num_pages: 487
description: The novel, for which Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's own creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course.
language: English
title: Humboldt's Gift
titlecomplete: Humboldt's Gift
characters: Pierre Thaxter, Charlie Citrine, Von Humboldt Fleisher, Demmie Vonghel, Denise Citrine, Rinaldo Cantabile, Renata Koffritz
genres: 20th Century, American, Nobel Prize, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Classics, The United States Of America, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 9293
places: New York City, New York, Chicago, Illinois
awards: awardedAt: 189331200000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 189331200000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 189331200000
name: Society of Midland Authors Award
category: Adult Fiction
publisher: Penguin Classics