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Love is two damned things after each other




By PETER STANLIS

Saul Bellow. More Die of Heartbreak.
New York: William Morrow and Co., 1987. Pp. 335. $17.95.


The main theme of Bellow's latest novel, summarized in the title, is stated by Uncle Benn, a central character in this narrative of "family relationships, greed, and the agonies of sexuality." After the Chernobyl disaster, a reporter interviews Uncle Benn, a world-famous botanist, about the threat to civilization. He remarks that "more people die of heartbreak than of radiation poisoning." While "every life has its basic, characteristic difficulty," the universal unhappiness caused by Eros is "developed in a thousand variations."

Every major character and most minor characters in the novel illustrate this theme, voiced throughout by the participant-narrator, Kenneth Trachtenberg, who notes that "for centuries love has made suckers of us." The disease of Eros is acute in contemporary man, with his genius for wilful self-deception regarding politics, money, and especially sex.

When it comes to the temptations of the flesh, intellectuals such as Uncle Benn and Kenneth are particularly susceptible. Despite their "quality minds," they prove that "knowledge divorced from life equals sickness." They see "every return of desire" as "a form of reincarnation," and they always hope "for a lucky break.'' But the novel's relationships show that if life is one damned thing after another, love is two damned things after each other.



'Inside the sealed country,
Stalin poured on the
old
death. In the West, the
ordeal is of a
new death.
There aren't any words
for what happens to the
soul in the free world'


Bellow's theme is universal, not merely personal: In modern man's "historical compass. . . Eros is the fixed pole." People cannot "cope with the powers of darkness" Eros releases, as both Uncle Benn and Kenneth learn to their great sorrow. The 20th century is revealed as a "period of sexual anarchy," in which devotees of Eros "run in the great contemporary sex marathon" until halted by tragedy or death. Indeed, the pursuit of love is really the pursuit of spiritual death, although it seems to be the opposite.

Kenneth also argues that the physical death inflicted by Soviet tyranny has its Western counterpart in the spiritual death individuals inflict upon themselves: "In Russia the government will send you to Siberia. Here you do it to yourself." Kenneth observes that "Russia had attempted to isolate itself from the ordeal of modern consciousness. . . . Inside the sealed country, Stalin poured on the old death. In the West, the ordeal is of a new death. There aren't any words for what happens to the soul in the free world."

No character is more caught up in the death-in-life of the modern spirit than Kenneth's father. He revels in illicit love as the supreme good. He is "a man of staggering charm," master of the waltz, rumba, conga and tango; "when he opened his arms to a woman, she could feel that she had come home." He is so successful a seducer that Kenneth's long-suffering mother at last escapes into a Mother Teresa role, caring for starving natives in Somalia.

Kenneth also escapes from his father's lifestyle, to teach Russian literature in a midwestern college, but his main purpose is to develop a genuine father-son relationship with his Uncle Benn, a fellow academic and a disoriented widower still consumed by erotic longings. As confessor, guide and friend to his lovable uncle, Kenneth wants "to preserve him in his valuable oddity" and keep him safe from predatory women.

In his own life Kenneth is "a sexual wraith," emotionally scarred by his father's lascivious character. He is currently involved with his admiring student, Dita Schwartz, but is also a father by his former girlfriend, Trecki, whom he would like to marry. For a kinky psychopath like Trecki, however, Kenneth is a bore; she prefers "sexual roughhouse with abusive men."

As a specialist in Antarctic lichens, Uncle Benn has learned the wisdom nature teaches. The lichen, in contrast to human beings, remains eternally calm under the most adverse conditions, drawing "nutrients from the air" and growing "an inch diameter" in 20 years. Such images recur frequently as central symbols in the novel. But Uncle Benn's botanical garden is incomplete without Eve. Much of the novel depicts his fall from grace with Matilda Layamon, a "high-stepping beauty" whom he marries without consulting Kenneth. Matilda's father, Dr. Layamon, a vulgar pragmatist and avaricious materialist, marries her to Uncle Benn to make her rich "without it costing him a penny."

Right after the wedding he comes straight to the point with Uncle Benn:

"If you're going to share the bed of this delicious girl of high breeding and wallow in it, you'll have to find the money it takes. And it so happens that the single most valuable piece of real estate in this town was your property until five years ago, when you were screwed out of it, chum."

The valuable real estate is "Electronic Tower," described as "bigger than ten Titanics lashed together, every single window lighted and on a dead course for the penthouse." The grand strategy of the Layamons is to force Uncle Benn to recover the millions swindled from him. The dramatic resolution of this plot is a gigantic metaphor handled in the spirit of high comedy, which is the special mark of Bellow's superb literary talent. His comic treatment of human pathos and tragedy makes More Die of Heartbreak perhaps his best novel.□

Dr. Peter Stanlis, professor emeritus of English at Rockford College, has served on the National Council for the Humanitie since 1982.


January 1988 | Illinois Issues | 34



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