Benjamin-Labarthe, Elyette. "Le regarde
bellovien dans The Actual, A
Novella." Profils Americains (France) 9 (1997): 169–86.
Analyzes the irony which characterizes
the point of view in Saul Bellow's TA. Describes how through a mock
allegory, on the way to a cemetery, a lonely man reaches towards
the concretization of a Platonic attachment to a woman he once
lost and found again, the unforgettable icon of first love.
Describes its romantic mode, its parody of courteous love, and
the bittersweet fable which barely hides its complex and
paradoxical undertones. An intellectual bias, astutely hidden
under the quotidian, concentrated in the dual phrase "actual
affinity," introduces a baroque renewal of the semantics of love,
when passionate love, seen through the "geometry" of Spinoza
combined with The Elective Affinities of Goethe acquires what we
define as a Bellovian touch. In an atmosphere where the ethereal
world of the fin amor collides
with contemporary prosaism, romanticism, revisited today,
descends into the streets of Chicago.
Shechner, Mark. "The
Actual." Small Planets: Saul
Bellow and the Art of Short Fiction. Eds. Gerhard Bach and
Gloria L. Cronin. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2000.
349–54.
Argues that Bellow's short fiction is
like scale models assembled with micro-tools and lacquered to a
high gloss. TA is about high rise
fashion and folly among business-class Jews up-teen stories high
on Michigan Avenue, where everyone has a racket or angle. The
romantic-erotic folderol that had earlier Bellow heroes on their
knees is handled here with wily, tongue-in-cheek metaphysics.
TA is a delightful miniature
which deals with the theme of childhood passion reawakened by
memory in later life. While this book does not change the face of
literature, it does soften the profile of the author. Bellow is a
writer of the erotic, a man for whom love and sex are more than
passions–they are a personal metaphysics.
Tintner, Adeline R. "'The Beast in the
Jungle' and Saul Bellow's The
Actual." Henry James's Legacy:
The Afterlife of His Figure and Fiction. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State UP, 1998. 431–32.
Sees TA
as a contemporary version of Henry James' "The Beast in the
Jungle" with regard to characters and fantasies of old age on the
part of the authors. Both heroes are out of touch with reality,
and men withholding love from women. Other similarities lie in
their country house settings, cemetery settings, art collecting,
and the likenesses between James himself and Harry. However,
Bellow reverses Marchov's realization of the failure of his life
by allowing Harry the revelation that allows him to make up for
his former mistakes, thus making a happy fable out of James'
tragic adventure into dark places within personal
relationships.
Amis, Martin. "Hitting His Stride." Los Angeles Times Book Review 8 June
1997, home ed.: 3. Rpt. as "Don't Call Him Mellow Bellow."
Observer Review (London) 17 Aug. 1997: 14.
Battersby, Eileen. "Life in all its Actuality."Irish Times 30 Aug. 1997, city ed.:
76.
Beauchesne, Mitt. "The Actual."
National Review 28 Jul. 1997:
62.
Begley, Louis. "Old Flames and Trillionaires." New York Times Book Review 25 May 1997:
14.
Blank, Barbara Trainin. "The Actual: A Novella." Hadassah Magazine Feb. 1999: 46.
Details the plot of TA and commends the book for its irony,
laconic style, turbulent emotions, mastery of the novella form,
and its interesting characters. The novel only falls short in its
didacticism, enigmatic and over-intellectualized treatment of
Harry, and its cop-out ending.
Caldwell, Gail. "The Real Thing; A Novella of
First and Last Love, by Saul Bellow." Boston Globe 4 May 1997, city ed.:
D17.
Canning, Richard. "The Observer." New Statesman 29 Aug. 1997: 48.
Christophersen, Bill. "Love and Death in Chicago." New Leader 14–28 Jul. 1997:
18–19.
Hamilton, Ian. "The Happy End of the Affair; Ian Hamilton on a
Skillful Novella about the Tenacity of Romantic Love."
Sunday Telegraph (London) 24 Aug 1997, sec Books: 6.
Harrison, Carey. "Saul Bellow's Jazzy Love Song." San Fransisco Chronicle Book Review
18 May 1997: 3.
Hencher, Philip. "Riches in a Little Room." Spectator 9 Aug.
1997: 28–29.
Kakutani, Michiko. "Eluding Entanglements, and So Eluded by
Love." New York Times
25 Apr. 1997, late ed.: C28.
Kazin, Alfred. "Struggles of a Prophet." New York Review of Books 26 Jun. 1997: 17–18.
LaHood, Marvin J. "The
Actual." World Literature Today 72.1 (1998): 132.
Calls TA pure Bellow, no risk at all with its
brilliant first-person narrative about two almost-lovers over a
forty year time period. Trellman is Bellow's respository of
highter human capacities such as the tenacity of love, romance,
and the capacity to recover from mistakes with hearts and minds
properly utilized.
Lovett-Graff, Bennett. "The Actual: A
Novella." Jewish Book
World 15.2 (1997): 8–9.
Miller, Karl. "Jay Wustrin's Remains." Times Literary Supplement 22 Aug. 1997:
23.
Reviews the plot of this "oblique"
novella, seeing Bellow and his protagonist Trellman as not quite
the same person, but not "standing at a distance from each other"
either. Discusses the idea that Bellow's novels and stories "are
dominated by the author and his avatars." Points out that, at
times, it is easy to forget which book his characters come from,
since many of the books they belong to often seem to be books in
which the writer is "talking about himself and his enemies, and
about first and further loves."
Minzesheimer, Bob. "The Actual: Bellow's Leisurely and
Literate Return." U.S.A Today 22
May 1997: D9.
Outram, Richard. "Bellowing in the Face of
Death: Sudsy Plot in the Hands of the Master." Ottawa Citizen 20 July 1997, final ed.:
M10.
Pritchard, William H. "Actual Fiction." Hudson Review. 50 (Winter 1998):
656–64.
Complains about instances where the
novel is hindered by an inelegantly declarative style that seems
to be there by design. Yet praises Bellow for his delicacy of
observation, unique phrases, and unique caginess.
"Putting
Readers' Stamina to the Test." Economist (London)
15 Nov. 1997: R14–15.
Briefly comments on the characters in
TA, finding Trellman less
interested in pursuing his love interest than in the "antics of
various vulgarians." Sees Bellow as "our most fastidious
chronicler of crass behavior, and concludes that it "makes for a
disconcertingly debonair look at some deeply shallow
people."
Schechner, Mark. "Another Chance at Love." Jerusalem Report (Jerusalem) 26 June 1997: 46–47.
Schechner, Mark. "With No Loss of Character, the Softer Side of
Saul Bellow." Buffalo News
1 June 1997, final ed.: 6F.
Steinberg, Sybil S. "The Actual: A Novella." Publishers Weekly 24 Mar. 1997:
57.
Trachtenberg, Stanley. "Summing Up." World and I Aug. 1997:
274–79.
Ulin, David L. "Writers on the Storm." Los
Angeles Times 12 May 1997, home ed.: E1.
Walden, Daniel. "Mini-Reviews of New Books." Studies in American Jewish Literature
16.3 (1997): 156.
Weinstein, Ann. "The Love Song of Harry Trellman." Midstream Oct. 1997: 42–43.
Weiss, Hedy. "Mellow Bellow." Chicago
Sun-Times 4 May 1997, late sports final ed., sec SHO,
13.
