Mr. Sammler's Planet

I can imagine few curses worse, historically speaking, than being born in Europe at the fin de sielce. Being born during this period afforded millions of individuals a front row seat, from the flowering youth into the onset of middle age's end, to this century's most colossal stupidities and unspeakable horrors. First industrialized warfare with its colossal waste during the First World War and then industrialized murder in the second. Artur Sammler, not thoroughly affected by the first war is, in every conceivable respect, a survivor of the second. Sammler exemplifies with his one eye, the other sacrificed to a Mauser rifle butt, what it means to see the world clearly, unmediated in its most extreme forms of viciousness and madness. He has lived life at its extremes. There are many ways to read Mr. Sammler's Planet, and though it probably detracts from gaining some of the meaning of the work, I choose to read it as part historical document and part philosophical treatise. As a document of the 1960's and 70's, it is a lamentation by Bellow at seeing an environment of what he considers adolescent intellectual arrogance blossom up all around New York coupled with a hedonistic sexual revolution which, though not necessarily condemnable is certainly not commendable. Sammler's New York is a mad house of crime, vice, and utter-ridiculousness. For him, one who saw society fall apart at the seems with disastrous consequences for his life--Bellow's narrative reveals very early on that Sammler should in all actuality be dead--New York is very close to being a modernized Sodom or Gomorrah, but a long ways away from having fire and brimstone rained down upon it. It is only redeemed by being almost stupidly infantile. The circles that Sammler travels in and his acquaintances are, and this is a great understatement, decidedly strange. The circle of survivors of World War II--camp survivors, veterans of the Red Army, or his daughter who was hidden in a Polish Catholic convent--are grotesqueries suffering from weird fetishes, capable of incredible violence, or simply incapable of being reasonable human beings. The young Americans who Sammler is forced to suffer could make lifetime studies for Freud, Jung, or Lacan. They are wild children borne of extravagance and wealth who have only redeeming qualities--two are hucksters, and one is described by her own father as a "sloppy c***." Sammler sees them as the product of a society that is going deeper and deeper into madness--all three are in fact being analyzed--and is incapable in its present state to live life in a way that accords with normal values. Since Sammler survived the greatest calamity of the twentieth century though, just watching the conduct of many of these people, many of whom is down right comical. Sammler's New York is a big stupid child that is unaware of itself. Sammler is an extremely intellectual man, who during the two days in which in the narrative takes place lives what

'Mr.Sammler's Planet' attracts criticism for being too much an excuse for the exegesis of a series of ideas; yet to take this criticism at its word and to imagine Bellow's work recast as a collection of essays would be to reveal how these ideas require a novelistic framework for their power. The ideas seem to be gestural and provisional, with little in the way of evidence or argument to bolster their claims, and a large fraction of their suggestiveness comes from the very fact that they are uttered by the persona of Mr.Sammler himself. * The bare biographical facts pertaining to Mr.Sammler are salient. He is a Holocaust survivor. He has killed a man. He survives through the generosity of an ersatz nephew, and exists as a witness to the times, rather than as a participant. Whatever his likeness to Bellow in other respects, he is starkly different in regards the above. Consequently, as one reads it is possible to repeatedly ask what would a Holocaust survivor make of the state of the modern world. Sammler's actual take is but one answer. Perhaps the core of his answer is the idea that a sense of order is ineliminable in humankind, be this couched in terms of a consensual or objective morality, or in the frankly religious terms of an existent God, and that we know that there are limits to the ways in which a human life can be rightly lived - this is presented as a tremendously strong and inspiring idea, a real wellspring of optimism. And it is one thing for Saul Bellow, Canadian born and blessed with a stellar literary career, to say this as in an essay, but quite another thing to have Mr.Sammler, a resurrected victim of obscene persecution, hold this as his most sacred truth. * Impotence is an idea explored repeatedly, along with the related notion of false potency. Sammler is the embodiment of a kind of impotence. He is, perhaps through his history, robbed of the arena in which to act - indeed he characterises himself as 'hardly human' for the ten years after the war. Instead he thinks, and words by his account have no business in necessarily being translated into action. They can and do exist for their own sake. Being embarassed by this 'impotence', as is evidenced in Sammler's quotation of Hamlet, can lead to chaos and terror, to actions beyond control - to a false and inauthentic potency. Potency has obvious sexual connotations, and this is further complicated by Sammler invoking Schopenhauer's esoteric theories where "The organs of sex are the seat of the Will"; just as there exists a misguided attempt to make words potent by using them as a springboard for action, so too the sexual bloom of the sixties is questioned as an example of another kind of sterile potency. * This last point is related to some unattractive aspects of the book. It seems entirely legitimate to take the book as a misogynist tract. No female character is cast in a positive light - condescension is the best attitude that can be mustered; the worst is overt

How did Saul Bellow get into my head? How does this man-whom I picture as some kind of Ur-white male, entombed in Great Books, plastered with awards and walled up in an ivy tower-speak so directly to my experience as a young woman in 2004? I guess is the same reason that Tolstoy gets to the heart of failing relationships more vividly than any chick-lit author, and Flaubert's descriptions of desire are so much more piercing than any "Sex and the City" episode. Sheer, freaking genius.Don't let Bellow's "white-maleness" or the blizzard of high-culture references scare you off-this is an incredibly moving and powerful book. Sammler, a Holocaust survivor and exiled European intellectual, is watching his life run down in 1960s New York. So much has changed, and so much stays the same. As I was reading this book on the subway in 2004, Bellow could have been sitting next to me in the car, describing what was happening on the platforms rushing by. "Sammler" made me miss my stop more than once, needless to say. His America is "vast slums filled with bohemian adolescents, narcotized, beflowered and `whole.'" Yet all of Sammler's and his family's sufferings are somehow uplifting, illustrating the power of a mind over the external world.Please read this book.

Mr. Sammler is a Polish Jew who escaped death at the hands of the Nazis at the cost of sight in one eye.He is a survivor. He now lives in New York City in the 1960's, supported by his nephew who is but a few years younger.Sammler, a intellectual with that gentlemanly old world manner, is now trying to come to terms with the culture he sees in NYC at the time, including how most of relatives have taken to it, the Holocaust and WWII in general. And, what the meaning of being a survivor is, both for himself and for the world he now finds himself in.But just as his physical vision, thanks to the Nazis, is but half and distorted, so is his sight and vision into his soul. (Anyway, that's my metaphorical take on the bad eye.) He is emotionally removed.As for Bellow's writing, it was great! This was my first Bellow book and I read it only because friends I highly respect so recommended him. I was flabbergasted that the writing was so good. Not at all heavy but yet trenchant in content and to the point. The scene where Sammler gives his talk is classic. His inability to understand the 60's culture and those in it, including his relations, yet having to deal with them, is often simultaneously riotous and deadly serious.It's easy to see why this book won the National Book Award.Note: Kosinski's _The Painted Bird_ has a complementary and sometimes similar subject matter. Imo, each books adds greater depth and meaning to the other.

Both as an example of fine writing and as a book that leaves you thinking deep thoughts, this novel is outstanding. One of my rules for determining the "importance" of any book, movie, or other entertainment piece is whether or not it is capable of inspiring change in its audience. This novel is.Bellow achieves the perfect balance of interior monologue and narrative in Sammler, in which we see the world through the eyes of the erudite elderly man, who, though constrained by his own reserved demeanor, sees the world with his eyes, his mind, and his heart. At a loss, often, to express himself, Sammler filters the world through his intellect. And yet, the truths he knows are intuitive, and he realizes that value in life is found through making and acknowledging the human connection and bond, and living up to the spiritual and moral truths of the "human contract." This is a book about how important it is to love, to connect with other frail, imperfect, crazy humans, how to come to terms with the messiness of life, and make peace with the contradictions between intellect and religion/spirituality. Living in New York on the charity of relatives, Sammler struggles, and succeeds in, maintaining his dignity in spite of the seemingly depraved surroundings of the city and in spite of his precarious financial and physical conditions. Observing the world around him, Sammler poses many questions about the values that drive us, noting poignantly that bragging about one's vices has become virtue, and that honor, "virtuous impulses," have somehow become shameful. Yet, the book also has an engaging plot, one that serves the message of the book, and Sammler's many family relationships are amusing and touching at once. Yet Sammler is not the hero of the novel, and we see the hero, (if one can call him that, since he spends the book unconscious) through Sammler's eyes. In doing so, we understand the human achievements that Sammler aspires to, and that he calls us to.This book is worth the work of reading for anyone who doesn't mind dense but beautiful writing, who will read the same paragraph several times to get all the nuggets out, and who enjoys philosophy, sociology, and "cultural" snapshots. I will note that this novel, right in line with Bellows other novels, is a bit mysogynistic in its portrayal of women (there is not a woman to respect in this novel, they are either dirty and smelly, cold and slutty, crazy, or lovable but totally clueless). My other complaint is that Bellow, in this novel more than others, is a bit intellectually pretentious, throwing in obscure historical/philosphical references that do not move the novel forward, but that are the intellectual equivalent of "muscle flexing." But neither of these shortcomings detracts from the overall impact of the book. I read it once a year or so to remind myself of important truths as I walk the path of life. Sammler forgives his flawed relatives their fau