THE VICTIM, A NOVEL BY SAUL BELLOW (BOOK REVIEW/OGLED KNJIGE)

 In this post, I will review The Victim, a novel by Saul Bellow. I read this novel many years ago but didn't share a review here on my blog. When I read another novel by Bellow three days ago, I naturally remembered this one. Moreover, I realized that I can recall the plot of The Victim pretty well. Some books are like that, they leave a trace.  The Victim is a novel that captured my attention right from the start, even if the start was deceivingly simple. I remember being instantly drawn to this book, as uncomplicated as it seemed. It was like I was able to sense that the novel will get more layered in time. 

The Victim was my introduction to the writing of an American Jewish author Saul Bellow. Naturally,  I was familiar with the work of this writer for many years. Saul Bellow was one of the most awarded writers of his generations. Most notable among Bellow's literary awards were the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer prize and The National Medal of Arts. As you can imagine, Bellow's name came up pretty often during lectures on American Literature at the University. 

Still, perhaps it is worth noting that this is the book that really made me want to read more of Bellow. It took me a while to pick up another Bellow's novel, though. However, when it happened, the timing was perfect. That happens sometimes, you just find yourself lost in a book. I'll tell you more about that some other time. Today we'll shall discuss The Victim. Have you read it? Have you read any other novels by Saul Bellow? What kind of novels do you prefer?

Danas ću podijeliti ogled za roman Žrtva (u orginalu na engleskom The Victim), pisca Saula Bellowa. Pročitala sam ovaj roman prije puno godina, ali nisam podijelila ogled ovdje na svom blogu. Kada sam prije tri dana pročitala drugi Bellowov roman, naravno sam se sjetila i ovog. Štoviše, shvatila sam da se prilično dobro sjećam radnje Žrtve. Neke knjige su takve, ostavljaju trag. Žrtva je roman koji je zaokupio moju pozornost od samog početka, čak i ako je početak bio varljivo jednostavan. Sjećam se da me odmah privukla ova knjiga, koliko god se činila nekompliciranom. Kao da sam mogao naslutiti da će roman s vremenom postati slojevitiji. 

Žrtva je bila moj uvod u pisanje američkog židovskog autora Saula Bellowa. Naravno,  bijah upoznata s radom ovog pisca već godinam. Saul Bellow bijše jedan od najnagrađivanijih pisaca svoje generacije. Najzapaženije među Bellowovim književnim nagradama bile su Nobelova nagrada za književnost, Pulitzerova nagrada i Nacionalne medalja za umjetnost. Kao što možete zamisliti, Bellowovo se ime često pojavljivalo tijekom predavanja o američkoj književnosti na Sveučilištu.

Ipak, možda je vrijedno napomenuti da je ovo knjiga zbog koje sam stvarno poželjela čitati više  Bellowa. Ipak, trebalo mi je neko vrijeme kako bi pročitala još jedan Bellowov roman. Međutim, kada se to dogodilo, vrijeme je bilo savršeno. To se ponekad događa, jednostavno se nađete izgubljeni u knjizi. Reći ću vam više o tome neki drugi put. Danas ćemo razgovarati o Žrtvi. Jeste li ga pročitali? Jeste li čitali još neki roman Saula Bellowa? Kakve romane preferirate?

THE VICTIM,  A  NOVEL BY SAUL BELLOW 

The Victim was published in 1947, so quite some time ago. However, I don't remember thinking much about the date of publication while I was reading this novel. The writing felt very modern, not dated or old fashion in any way. There is something captivating about the writing style. The novel opens with a protagonist Leventhal. I suppose it can be said that the protagonist is in some ways similar to the writer, for example they both share Jewish identity. Bellow paints his protagonist Leventhal with ease. The plot starts to unfold as the protagonist Leventhal is left on his own.  His wife had to go away to help her mother, so the protagonist lives alone for the time being. That changes his routine somewhat and foreshadows events that are to come. 

Who is the protagonist?  Leventhal is a middle aged Jewish man who works as a copy writer. At work he receives a call for help from his sister- in- law. It seems his nephew is sick. When confronted with realities of life he protagonist often meditates on his life. Leventhal examines his relationship with his extended family, wondering has he failed at his duty. During a walk in the park, a man approaches Leventhal. The man, revealing himself to be an old acquaintance Leventhal, starts a conversation with Leventhal. At first, Albee seems benevolent enough, and Leventhal pities him as he seems a bit run down. Soon, however, it turns out that Albee blames Leventhal for all the misfortunes in his life, starting from Albee having lost his job to the present day.

A feeling of isolation soaks this novel. Our protagonist asks many questions. He becomes convinced that his brother Maxi has neglected his family. At the same time, a cat and mouse play with Albee continues. What could Alble possibly want? The protagonist constantly questions and exmines everything. As I kept reading, I had a whole set of questions as well. Who is the victim? What is the crime? What is Levathien victim of? What are all we victims of? Even after reading this novel I'm not sure I have any definite answers. However, that's exactly what I loved about this novel. I feel that Bellow managed to capture the complexity of life.

 Perhaps we are all victims of life. Perhaps this is what the novel is trying to tell us. That we can be victims of one another, but in the end we are all victims of the injustice that is this world. I cannot be entirely sure what exactly the writer was going for, but I liked how complex he made the world seem. You could say that I liked the way Bellow went about writing this short but complex  work. What I'm certain of is that The Victim is a wonderful novel.

Levanthian was easy to sympathize with because he is so human, just a guy trying to do the right thing. The kind of person that will take the time to think things over. Nevertheless, at the same time as a reader you are not certain what that exactly means. Is Levanthian really who he seems that he is? Are we? Who of us really knows ourselves? Are we not undergoing constant change. While reading this book, I had a feeling that it portrayed the life as perplexing as it really is. Yes, I loved the complexity of the protagonist. His existential questioning appealed to me. Moreover, I quite enjoyed the ambiguity of it all. This is a novel that has left me wondering and I liked it. 

Life is complicated and so is this novel. Similar to real life, in this novel it is hard to figure out who is guilty and of what. In that sense the novel felt quite ambiguous. It was also wonderfully philosophical at times. Perhaps for the first fifty pages or so, things seemed much too simple to me and the characters stereotyped. However, that changed. I can only describe the rest of the book as being excellently written. The slow start was, or so it seems, the perfect introduction. Indeed, perhaps those first fifty pages or so are an introduction of some kind. So, there's a reason why the introduction is slow ( or maybe not exactly slow, it is more that there is no obvious foreshadowing to start with). What could be a good word for it? Maybe it is best to say that the beginning of the story is "not revealing" at all.

 Ultimately, this proved to be a good thing, because this novel really grabs your attention once the things start to get going. By the end of the story, I found myself immersed in the story. At start the characterization seemed stereotypical. Nevertheless, by the end of the novel there wasn't a character that did not feel real. The protagonist is the most complex character, but they all have a life of their own. Literally, it is like the characters gained life with every page. Another thing that I really liked was the descriptiveness of the writing. Bellow writes with ease. The descriptiveness suited this story perfectly. The contrast between the ambiguity of meaning and the descriptiveness of the prose was starling.

To conclude, The Victim is a wonderfully written and plotted novel. Bellow, this highly praised and awarded writer, wrote many others more famous works, but if you happen upon this one, don't miss it. 

ŽRTVA (THE VICTIM), ROMAN SAULA BELLOWA

Žrtva (The Victim) je roman objavljen 1947. godine., dakle prije poprilično vremena. No, ne sjećam se da sam puno razmišljao o datumu izlaska dok sam čitala ovaj roman,  pri tome mislim to da je roman napisan  u suvremenom stilu i djeluje moderno te ni na koji način nije zastarjelo ili staromodno. Ima nešto zadivljujuće u stilu pisanja. Roman počinje upoznavanjem s protagonistom Leventhalom. Pretpostavljam da se može reći da je protagonist na neki način sličan piscu, na primjer, oboje dijele židovski identitet. Bellow s lakoćom oslikava svog protagonista Leventhala. Radnja započinje time što Leventhal ostaje sam. Njegova supruga morala je otići kako bi pomogla majci, pa protagonist zasad živi sam. To donekle mijenja njegovu rutinu i nagovještava događaje koji će doći.

Tko je protagonist? Leventhal je sredovječni Židov koji radi kao prepisivač. Na poslu dobiva poziv u pomoć od šogorice. Čini se da mu je nećak bolestan. Kada je suočen sa stvarnošću života, protagonist često meditira o svom životu. Leventhal ispituje svoj odnos sa svojom proširenom obitelji, pitajući se je li zatajio u svojoj dužnosti. Tijekom šetnje parkom, čovjek prilazi Leventhalu. Čovjek, otkrivši da je njegov stari znanac, započinje razgovor s Leventhalom. Isprva se Albee čini sasvim dobronamjernim, a Leventhal ga žali jer se čini da je pomalo iscrpljen životom. Ubrzo se, međutim, ispostavi da Albee krivi Leventhala za sve nesreće u svom životu, počevši od toga da je Albee ostao bez posla do danas.

Osjećaj izoliranosti natapa ovaj roman. Naš protagonist postavljaja brojna pitanja. Protagonist postaje uvjeren da je njegov brat zanemario svoju obitelj. Istovremeno se nastavlja igra mačke i miša s Albee-om. Što bi Albee uopće mogao željeti? Protagonist  sve propituje i ispituje. Dok sam čitala, imala sam i  sama čitav niz pitanja. Tko je žrtva? Što je zločin? Čega je Levathien žrtva? Čega smo mi sve žrtve? Čak i nakon što sam pročitao ovaj roman, nisam sigurn da imam neke konkretne odgovore. Međutim, upravo to mi se svidjelo u ovom romanu. Osjećam da je Bellow uspio uhvatiti složenost života.

 Možda smo svi mi žrtve života. Možda nam to roman pokušava reći. Da možemo biti žrtve jedni drugih, ali na kraju smo svi mi žrtve nepravde koja je na ovom svijetu. Ne mogu biti potpuno sigurna što je pisac točno želio reći, ali mi se svidjelo koliko je svijet u romanu učinio složenim. Moglo bi se reći da mi se svidio način na koji je Bellow napisao ovo kratko, ali složeno djelo. Ono u što sam siguran je da je Žrtva prekrasan roman.

S Levanthianom je bilo lako suosjećati jer je čovječan čovjek, samo tip koji pokušava učiniti pravu stvar. Vrsta osobe koja će odvojiti vrijeme da razmisli o stvarima. Ipak, u isto vrijeme kao čitatelj niste sigurni što to točno znači. Je li Levanthian doista ono što se čini da jest? Jesmo li mi? Tko od nas doista poznaje sebe? Ne prolazimo li kroz stalne promjene? Čitajući ovu knjigu, imala sam osjećaj da prikazuje život onako zbunjujućim i kompliciranim kakav zapravo jest. Da, svidjela mi se složenost protagonista. Njegovo me egzistencijalno propitivanje oduševilo. Štoviše, jako sam uživala u dvosmislenosti svega toga. Ovo je roman koji me je ostavio u čudu i svidio mi se.

Život je kompliciran pa tako i ovaj roman. Slično kao u stvarnom životu, i u ovom je romanu teško dokučiti tko je i za što kriv. U tom smislu roman se činio prilično dvosmislenim. Ponekad je bio i predivno filozofski. Možda su mi se prvih pedesetak stranica stvari činile previše jednostavnim, a likovi stereotipni. Međutim, to se promijenilo. Ostatak knjige mogu samo opisati kao izvrsno napisan. Spori početak bio je, ili se barem tako čini, savršen uvod. Doista, možda je tih prvih pedesetak stranica neka vrsta uvoda. Dakle, postoji razlog zašto je uvod spor (ili možda ne baš spor, više se radi o tome d nema očitog predznaka za početak radnje). Što bi mogla biti dobra riječ za opisati to? Možda je najbolje reći da početak priče uopće „ne otkriva“ previše.

 U konačnici, to se pokazalo dobrom, jer ovaj roman zaista privlači vašu pozornost kada se stvari počnu odvijati. Do kraja priče sam se našala uronjena u priču. Na početku se karakterizacija činila stereotipnom. Ipak, dok sam došla do kraja romana nije bilo lika koji se ne činjaše stvarnim. Protagonist je najsloženiji lik, ali svi imaju svoj život. Doslovno, imala sam osjećaj kao da su likovi oživljavali sa svakom stranicom. Još jedna stvar koja mi se jako svidjela je deskriptivnost (opisnost) pisanja. Bellow piše s lakoćom. Deskriptivnost je savršeno odgovarala ovoj priči. Kontrast između dvosmislenosti značenja i opisnosti proze bio je zapanjujući.

Za kraj mogu zaključiti kako je Žrtva  divno napisan roman. Below, ovaj hvaljeni i nagrađivani pisac, napisao je brojne romane, ali ako imate priliku svakako pročitajte i ovaj. 

“Mr. Benjamin shrugged his shoulders. "We have to live today," he said. "If you had a son, Harkavy, you'd want him to have a college education. Who's going to wait for the Messiah? They tell a story about a little town in the old country. It was out of the way, in a valley, so the Jews were afraid the Messiah would come and miss them, and they built a high tower and hired one of the town beggars to sit in it all day long. A friend of his meets this beggar and says, 'How do you like your job, Baruch?' So he says, 'It doesn't pay much, but I think it's steady work.”  Saul Bellow, The Victim

FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO KNOW MORE (QUOTED FROM BRITANNICA):

Saul Bellow, (born June 10, 1915, Lachine, near Montreal, Quebec, Canada—died April 5, 2005, Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.), American novelist whose characterizations of modern urban man, disaffected by society but not destroyed in spirit, earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Brought up in a Jewish household and fluent in Yiddish—which influenced his energetic English style—he was representative of the Jewish American writers whose works became central to American literature after World War II.....
Bellow won a reputation among a small group of readers with his first two novels, Dangling Man (1944), a story in diary form of a man waiting to be inducted into the army, and The Victim (1947), a subtle study of the relationship between a Jew and a Gentile, each of whom becomes the other’s victim. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) brought wider acclaim and won a National Book Award (1954). It is a picaresque story of a poor Jewish youth from Chicago, his progress—sometimes highly comic—through the world of the 20th century, and his attempts to make sense of it. In this novel Bellow employed for the first time a loose, breezy style in conscious revolt against the preoccupation of writers of that time with perfection of form.
Henderson the Rain King (1959) continued the picaresque approach in its tale of an eccentric American millionaire on a quest in Africa. Seize the Day (1956), a novella, is a unique treatment of a failure in a society where the only success is success. He also wrote a volume of short stories, Mosby’s Memoirs (1968), and To Jerusalem and Back (1976) about a trip to Israel.
In his later novels and novellas—Herzog (1964; National Book Award, 1965), Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970; National Book Award, 1971), Humboldt’s Gift (1975; Pulitzer Prize, 1976), The Dean’s December (1982), More Die of Heartbreak (1987), A Theft (1989), The Bellarosa Connection (1989), and The Actual (1997)—Bellow arrived at his most characteristic vein. The heroes of these works are often Jewish intellectuals whose interior monologues range from the sublime to the absurd. At the same time, their surrounding world, peopled by energetic and incorrigible realists, acts as a corrective to their intellectual speculations. It is this combination of cultural sophistication and the wisdom of the streets that constitutes Bellow’s greatest originality. In Ravelstein (2000) he presented a fictional version of the life of teacher and philosopher Allan Bloom. Five years after Bellow’s death, more than 700 of his letters, edited by Benjamin Taylor, were published in Saul Bellow: Letters (2010). SOURCE: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Bellow 23.4.2022

ZA ONE KOJI ŽELE ZNATI VIŠE (CITAT PREUZET S HRVATSKE ONLINE ENCIKLOPEDIJE)

Bellow [be'lou], Saul, američki pisac (Lachine, Kanada, 10. VI. 1915 – Brookline, Massachusetts, 5. IV. 2005). U romanima o sinovima židovskih doseljenika u Ameriku Čovjek u iščekivanju (Dangling Man, 1944), Žrtva (The Victim, 1947), Ne propusti dan (Seize the Day, 1956) daje sliku potištena otuđenika u velegradu, a ta slika prerasta u bujnu, afirmativnu viziju čovjeka koji svoje odnose prema drugim ljudima gradi izvan konvencija ekonomske i karijerističke discipline u romanu Doživljaji Augiea Marcha (The Adventures of Augie March, 1953). Filozofija, traganje i spoznaje iz moderne antropologije tvore bitan sadržaj burlesknog romana Henderson, kralj kiše (Henderson the Rain King, 1959), a simbolika u romanu Herzog (1964) seže do razine izvornog mita o suvremenome američkome intelektualcu. Među potonjim romanima o kompleksnom odnosu između društva i pojedinca ističu se Humboldtov dar (Humboldt’s Gift, 1975), Dekanov prosinac (The Dean’s December, 1982) i Ravelstein (2000). Dobitnik Nobelove nagrade za književnost 1976.

Citiranje:
Bellow, Saul. Hrvatska enciklopedija, mrežno izdanje. Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 2021. Pristupljeno 23. 4. 2022. <http://www.enciklopedija.hr/Natuknica.aspx?ID=6778>.

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