Ravelstein

It seems funny to write this about a book that is about death, but this book is delightful mind candy for the political theorist (the comments about esotericism and footnotes and Athens and Jerusalem are just too much fun and oh so nerdy). And the book isn't all about death: it's mainly a memoir or biography of Allan Bloom. And it's more complicated than that--it's also an exploration of love and friendship.

The veiled name dropping in this roman a clef (yes, I'm using a word that I just learned) is remarkable: Strauss, obviously; Edward Shils is discussed; Mircea Eliade is given a very hard time. It almost makes you wonder why Bellow decided to change the names of the characters at all.

Of course, the question of whether or not Bellow's descriptions are accurate is far from settled (and I can't say a word about it, as I have no knowledge of Allan Bloom outside of this book). This issue is treated (with no real conclusion) in the article, "With Friends Like Saul Bellow." The article considers the most controversial aspect of Bellows' treatment of Bloom--his. outing of Bloom and his claim that Bloom died of AIDS. Throughout the novel, as this article points out, the narrator claims that Ravelstein asked him to write about him and not hold back. Whether it is true that Bloom died of AIDS is unclear; it seems that Bellow believed that he had. The narrator of Ravelstein claims that Bloom did not seek to keep his sexuality a secret. I think that conservatives in particular were shocked by this outing as conservatives loved Allan Bloom's best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind.

Saul Bellow writes Ravelstein about his friendship with Allan Bloom, about Allan Bloom's death, and about his own close-to-death experience before fulfilling his promise to write Bloom's biography. Saul Bellow's descriptions are delightful--he reveals the good parts and the bad parts of Bloom, but sympathetically (with no outside frame of reference, my impression was that his treatment of Allan Bloom was kind, while not holding back from mentioning Bloom's foibles). For instance, Bloom (as Chick, the narrator) describes Allan Bloom (Ravelstein), when he writes (and I had to include this quotation because it mentions TSE [why didn't TSE get his own secret name?!]):

"He was a curious man to watch at the table. His feeding habits needed getting used to. Mrs. Glyph, the wife of the founder of his department, told him once that he must never again expect her to ask him to dinner. She was in her own right a very rich lady, big on high culture and an entertainer of visiting celebrities. She had had R. H. Tawney at her dinner table, and Bertrand Russell, and some big-shot French Thomist whose name escapes me (Maritain?), and lots of literati, especially the French. Abe Ravelstein, then a junior faculty member, was invited to a luncheon to honor T. S. Eliot. Marla Glyph said to Abe Ravelstein as he was leaving, 'You drank from your Coke bottle, and T. S. Eliot was watching--with horror.'"

Bellow highlights Ravelstein's yearning for love and beauty (and arguably even truth) above all things, and his whole-hearted pursuit of these things. While of course I'm not crazy about his searching for these things in fine clothes and food and sex, Bellow's articulation of Ravelstein's appetites in this way is, I think, the best possible portrayal of them.

The book is so casually and comfortably told that even in the form, it conveys the joys of intellectual friendship. It brings you into Chick and Ravelstein's friendship. Their friendship was that of a writer and a political theorist. While I have lots of intellectual friendships with people in my own field, I think that intellectual friendships across disciplines are perhaps particularly rewarding: the fact that they are outside of disciplinary boundaries means that you spend less time fussing about the particular idiosyncrasies of your discipline and more time talking about the truths that stand outside of disciplines. Instead of shop talk (however fascinating and necessary shop talk is--and it is! We always need the chance for good gossip), it can be the real discussion of ideas, and can draw you outside of your own areas of specialization. Chick and Ravelstein are able to exchange real ideas and respect each other deeply (although Chick always writes about himself as the student and Ravelstein as the teacher, even though Chick was older, and they co-taught classes together). Ravelstein asking Chick to write his biography is a request that expresses the deepest respect. And, as a reader, my impression is that Ravelstein chose well in asking Chick to write about him. Chick offers wonderful literary insights, at times turning the Straussian method on its head in his fascination with pictures and images: "...[I]n the surface of things you saw the heart of things."

In a way, the book is a love triangle: the devoted friendship of Chick and Ravelstein is explored, as is the love between Chick and Rosalind (his wife at the moment, whom Chick claims saved him from his own brush with death [although, and I just have to say it--she's also the reason that he almost died by insisting that they go to the Caribbean together]). I'm not sure if love or friendship wins out in the end. Ravelstein notes all the time that most people don't experience grand love, and so have to settle for the erotic in their sexual encounters. Intellectual friendship is higher than erotic sexual encounters in Ravelstein's understanding (I think). Bellow's position may be different--he praises Rosalind (the character portraying his real-life fifth wife, Janis, who was a student of Bloom's--weird, huh?) to high heaven. He may be arguing at the end of the day that a romance of both sexual love and intellectual friendship is the highest of all.

What death (or almost death) does to Ravelstein and Chick is interesting: Ravelstein becomes more and more focused on the Jewish people and with the atrocities committed against them toward the end of his life. Chick becomes obsessed with a story about cannibals. Both consider the problems with suicide (Chick in the context of a hallucination of a previous wife asking him to have himself frozen--he sees this as a problem both in its avoidance of what is inevitable, and as a sort of suicide).

Finally, here are a couple of quotations from Ravelstein on women. First, Chick is describing the Eliade character and his treatment of women to Ravelstein: [Chick:] "The considerate man, the only right kind, remembers birthdays, honeymoons, and other tender anniversaries. You have to kiss the ladies' hands, send them roses; you cringe, move back the chairs, you rush to open doors and make arrangements with the maitre d'. In that set, the women expect to be petted, idolized, deferred to, or romanced." Ravelstein: "... Of course it's just a game. But the women get a kick out of it."

Second, Chick communicates Ravelstein's take on women: "Nature, furthermore, gave them a longing for children, and therefore for marriage, for the stability requisite for family life. And this, together with a mass of other things, disabled them for philosophy."


(picture, picture)