Bellow's Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9590795 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eusebio L Rodrigues (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1971 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 242 |
| Publication date | 1971-05-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9831 • E-ISSN: 1527-2117 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2924240 |
| OpenAlex | W2324682747 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
4 ENDERSON THE RAIN KING is surely the most brilliant of Bellow's I novels, a dazzling achievement that displays his powers of invention and reveals the esemplastic quality of his imagination. Bellow has exploited a wealth of creative material in this novel. King Dahfu, for example, is a strange synthesis of Wilhelm Reich and William Blake. The lion-therapy that he uses to treat Henderson is savagely, and quite comically, Reichian. And the king's vision, especially his faith in the human imagination, is essentially Blakean. Also, Jeff H. Campbell has shown us how Bellow has parodied various contemporary quests in the opening chapters before allowing Henderson to set foot in Africa.' Bellow's Africa is not a geographical continent but a strange land summoned into existence by Bellow's imagination. It is, of course, a metaphysical Africa. The two locales and the two tribes, the Arnewi and the Wariri, remind one strongly of the two worlds of Asa Leventhal in The Victim. The Arnewi world is parallel to the lucky, ignorant state Leventhal is content to be in until he is propelled into the real, savage Wariri world by Allbee and the death of Mickey. The Wariri world is the Hobbesian world where existence is nasty, brutish and short, one that Joseph (Dangling Man) avoids, not knowing how to account for it. It is also the dark world which Augie March is aware of but larkily refuses to succumb to. And it is a larger, more terrifying version of the hard, treacherous, aggressive world of Seize the Day. Bellow's Africa is a paradigm of the modern world seen through a distorting, fantastic lens. By allowing his protagonist to wander around in this Africa, Bellow was able to give free rein to and yet control (as he could not do in The Aduentures of Augie March) hiJ talent for comic invention and improvisation. Bellow did not conjure up his Africa out of airy nothing. His Africa has been assembled, probably, from travel documentaries he
Geography · American Jewish Fiction Analysis · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
| Citations per year | 0.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |