DaveNash3 reviewed Henderson, the rain king by Saul Bellow (Penguin twentieth-century classics)
Review of 'Henderson, the rain king' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
I read this book inspired Joni Mitchel to write From Both Sides Now and I think there are two ways to look this, one as triumph along the way to a Noble Prize and the other as a total failure of a privileged white American man trying to have some sort of anthropological or life journey, so that's why I gave three stars.
I have to get the failure part out of the way. This is written in the first person by a blustering millionaire who inherited his money, which isn't a sin but his discourse is. Reading him for 330 pages is exhausting. Many of the other characters talk in pidgin English, its really bad. Faulkner and O'Connor have conveyed southern and country dialects in the writing without going all vaudeville blackface. Bellow never visited Africa, so the whole part about Africa is just his imagination, which wasn't PC …
I read this book inspired Joni Mitchel to write From Both Sides Now and I think there are two ways to look this, one as triumph along the way to a Noble Prize and the other as a total failure of a privileged white American man trying to have some sort of anthropological or life journey, so that's why I gave three stars.
I have to get the failure part out of the way. This is written in the first person by a blustering millionaire who inherited his money, which isn't a sin but his discourse is. Reading him for 330 pages is exhausting. Many of the other characters talk in pidgin English, its really bad. Faulkner and O'Connor have conveyed southern and country dialects in the writing without going all vaudeville blackface. Bellow never visited Africa, so the whole part about Africa is just his imagination, which wasn't PC in 1959 and isn't now. Finally there is a lot philosophical discourse about reality and being versus becoming. But the discourse is all this bad dialogue, telling instead of showing.
The fact that this a mythic Africa invites Joseph Campbell and Robert Graves into the discussion. The African tribe puts the King in a position where he must continually prove his manliness or die. Our narrator is unwittingly tricked into this succession of kings when he moves a statute and becomes the rain king, heir to the throne. He undergoes a true hero journey. There is a wonderful metaphor of lions and man's relationship with them. He brings back the grail to his home. The last 40 pages are a tour de force, I loved the last page.
But the prose and the condescending privilege of the author's avatar are just too much. Bellow doesn't try at all to distance himself from this buffoon.
