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Original Title: Humboldt's Gift
ISBN: 0140189440 (ISBN13: 9780140189445)
Edition Language: English
Characters: Charlie Citrine, Von Humboldt Fleisher, Renata Koffritz, Rinaldo Cantabile, Pierre Thaxter, Denise Citrine, Demmie Vonghel
Setting: Chicago, Illinois(United States) New York City, New York(United States)
Literary Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1976), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1976), Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction (1976)
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Humboldt's Gift Paperback | Pages: 487 pages
Rating: 3.86 | 8059 Users | 541 Reviews

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Title:Humboldt's Gift
Author:Saul Bellow
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:Deluxe Edition
Pages:Pages: 487 pages
Published:June 1st 1996 by Penguin Classics (first published 1975)
Categories:Fiction. Classics. Literature

Rendition As Books Humboldt's Gift

The novel, for which Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's own creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course.

Rating Containing Books Humboldt's Gift
Ratings: 3.86 From 8059 Users | 541 Reviews

Column Containing Books Humboldt's Gift
"Wrestling match between Vita Contemplativa and Vita Activa" Lets be honest! Humboldts Gift is exhausting. It is a masterpiece, a brilliant study of a man fighting the world and his inner demons by withdrawing from active participation, but it leaves the reader frequently frustrated with the narrator, Charles Citrine, and his non-response to the problems he causes by contemplating life rather than living it actively. Using a similar idea to the one explored in Dangling Man, it goes further,

I don't know what it is, but Bellow's books just go down easy for me. I can (and have) read them in one or two or five very long sittings, enjoying myself enough to just refuse to take my eyes off the page. There's something about his protagonists- the nervy, learned, spunky, earthy, thoughtful and hyper-attentive 30-40 year old males which seems to resonate with me over and over again. I seriously thought about making a special category on my bookshelves for "old-drunk-wannabe-writer" books

Transcendental. Profound. Scholarly. Challenging. Invigorating. Agile. A literary treasure. Citrine lives and breathes with the perspective of a real writer surging against great existential issues like Walt Whitman's ultimate question. Humboldt is brilliant, pitiful, hilarious and, ultimately, victorious from the grave. The gangster, Cantabile, is Citrine's cosmic foil: the Dionysius of Nietzsche to Citrine's Apollo. This is potentially a life-altering work: it can change your outlook on life

This is the first Bellow I have read and I enjoyed the experience. It concerns Charlie Citrine, a chap in his 50s, a writer and intellectual who has an ongoing divorce, an unpredictable girlfriend, an acquaintance in the mob who decides he quite likes Charlie, various bloodsucking lawyers, friends who want money for hare-brained schemes and his relationship with his old mentor (now dead), the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer. It is an erudite book with lots of ideas in play and Bellow has great fun

I realize that most of the online reviews for this book are raves and so my 2 star review is abberant, however if I am honest that rating is higher than I actually want to give. I am at a loss for reviewing it, but will give it a shot.1. I have been a reader my entire life and have multiple degrees and yet this book made me feel stupid. Mr Bellow wrote this with so many odd mechanisms and intentionally poor grammar. Not using commas throughout the book where words were written in list form drove

I'm going to rave a little here. Do forgive me in advance. This is my second reading of this masterpiece. It was shortly after publication of Humboldt's Gift that Bellow won the Nobel Prize. That in itself usually doesn't mean much, mostly the literature awards are given out for political reasons these days, but I think in the case of Bellow Oslo got it right. From the start the storytelling is brilliant and it never flags. Charlie Citrine, a young man filled with a love of literature, writes to

Roman a Clef a TroisHumboldts Gift is generally recognised to be a roman a clef, in which the titular character is based on the poet Delmore Schwartz, an early friend and mentor of Saul Bellow.However, there are three levels at which the roman a clef operates within the novel itself.Firstly, Von Humboldt Fleisher accuses the narrator, Charlie Citrine, of using his life as the inspiration for his commercially successful play, Von Trenck (which was later turned into a film): I dont say he actually