Augie was too obsessed by the color and excitement of individual personality to have time to worry about mankind in the mass. And something exciting was always happening to him. How seriously Mr. Bellow intends his readers to take Augie March s muddled ideas about life and love it is impossible to tell. Probably they don t really matter very much, not with all the verbal fireworks that keep exploding in these verbose and yet vital pages. Individual episodes are superb.
Peculiar conversations are delightful.
And so loose and formless is Mr. Bellow s book that it would make no noticeable difference if 100,000 words were cut from it or if 100,000 words were added to it. Since Augie March refuses to take his own life seriously he ought to be a comic character, but since he thinks about life with painful seriousness he never is. There s lots more, but I have no more room.