The Adventures of Augie March

Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels was published in alphabetical order, which makes sense if you aren't trying to rank the books from the best on the list to the worst least best on the list. The first book on the list was The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, which centers on an eponymous character who grows up during the Great Depression. The protagonist struggles to make sense of and succeed in an alienating world. The plot of the novel is never predetermined, things simply happens to Augie, one after another, with no evident story arc or a hint as to where his adventures are leading him.

To be blunt, the book was painful to read. Not only is there no concise plot to the story, Bellow chose to write the novel in stream of conscience, and it was done poorly. Amidst the rambling, there is an interesting story, but you have to decipher the long-winded sentences to have a clear picture of what the hell is happening. Additionally, Bellow throws new characters at the reader with absolutely as if they were fast balls. He'll spend chapter after chapter going into great detail about the relationship Augie has with a character, then suddenly a new set of characters are thrust at you.

A perfect example of this, is Chapter 11. Prior to the chapter, Augie has been working for the Renling family, in their sporting goods store and becomes a member of their family. At one point, Mrs. Renling even offers to adopt Augie, which would give him a huge inheritance when the Renlings passed away. After refusing her offer, they suddenly disappear and a whole new group of characters are introduced. I couldn't even keep track of who were major characters and who were minor characters, seeing that characters changed like Brady's diapers. 

At one point, I decided to read Rachel a few paragraphs from the chapter, to see if she could make sense of what the hell was going on. After one paragraph she begged me tos top, after the second paragraph her ears began to bleed, and after the third paragraph she had to run to the bathroom. 

I also saw Sylvester on the stairs of the rooming hose, with Mimi. He was, or had been, Mimi's brother-in-law, married in New York to her sister Annie, who had no left him and was getting a divorce. I recalled how his first wife threw stones at him when he tried to come through her father's backyard to talk to her, and I even remembered the surroundings in which I had heard about this from him, the grim air of cold Milwaukee Avenue when we peddled razorblades and glass-cutters with Jimmy Klein. Sylvester wanted Mimi to plead with her sister for him. "Hell," Mimi told me, as much for my private ear as any of her opinions were, "if I had known him before they were married I would have told Annie not to do it. He leaks misery all over. I wonder how she could stand two full years of him. Young girls do the goddamnedest things. Can you imaging being in bed with him, and that mud face and those lips? Why, he looks like the frog prince. I hope now she'll get under the sheets with a young strong stevedore." If somebody fell against Mimi's lines she had no mercy, and as she listened to Sylvester she kept in mind her sister bolt upright in a huskier man's clasp and struggling her arms with pleasure, and it made me for a minute dislike her for her cruelty that she held her eyes open for Sylvester so that he might look in and see this. What was to make it an acceptable joke was the supposition that he couldn't see. No, he probably couldn't.

The only way I could get myself to keep reading, was to convince myself that Augie was going to go on a homicidal rampage with toothpicks and ice scrapers so that I had something to look forward too. After reading a little less than half the book, I threw in the towel. For good reason, a new list was born from the brains of three, highly intelligent ladies and myself.