Ravelstein

By: Saul Bellow

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.

Ravelstein suggests in turn that Chick write a memoir or a life of him, and during the course of a celebratory trip to Paris the two share thoughts on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends, old and new, and vaudeville routines from the remote past. The mood turns more somber once they have returned to the Midwest and Ravelstein succumbs to AIDS and Chick himself nearly dies.

Deeply insightful and always moving, Saul Bellow’s new novel is a journey through love and memory. It is brave, dark, and bleakly funny: an elegy to friendship and to lives well (or badly) lived.

©2015 Saul Bellow (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

If Voltaire did a bio of Plato

Not for the self-righteous or indignant reader - better than Wilde’s Dorian Gray for those who love Allan Bloom - a treasure for the ages. Blooms trembling hand spills champagne on the pages of philosophy and the reader. Full of love from Bellow to Bloom and back again 🎩🍾

Vivid capture of talented intellectual’s world & effect of his foibles on his relationships

Complicated tale of genius level professors interactions, idiosyncrasies, yearnings, world views, & lifestyles told with humor, honesty, unfavorable obsessions, shortcomings, awkward love relationships, empathy, fondness, & admiration.

Grew on me after finishing

This is a roman à clef of an apparently authorized biography of the philosopher Allen Bloom (author of The Closing of the American Mind) where the names have been changed to protect the author or publisher.

While I was reading this book, even at the end, I did not feel this was the best of Bellow - there was really no storyline. Yet, as time went by, the novel, particularly the two friends, Bloom and Bellow, suck with me. The humorous juxtaposition of the brilliant Bellow with the astoundingly brilliant Bloom, along with the American Jewish mystic does make this a Bellow classic.

The narrator was up to these challenging prose.

A wonderful portrait of a human being

Not much else to say, a beautifully written, simple story.

Through Ravelstein we learn about life, legacy, death, sickness, pleasure, and money, without ever noticing.

A great book

A wonderful book that I found to be exciting and interesting to get through. I found this book to be developmental and maturative for a young man coming of age such as myself. I very much enjoyed this book and further highly recommend it.