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Herzog

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TORN
Post subject: Herzog
Posted: Wed 04 May , 2005 4:13 am
THE GREAT AND POWERFUL
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I felt a bit ashamed when Saul Bellow died recently to realize that I had never read a single one of his works. Somewhere or other, someone said that if you were to read just one of his books, you should probably pick Herzog. I had been hunting for it for a couple of weeks now, but all the bookstores near my house were pretty much sold out on all of Bellow's works. I finally found it at the bookstore at 30th Street Station (the train station) in Philly on the way to the airport. An interesting (but largely irrelevant) observation was that, while in flight, I came to a passage where Herzog is going to see a lawyer in the Burnham Building a block away from City Hall in Chicago. Upon reading that, I checked my hotel reservations for that night in Chicago, and saw that I was indeed booked to stay at the Burnham Hotel, which I discovered -- upon arriving at the hotel by cab -- was in fact about a block away from City Hall. Go figure.

In any event, I just finished the book and found it to be truly wonderful -- very moving and thoughtful. And it was so pleasant to read its ending, untainted by the modern-day conceit that true literature requires tragic endings. I can take my share of tragedy, but I've read enough modern-day books that were otherwise quite good but were ruined (at least for me) by the perceived need to kill someone off tragically.

I highly recommend the book, with the warning that many passages are quite dense. But then you suddenly find yourself transitioned into extraordinarily warm and touchingly personal passages that will reward you even if you don't enjoy the denser portions.


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Wed 04 May , 2005 7:20 am
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Thank you, TORN.

I love these "out of the blue" recommendations. When they come from someone I know and respect, I always try to follow up—and have been rewarded by some amazing reading.

It's on my next library list.

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TORN
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Posted: Thu 05 May , 2005 12:58 pm
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I hope you'll enjoy it -- it has very much of a man's perspective, albeit an early 1960s type of sensitive man -- which is to say that there is probably a far amount to dislike about the main character, but there is also quite a lot to like very much


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 05 May , 2005 2:09 pm
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I read a lot of science fiction, TORN, and much of even recently written SF is full of 1960s men—the kind I read for clever plots or interesting ideas, not major character development. ;) I know the breed and can read around that. But thanks for the warning!

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TORN
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Posted: Thu 05 May , 2005 3:25 pm
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Primula_Baggins wrote:
I read a lot of science fiction, TORN, and much of even recently written SF is full of 1960s men—the kind I read for clever plots or interesting ideas, not major character development. ;) I know the breed and can read around that. But thanks for the warning!
Ah, but the problem is that it is about the man, so reading around it does not leave much else


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Primula_Baggins
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Posted: Thu 05 May , 2005 4:07 pm
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Ah, I see. Well, if I can read Victorian litrachah, I can bend my mind around that.

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