I have not yet read all of his novels but I really liked his works.He had a very hard life in amny ways including bringing up three tiny childre alone and he proves that smoking and drning do not always kill you in middle age!
This is an extract from “Humboldt’s Gift” in a book review on GoodReads Saul Bellow
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/637022168
Humboldt’s Gift
by Saul Bellow, Jeffrey Eugenides (Introduction)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/637022168
“Some think that sloth, one of the capital sins, means ordinary laziness,” I began. “Sticking in the mud. Sleeping at the switch. But sloth has to cover a great deal of despair. Sloth is really a busy condition, hyperactive. This activity drives off the wonderful rest or balance without which there can be no poetry or art or thought — none of the highest human functions. These slothful sinners are not able to acquiesce in their own being, as some philosophers say. They labor because rest terrifies them. The old philosophy distinguished between knowledge achieved by effort (ratio) and knowledge received (intellectus) by the listening soul that can hear the essence of things and comes to understand the marvelous. But this calls for unusual strength of soul. The more so since society claims more and more of your inner self and infects you with its restlessness. It trains you in distraction, colonizes consciousness as fast as consciousness advances. The true poise, that of contemplation or imagination, sits right on the border of sleep and dreaming. Now, Naomi, as I was lying stretched out in America, determined to resist its material interests and hoping for redemption by art, I fell into a deep snooze that lasted for year.
| The season’s too fleeting for greeting…we once had a cat which was squeaking |
| God saw a shadow on my soul.It was his! |
| Silence is mean and golden like you |
| I have the spice of a wife with lice |
| Bars like Raymond’s are few but well designed for demons like my lover |
| We can’t even sell our own noses now |
| Why do they test the waters… or they poisoned or just cold? |
| My husband’s like a thorn in my backside |
| Till the clock rhymes,I’ll be tickling your butt with a feather duster.It’s called housework |
| Times without jumble I have written you knots of words to aid memoire and seduce your eye. |
| It’s time to call for a prayer for unanimity..passed with no votes |
| I hate the sound of hooversand dusters |
| She had hips like an iceberg’s flo |
| That man stole my heart.I need either him or it..stand and deliver.Be a man |
=
Joy sings now in summer light;
Yet after day comes deep,black night.
New moon will rise by these gray trees.
Our earth is where I want to be.
I want the day;I want the night.
I want the dark;I want the light.
I want to see and to be seen,
And not to lose myself in dreams.
The sun has set,gray clouds turn black,
The day just gone will not come back.
I’ll rest in thoughtful reverie
Until the reaper’s scythe takes me.
And then I drop and mix with dust,
till worms and beetles sate their lust.
I fall into ten thousand motes,
And dance,in sunlight,music’s notes.
No more striving;no more ambition,
No more fighting;no competition,
Every particle’s the same
Without even its special name.
And, side by side, we all are one,
The lusts of life have been and gone.
We dwell with dirt and grain and sand
At last we’ve reached the Promised Land
How my heart sings 