough on the ticking clocks in Citrine that get him to have a change of mind. All of a sudden he just does. His reasons encompass events and thoughts across the whole novel, but the reader is never thinking this event would come to pass. It feels tacked on. Other novelists told stories like this outside of the first person point of view and focused on the fatefulness of the protaganist's journey to self discovery. It made us look at the events with more awareness. In Humbolt's Gift we are beholden to his thoughts and whims to self entertainment for the character. Bellow is masterful with his writing, but too distanced from making the final revelations truly work.