Aharoni, Ada. "The Search for Freedom
in Dangling Man." Saul Bellow
Journal 3.1 (1983):
47–52.
Aharoni sees the novel as a discussion
of the twin questions "How much freedom do we really have?" and
"What should we do with it?" Discusses the deteriorating effects
of freedom on Joseph and his ultimate ability to understand not
only his own freedom but that of others.
Anderson, David D. "The Room, the City and
the War: Saul Bellow's Dangling
Man." Midwestern
Miscellany 11 (1983): 49–58.
Anderson discusses the room, the city,
and the war as the three dimensions of Joseph's experience that
provide both the background and metaphor for what is at once
freedom from an identity and enslavement by the search for
it.
Anderson, David D. "Saul Bellow: Sojourner in
New York." Saul Bellow Journal
7.1 (1988): 35–43.
Argues that DM is a city novel, but not a novel of
a city; a novel set in Chicago but not of Chicago; a war novel,
but not a novel about war. It is a novel about apparent choices
when in reality there are none; as well as a novel about a young
man who seeks isolation then absorption into uniform of the
times, knowing he will ultimately accept the fact of his
victimization because a separate peace is impossible. Concludes
that Bellow ends not with philosophical inquiry, but with the
kind of traditional American optimism of an early Whitman or
Sherwood Anderson.
Baim, Joseph. "Escape from Intellection: Saul
Bellow's Dangling Man." N University Review [Kansas City] 37
(Autumn 1970): 28–34.
Sees Bellow as neither an intellectual
nor a Jewish humanistic writer, but a mystical one who constantly
encourages his heroes to escape history and "break the spirit's
sleep" by refusing to see the Self as merely the product of its
own historical past. In DM the
hero finally rejects intellect and static definitions of the past
as sole definitions of self. Joseph see-saws between reason and
nihilism and finally experiences illumination through an
intuitive experience that only comes when intellectual responses
become impossible.
Brans, Jo. "The Dialectic of Hero and
Anti-Hero in Rameau's Nephew and Dangling Man." Studies in the Novel 16.4 (1984):
435–47.
Discusses how in the earlier European
tradition hero and anti-hero reflected two diametrically opposed
stances toward reality while engaging in some dialectics and
exchange of attitudes. Relates the modern hero to this tradition
and argues that these semi-polar attitudes are often found within
the same character in modern fiction. Goes on to compare both of
these trends in DM through an
illustration of the similarities between DM and Diderot's Rameau's Nephew.
David, Gerd. "Leiden im Exil: Saul Bellow's
Dangling Man." Literatur in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 9 (1976): 231–43.
Davis, James E. "Bellow's Dangling Man: Archetype of
Adolescence." Virginia English
Bulletin 36.2 (1986): 67–71.
Considers Joseph of DM as an all-American adolescent
dangling between action and inaction, acceptance of tradition and
denial of tradition, participation and isolation, love and hate,
and his old self and his emerging self. Bellow chooses the
journal form for his narrative and includes experimental dialogue
in order to dramatize the inner struggles of his protagonist.
Unfortunately, Bellow is so possessed by ideas that they take
over the novel. But he does succeed in universalizing the
character.
Donoghue, Denis. "Commitment andThe Dangling Man." Studies.' an Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy
and Science 53 (1964): 174–87. Expanded version rpt.
in The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in
Modern Literature. Ed. Denis Donoghue. New York:
Macmillan, 1968. 194–220.
Donoghue argues that the Dangling Man is not an outsider or
stranger, but a man in an interim situation in which action is
merely motion drained of meaning. Such a man is a worthier image
of our condition than the outsider because he is an exceptional
man able to throw light upon our interim condition precisely
because he develops a spirit of opposition in face of false
simplifications, thus realizing his total responsibility in a
palpable world. The quest is the search for the strength to
overcome the fear of choice, and avoid public institutions whose
claims are hostile to the imagination and to individual
autonomy.
Aharoni, Ada. "The Search for Freedom
in Dangling Man." Saul Bellow
Journal 3.1 (1983):
47–52.
Aharoni sees the novel as a discussion
of the twin questions "How much freedom do we really have?" and
"What should we do with it?" Discusses the deteriorating effects
of freedom on Joseph and his ultimate ability to understand not
only his own freedom but that of others.
Anderson, David D. "The Room, the City and
the War: Saul Bellow's Dangling
Man." Midwestern
Miscellany 11 (1983): 49–58.
Anderson discusses the room, the city,
and the war as the three dimensions of Joseph's experience that
provide both the background and metaphor for what is at once
freedom from an identity and enslavement by the search for
it.
Anderson, David D. "Saul Bellow: Sojourner in
New York." Saul Bellow Journal
7.1 (1988): 35–43.
Argues that DM is a city novel, but not a novel of
a city; a novel set in Chicago but not of Chicago; a war novel,
but not a novel about war. It is a novel about apparent choices
when in reality there are none; as well as a novel about a young
man who seeks isolation then absorption into uniform of the
times, knowing he will ultimately accept the fact of his
victimization because a separate peace is impossible. Concludes
that Bellow ends not with philosophical inquiry, but with the
kind of traditional American optimism of an early Whitman or
Sherwood Anderson.
Baim, Joseph. "Escape from Intellection: Saul
Bellow's Dangling Man." N University Review [Kansas City] 37
(Autumn 1970): 28–34.
Sees Bellow as neither an intellectual
nor a Jewish humanistic writer, but a mystical one who constantly
encourages his heroes to escape history and "break the spirit's
sleep" by refusing to see the Self as merely the product of its
own historical past. In DM the
hero finally rejects intellect and static definitions of the past
as sole definitions of self. Joseph see-saws between reason and
nihilism and finally experiences illumination through an
intuitive experience that only comes when intellectual responses
become impossible.
Brans, Jo. "The Dialectic of Hero and
Anti-Hero in Rameau's Nephew and Dangling Man." Studies in the Novel 16.4 (1984):
435–47.
Discusses how in the earlier European
tradition hero and anti-hero reflected two diametrically opposed
stances toward reality while engaging in some dialectics and
exchange of attitudes. Relates the modern hero to this tradition
and argues that these semi-polar attitudes are often found within
the same character in modern fiction. Goes on to compare both of
these trends in DM through an
illustration of the similarities between DM and Diderot's Rameau's Nephew.
David, Gerd. "Leiden im Exil: Saul Bellow's
Dangling Man." Literatur in Wissenschaft und
Unterricht 9 (1976): 231–43.
Davis, James E. "Bellow's Dangling Man: Archetype of
Adolescence." Virginia English
Bulletin 36.2 (1986): 67–71.
Considers Joseph of DM as an all-American adolescent
dangling between action and inaction, acceptance of tradition and
denial of tradition, participation and isolation, love and hate,
and his old self and his emerging self. Bellow chooses the
journal form for his narrative and includes experimental dialogue
in order to dramatize the inner struggles of his protagonist.
Unfortunately, Bellow is so possessed by ideas that they take
over the novel. But he does succeed in universalizing the
character.
Donoghue, Denis. "Commitment andThe Dangling Man." Studies.' an Irish Quarterly Review of Letters, Philosophy
and Science 53 (1964): 174–87. Expanded version rpt.
in The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in
Modern Literature. Ed. Denis Donoghue. New York:
Macmillan, 1968. 194–220.
Donoghue argues that the Dangling Man is not an outsider or
stranger, but a man in an interim situation in which action is
merely motion drained of meaning. Such a man is a worthier image
of our condition than the outsider because he is an exceptional
man able to throw light upon our interim condition precisely
because he develops a spirit of opposition in face of false
simplifications, thus realizing his total responsibility in a
palpable world. The quest is the search for the strength to
overcome the fear of choice, and avoid public institutions whose
claims are hostile to the imagination and to individual
autonomy.
Ellis, R. J. "'High Standards for White
Conduct': Race, Racism, and Class in Dangling Man." Saul Bellow Journal 16.1 (1999):
3–30. Rpt. Saul Bellow
Journal 16.2/17.1–2 (2001): 26–50.
Begins with Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the
Literary Imagination and suggests
that most Bellow critics have not seen any need to establish this
racial coordinate as they examined his works. Proceeds to examine
the Africanist presence and personae in DM. Despite the
presence of only two mentioned "negroes," taken together they
indicate a text in which not a single African American labeled as
such utters a word. Furthermore, a hierarchy is set up in which
white males are always positioned higher than African Americans,
thus serving as a basis for a representation of a social
formation within which the definition of an American as "new,
white and male" (Morrison, 43), was constituted. Reads DM through
the national regimentation and centering of values that occurred
after WWII, and through Toni Morrison's theoretical
paradigms in Playing in the Dark:
Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Focuses on the
ways in which the narrator, Joseph, disconcertingly fails to
define ethnic and racial issues and thus inevitably cannot
explore how issues of race and ethnicity might relate to his
constant concerns over class identity. Thus, DM becomes a complex exploration of
these relationships inside of an evasive critical white reading,
one replicating Joseph's own evasiveness in a disturbing
homology. Discusses Joseph's encounter with blackness, the social
and sexual parameters which emmesh him, and the dyadic structures
of desire which drive his imagination. Joseph's story makes clear
strategic use of black characters to define and enhance the white
characters. Provides a social history of segregated housing race
riots and bombing campaigns in Chicagoan history. Points up the
restrictive housing covenants which segregate white and black
Chicagoans and Joseph's falls in fortune which place him closer
to his black ghetto neighbors. Invokes the parallels provided by
Invisible Man since both IM and DM finally hinge on issues of
self-knowledge. Joseph's ethnicity-free self-designation is what
is at issue and makes him even more unreliable as a narrator.
Evasiveness and slippage concerning racial and class identity
causes his contempt for blackness and his stereotyping to
increase. Expresses disappointment at Bellow's subdued treatment
of Joseph and prepares the reader for the much more disturbing
construction of race to be found in HRK. Joseph's final vulnerability
causes him to deny that he is a negro.
Glenday, Michael K. " 'The Consummating
Glimpse': Dangling Man's
Treacherous Reality." Modern Fiction
Studies 25.1 (1979): 139–48.
Bellow's novels deny the post-modernist
strain of aversion to representational modes of narrative and
self-reflexibility. Yet Bellow does explore new mental versions
of reality as he attempts to relocate modern man. While not a
realist in the Dreiserian sense, he is as subversive as any
post-modern writer. He is an explorer in the field of human
reality. In DM Bellow shows
Joseph recoiling from the idea of an objective reality subscribed
to by collective assent.
Ikeda, Choko. "Hard-Boiledness in Saul
Bellow's Dangling Man." Kyushu American Literature 26 (Oct.
1985): 29–36.
Discusses Joseph's repudiation of
hard-boiledness and elaborates on its many levels of meanings as
well as how this code has developed. Describes Joseph's search
for an alternative set of values with which to confront his
modern age.
Kaler, Anne K. "Use of the Journal/Diary Form
in the Development of the Odyssean Myth in Dangling Man." Saul Bellow Journal 5.1 (1986):
16–23.
Argues that modern man has no exterior
voice such as a gleeman or scop. The modern anti-hero has only
his own voice, which is not intended for public oral presentation
but for private reading. This ancient and yet modern voice has
been achieved through the journal voice in DM and functions to underscore his sung
epic as he develops a modern version of the Odyssean myth in the
novel.
Kulshrestha, Chirantan. "Affirmation in Saul
Bellow's Dangling Man." Indian Journal of American Studies 5
(1975): 21–36.
Argues that DM has been undervalued. Discusses in
depth the artistic implications of the journal form. The
seemingly fragmented diary-form is the product of an artistry
conscious of its aims, according to Kulshrestha, who goes on to
point up the aesthetic and point-of-view ironies possible through
such sophisticated and deliberate use of the form. Provides some
alternate conclusions on the nature of Joseph's quest and
discovery.
Lehan, Richard. "Existentialism in Recent
American Fiction: The Demonic Quest." Texas Studies in Literature and
Language 1.2 (1959): 181–202. Rpt. in Recent American Fiction: Some Critical
Views. Ed. Joseph J. Waldmeir. Boston: Houghton, 1963.
63–83.
Outlines the affinity of spirit that
exists between the French existentialists and the contemporary
American novelist whose hero is engaged in the same existential
quest for identity. Compares DM
with Sartre's Nausea and Camus's
The Stranger. Joseph is compared
to Roquentin and Meursault. Develops an elaborate and scholarly
discussion on the existentialist issues of freedom and death both
central to DM.
Lyons, Bonnie. "From Dangling Man to 'Colonies of the
Spirit'." Studies in American Jewish
Literature 4.2 (1978): 45–50. Joint issue with Yiddish 3.3 (1978).
Provides a re-evaluation of DM, recapitulating
many earlier observations concerning sources and influences on
the novel. Argues that DM
is not simply an updating of Dostoevsky, nor
merely an illumination of the American 1940s moral dilemma. It is
an elaborate working out of the many stages, kinds, and degrees
of alienation. All minor characters represent unacceptable
alternatives to alienation. All of the positive themes of the
later novels are prefigured in this novel. Although this is
Bellow's first novel, it nevertheless exhibits his "inherited
intellectual and emotional starting point" and his "dialectical
roots." Such beginnings include: the divided self, existential
freedom, Dostoevskian alienation, accommodation, contemporary
conditions, childhood remembrances of poverty, and assertions of
the basic goodness of life.
Marcus, Stevan. "Reading the Illegible:
Modern Representations of Urban Experience." The Southern Review 22.3 (1986 Summer):
443–464
Examines Bellow's responses to the
classical conception of the city. Traces characterizations of the
urban milieu from DM to DD. Sums up Bellow's evolving sense of
the city as uncertain, querulous, censoriousness, befuddled in
its superiority, and hopelessly vandalized. Concludes that his
reading of the city has become very dim indeed.
Mellard, James. "Dangling Man: Saul Bellow's Lyrical
Experiment." Ball State University
Forum 15.2 (1974): 67–74.
Asserts that previous criticism fails
to confront the serious formal experimentation that takes place
in DM. Claims it is best
understood through the concept of "lyrical fiction." Such a point
of view resolves the problem of the author/narrator relationship
because the lyrical point of the journal mode becomes at once
author, hero and audience. External actions, characters and
settings are simply absorbed into the lyrical pattern. The
rhythms of the plot are governed by the logic of lyric
association, even when the associations become disjunctive.
Messenger, Christian K. "Heroes and
Witnesses: A Brief Literary History." Sport and the Spirit of Play in Contemporary
American Fiction. New York: Columbia UP, 1990.
212–17.
In a brief discussion of Whitman's and
Emerson's democratic hero, discusses nineteenth-century vitalist
texts, early sport rituals, and the other shift in American
fiction to the "spectator-observer" protagonist. Claims that the
central text which validates the witness as hero in relation to
sports culture is Bellow's DM,
which immediately engages concepts of modern American heroism.
Suggests that Bellow's manifesto contains the seeds of a new way
to approach athletic heroism through the eyes of the witness who
does not compete or play, but who freely expresses vulnerability.
Argues that Bellow is attacking both Hemingway's code hero and
his stoic acceptance of pain and danger, thus correctly
identifying the inarticulate, physically dominant reality of the
athlete, even though Bellow's major interest is in the frustrated
witness as a kind of closet-performance artist, shaping small
rituals that he ruefully understands as his own repetitive games
of defeat. Invokes a Derridean model by suggesting that the
witness has only his own language and must invoke the essence of
language play. Thus the witness moves to supplement the
theatricality of gesture with that of language, binding himself
to undertake the hero's quest.
Newman, Judie. "Bellow's Ransom Tale: The
Holocaust, The Victim, and The Double." Saul Bellow Journal 14:1 (1996):
3–18.
Argues that the Holocaust provides the
occasion and the major structural principle of the DM, particularly in relation to its use
of the "double" and the double plot. Suggests that Bellow's sense
of having gotten away with tuberculosis as a child has left him
with a residual survivor guilt which he then expresses through
Leventhals' guilt at having survived the Depression. Documents
Bellow's explanation that until the fall of France he had
completely misunderstood the war because of his orientation as a
Trotskyite Marxist who did not believe that a worker's state
would wage and imperialist war. Allbee expresses the repressed
side of Leventhal's own mind. Leventhal's repressed subconscious
is mysteriously prompted into existence at the precise moment of
the child Mickey's death. Describes the sea of faces in the crowd
mentioned in the novel's epigraph as clearly reminiscent of the
holocaust victims, a pattern enacted in many of his other novels,
and in such works as Morrison's Beloved, and Erdrich's Tracks where storytelling becomes a
survival mechanism. Provides a sophisticated psychosocial
explanation of the literary phenomenon of doubling via Otto Rank,
Sigmund Freud and drama theory.
Petillon, Pierre-Yves. "Un Homme en Suspens."
Critique [Paris] 427 (1982):
983–98.
Pinsker, Sanford. "Rameau's Nephew and Saul
Bellow's Dangling Man." Notes on Modern American Literature 4
(1980): Item 22.
Notes in considerable detail the
similarities between Joseph and Rameau's nephew. Illustrates how
Diderot's Rameau's Nephew may
have provided structural and philosophical models for the
development of DM.
Rao, R. IVl. V. R. "Chaos of the Self: An
Approach to Saul Bellow's Dangling
Man." Osmania Journal of English Studies [India] 8.2
(1971): 89–103.
Reichman, Ravit. "The Medical Model and the
Wartime Reading of Dangling Man;
Or, What Can Joseph Recover?" Saul
Bellow Journal 14.2 (1996): 28–42.
Looks at the metaphor of recovery in
DM, a wartime text, viewed in
light of the newspaper rhetoric of American recovery from the
condition of war that dominated the press in 1944. Suggests that
Bellow's notion of Joseph's recovery as a sick patient is a
response to the current condition of the country as put forth in
FDR's most famous presidential address of that year describing
wartime USA as a sick patient. Points out that in contrast to
newspaper headlines talking of almost nothing but action, DM features a series of anticlimaxes
and inactions, and very little plot or conflict because nothing
ever really happens. There is little sense of danger in Joseph's
somewhat unpatriotic, bell jar world where combat and war is
almost totally ignored. Yet despite this a wartime critic for
The New York Times sees it as a
story where danger lurks, conflict abounds, and Joseph is trapped
without freedom. Concludes that there is also a dim subtext in
which the text never happened at all. Concludes that this subtext
also describes Joseph as a patient, but one recovering from
wartime inaction rather than action.
Saposnik, Irving S. "Dangling Man: A Partisan Review." Centennial Review 26.4 (1982):
388–95.
While DM is in many ways noticeably European
in style, its ending is definitely that of the contemporary
American novel. The novel depicts the paradigm of Joseph's
generation's conflict between; 1930's ideology and 1940's
pragmatism as a metaphor for radical displacement. Saposnik
attempts to portray the intellectual world in which Bellow was an
active participant during the period dealt with in the
novel.
Schwartz, Delmore. "A Man in his Time." Rev.
of Dangling Man. Partisan Review 11.3 (1944):
348–50. Rpt. in Critical Essays on
Saul Bellow. Ed. Stanley Trachtenberg. Critical Essays on American Literature.
Boston: Hall, 1979. 3–4.
Commends Bellow for being the first to
seize and record the experience of the WW II generation who have
witnessed the depression and the New Deal. There is much that is
familiar and recognizable in the settings, relationships,
non-essential marriage and family life. Yet Joseph's uniqueness
lies in his refusal to yield to the organized lack of imagination
that has produced the life of the times. Criticizes the book for
using the journal form and missing many dramatic possibilities
that would relieve the linearity of the plot.
Wilson, Edmund. "Doubts and Dreams: Dangling Man Under a Glass Bell." New Yorker I Apr. 1944: 78, 81, 82.
Rpt. as "Saul Bellow's Dangling
Man and Anais Nin's Under a Glass
Bell." In The Uncollected Edmund
Wilson. Selected by Janet Groth and David Castronovo.
Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1995. 251–55.
Treats DM alongside Under a Glass Bell. Sees DM as an excellent account of the
non-combatant in wartime, and a remarkably honest piece of
testimony on the psychology of a whole generation. Compares the
novel to many others of its type that feature disillusioned
communists and dangling heroes. Depicts the refusal of the hero
to defend the status quo, his insistence on meeting the challenge
of fascism and his frustrated artistic and intellectual
impulses.
Wisse, Ruth R. "The American Dreamer." The Schemiel as Modern Hero. Ruth R.
Wisse. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1971. 70–91. [Paperback ed.
1980]
Considers DM to be the turning point in American
cultural history where Bellow throws down the gauntlet to
Hemingway. Argues that Bellow is the new spokesman for an altered
America that would be more like Cohn than Jake Barnes. Joseph
hangs suspended between induction and isolation while being
attended by his dybbuk. The
Spirit of Alternatives. Joseph is a departure from the European
Schlemiel because eof his
existentialist intensity.
Reviews
"At the End of the Rope." Times
Literary Supplement 11 Jan. 1947:
21.
Chamberlain, John. "Books of the Times." New York Times 25
Mar. 1944: 13.
De Vries, Peter. "Portrait in Depth of Youth
Suspended Between Worlds." Chicago Sun
Book Week 9 Apr. 1944: 3.
Fearing, Kenneth. "Man Versus Man." New York Times Book Review 26 Mar.
1944: 5, 15.
Hale, Lionel. "In Mid-Air." Observer 12 Jan. 1947: 3.
Heppenstall, Rayner. "New Novels." New Statesman and Nation 28 Dec. 1946:
488–89.
"Introspective
Stinker." Time 8 May 1944: 104.
Kirkus I Feb. 1944: 48.
Kristol, Irving. Politics June 1944: 156.
Mayberry, George. "Reading and Writing."
New Republic 3 Apr. 1944:
473.
Paige, D. D. "No Man Is an Island." Quarterly Review of Literature 1
(1944): 244–45.
Calls DM small in size and large in
conception. In this novel Bellow has taken on the plight of a
whole generation of dangling men. Details the plight of the
generations of artists who came of age in the 1930s and lost a
belief in art while they gained a belief in alienation. This was
Joseph's patrimony. He probes himself acutely for the paradox of
his generation. Describes Bellow's style as restrained and
scrupulous.
Rothman, Nathan. "Introducing an Important
New Writer." Saturday Review of
Literature 15 Apr. 1944: 27.
