Mr. Sammler's Planet

Fülszöveg

A tall old man, blind in one eye, born in
Cracow but with Oxonian manners and the
face of a British Museum reader, strides
lightly and recklessly, rolled umbrella
pointing, through the pages of Saul Bel-
low's new novel.
Mr. Artur Sammler, who looks back on
the civilized pleasures of England in the
twenties and thirties, on an acquaintance
with Bloomsbury and H. G. Wells, but also
on the camps, the war, a death ditch in Po-
land, is above all a man who has lasted.
Moving now through the chaotic and dan-
gerous streets of New York's upper West
Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to every-
thing, appalled by nothing. He brings the
same curiosity and disinterestedness to the
activities of a black pickpocket observed in
an uptown bus as to the details of his niece
Angela's sex life, to his daughter's lunacy
as to the extraordinary theories of one Dr.
V. Govinda Lai on the use we are to make
of the moon now that we have reached it.
Is it time to go? Sammler asks... Tovább

Fülszöveg

A tall old man, blind in one eye, born in
Cracow but with Oxonian manners and the
face of a British Museum reader, strides
lightly and recklessly, rolled umbrella
pointing, through the pages of Saul Bel-
low's new novel.
Mr. Artur Sammler, who looks back on
the civilized pleasures of England in the
twenties and thirties, on an acquaintance
with Bloomsbury and H. G. Wells, but also
on the camps, the war, a death ditch in Po-
land, is above all a man who has lasted.
Moving now through the chaotic and dan-
gerous streets of New York's upper West
Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to every-
thing, appalled by nothing. He brings the
same curiosity and disinterestedness to the
activities of a black pickpocket observed in
an uptown bus as to the details of his niece
Angela's sex life, to his daughter's lunacy
as to the extraordinary theories of one Dr.
V. Govinda Lai on the use we are to make
of the moon now that we have reached it.
Is it time to go? Sammler asks dispas-
sionately. Are we to blow this great blue,
white, green planet or be blown from it?
Under the comedy and sadness, the shock-
ing force of much of the action, and the
superb character-drawing of this brilliantly
written novel runs a strain of speculation,
both daring and serene, on the future of
life on this planet, Mr. Sammler's planet,
and any other planets for which we may
be destined.
Saul Bellow was born in Lachine,
Quebec, in 1915, and was raised in Chi-
cago. He attended the University of Chi-
cago, received his Bachelor's degree from
Northwestern University in 1937, with
honors in Anthropology.
He has contributed fiction to Harper's
Bazaar, The New Yorker, Esquire, Parti-
san Review, and other literary quarterlies.
His criticism has appeared in The New
York Times Book Review, Horizon, En-
counter, The New Republic, The New
Leader, and elsewhere. He has taught at
New York University, Princeton Univer-
sity, and the University of Minnesota, and
is at present a member of the Committee
on Social Thought at the University of Chi-
cago. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict,
Mr. Bellow was a special correspondent for
Newsday. Vissza