Book Review

The Adventures of Augie March

by Saul Bellow

   Saul Bellow set out to write the quintessential American novel. The Adventures of Augie March touches on a lot of the themes that qualify it to be so. It involves immigrants, youth, class mobility, capitalism, and American identity. It is a sprawling book that probably covers too much ground for most readers though, especially considering the short attention spans and anti-intellectual nature of American society in our day.

     The Adventures of Augie March can be approached from several different angles but to get a handle on it, it is best to consider the main character himself. Augie comes from a Jewish family living in Chicago during the Great Depression. Too much can not be made of these details since the events of the story could be about people of any ethnic background, happening in any American city, and probably at any time in the early to mid-20th century. The narrative follows young Augie from his boyhood into his early adult life. He is a handsome and charming boy, prone to the minor troublemaking that teenagers are drawn to by nature. Those around him believe he is destined to do something great with his life but Augie himself can not figure out what that is and everything he sets out to do turns into a mess, usually for reasons beyond his control. His good looks and good nature make him attractive to beautiful women. Augie narrates the book, telling the stories of all the people in his life. This is a picaresque novel and has no central plot; the journey of his young life simply flows from episode to episode.

     This thick book can probably be broken into three parts. The first, and longest part, would be the beginning of Augie’s life up until the time he moves to Mexico. The bulk of the descriptive writing is about family members, friends, and the odd jobs he takes on to survive. His grandmother is mean. His older brother is ambitious, sometimes violent, and on the path to becoming a big shot businessman. Augie makes a living by taking care of Einhorn, a disabled and wheelchair bound businessman with a crooked streak and a taste for minor scams. After dropping out of college, he survives by selling stolen textbooks, most of which he reads first. At one point Augie realizes he has to discover who he is.

     Augie March himself is mostly a fly on the wall type narrator through most of this first section. To say the writing is descriptive would be an understatement. When successful, Bellow creates characters who are unforgettable. As a reader you feel as if you can physically see them, feel them, and relate to them as if they are real people in your life. The novel’s biggest problems lie in this descriptiveness too; it is not always necessary to know about every nose hair and toenail of each character. Too much description hinders the flow of the writing at times and the details become a burden to the narrative. Even worse, there are passages where Augie sinks into subjective and abstract descriptions of these people so that the actual characters themselves disappear into a fog of his inner perceptions. These paragraphs do not enhance the writing in any way and even an experienced reader can get lost in what reads like a haze of white noise and dense smoke.

The narrative takes a turn when Augie’s friend Mimi needs to have an abortion. For the first time, Augie tries to take control of the situation by getting her to a doctor for the operation and then getting her into a hospital afterwards when she starts having massive hemorrhaging. The pace of the language quickens from here on. Augie’s attempt at taking control leads to problems though since his fiancee, Lucy, and her family find out about his friend’s abortion and Lucy breaks off their engagement. This scene leads to a bigger shift in Augie’s life when he meets up with Thea and leaves Chicago.

     So begins the second major section of The Adventures of Augie March. Thea is a beautiful heiress going through a divorce. She takes Augie to Mexico with a recently purchased eagle. Her big plan is to have Augie assist her in training the eagle to hunt giant lizards so she can sell a story about their venture to National Geographic. But the eagle turns out to be scared of the lizards and Augie feels uneasy about Thea’s strange interest in hunting. After Augie’s horse throws him and kicks him in the head, she ditches the eagle and takes to catching pit vipers in the mountains instead. While on her expeditions, he makes loads of money playing poker in town. Augie finally has a taste of freedom but his life is not where he wants it to be.

     During this period he meets an irresistibly attractive woman who is in danger and asks Augie to help her escape to Cuernavaca so she can get back to the USA. As they drive up into the mountains, the car gets stuck and they end up sleeping together. Of course, when Thea finds out she leaves him, even though her snake hunting was actually a cover for an affair she was having with a Mexican man. Their relationship was failing anyways; they had nothing in common and Augie felt used by Thea who he, and everyone else, thought was too eccentric to truly be loved. The affair with Stella is a major turning point in another way; Stella connects with Augie because she tells him he always has to be a player in somebody else’s game. This is a big revelation to him and thereafter he sets out to escape from the fate of his character and this epiphany sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Stella feels the same way about herself too.

     Augie March’s sojourn in Mexico is where the novel peaks. His return to Chicago marks the beginning of the final phase of his stories. Augie finds his brother has become a millionaire but his life takes a dark turn as he has an affair with a young woman who is after his money. World War II begins and Augie sets off to train for the Merchant Marines in New York City. There he marries Stella before setting off on a ship gong into battle. After his military service, Augie and Stella move to Paris where they continue to be what they always were: characters in someone else’s play. This is literally true for Stella because she becomes an admittedly talentless but beautiful actress in the French film industry. Neither of them escape the fate of their character.

     The novel ends abruptly without resolving any of the many conflicting threads that keep popping up all the way to the end. This works well though because it leaves the reader feeling like Augie’s life will continue on as it has all along.

     In The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow has written a good quality novel. It is a solid narrative with unforgettable characters but in terms of descriptive writing, he overplayed his hand. It has a cinematic quality; a young Dustin Hoffman would have done well as Augie in a movie version of this book. It might even be possible that his classic film The Graduate is a moderately distant echo of Saul Bellow’s writing. 

Bellow, Saul. The Adventures of Augie March. Penguin Books, New York: 1981.