ellauri052.html on line 155: 9v ennen omaa kuolemaansa Hämäläinen Timo, naapurimme dokulamppu uudisoi Salen Bloom-avainromaanista Ravelstein. Timolla ja mulla oli yhteinen työhuone Osmontiellä, jossa en käynyt montaakaan kertaa edes kuivilla, enkä koskaan tavannut Timoa. Timo antoi mulle lahjaxi Sven Delblancin sairaalassa kirjoittamaan viimeisen muistelman. Vähän ennen kuolemaansa senkin.
ellauri052.html on line 162: Saul Bellowin juuri ilmestynyt uusi romaani Ravelstein kuohuttaa tunteita oikeistolaisissa piireissä Atlantin molemmin puolin. Romaanin päähenkilön Abe Ravelsteinin esikuvana on ollut Bellowin chicagolainen ystävä Allan Bloom, joka nousi maailmanmaineeseen kirjoittamalla populistisen hitin The Closing of the American Mind. Se julisti, että Woodstock-sukupolvi tuhosi kulttuurin suvaitsemalla liikaa ja unohtamalla Kreikan ja antiikin. Kirjan mainetta siivittivät muun muassa Margaret Thatcher ja Ronald Reagan. Bloom kuoli 62-vuotiaana 1992. Kuolinsyyksi ilmoitettiin maksasyöpä. Bellowin Ravelstein on kaappihomo, joka kuolee aidsiin. Tämä on suututtanut Bloomin ystävät.
ellauri052.html on line 164: Bellow, 84, sanoo New York Timesille aliarvioineensa tunteenomaisen suhtautumisen homoseksuaalisuuten ja aidsiin. "Se taitaa olla kovin kutiava aihe, ja ihmisillä on siihen enemmänkin keskiajalle luontuvat asenteet", hän sanoo ja katuu sanankäyttönsä holtittomuutta. Bellow pesee myös kielensä, hän korjailee toiseen painokseen muun muassa Ravelsteinin sukupuolisten mielihalujen kuvauksia.
ellauri052.html on line 962: He portrayed his ex-wives, before and after they divorced him, as they declined from goddess to devil. Their sexual betrayals and financial extortions supplied the mother lode of his fictional material and generated the misogyny and guilt that fueled his creative powers. He exalted his fourth wife, the Gentile Romanian mathematician Alexandra Tulcea, as the “translucent Minna gazing at the stars” in The Dean’s December and crucified her as the “ferocious, chaos-dispensing Vela” in Ravelstein.
ellauri067.html on line 239: Allan oli se Belovin Salen homokolleega paasauxessa 52, josta Sale tekas pahasuisen avainromaanin Ravelstein. Allan eli 1930-1992.
ellauri074.html on line 441: Saku ja Mirkku tapaili useinkin sitku Sakun nai se romanialainen matemaatikko 1974, vaimo nro 4, Alexandra Bagdasar. Puhuttiin romaniaa ja kokattiin romanialaisia kotiruokia. Ero tuli vaimosta 1985 ja 1986 kuoli Eliade. Mirkun nazitouhut tuli ilmi vasta 1988. Mirkun 30-luvun kirjoituxet oli aika pahaa fasismia indeed. Sen kannattaman rautakaartin miehet listi silmittömästi jutkuja sakujen rinnalla. Sakua vähän hävetti eze oli kaveerannut tälläsen paskiaisen kaa. Se kirjotti sit Mirkun comic sidekickixi Bloomista kertovaan rompskuunsa Ravelstein: kohteliaasti pokkuroiva pikku romanialainen Radu Grielescu, sliipattu intellektuelli jolla oli antisemiitin rikosrekisteri. Aika noloa. Pääsipä kusettamaan Sakua oikein kunnolla.
ellauri222.html on line 209: The decorum in Bellow criticism is to acknowledge the original of the fictional character when the person is famous, and otherwise to insist on treating it all as fiction. Thus everyone knows that, in “Humboldt’s Gift,” Von Humboldt Fleisher “is” Delmore Schwartz, and that, in “Ravelstein,” Abe Ravelstein “is” Allan Bloom, the Chicago professor who wrote “The Closing of the American Mind” and was a good friend of Bellow’s.
ellauri222.html on line 211: But “Ravelstein” is a revenge novel, too. It’s not really about Ravelstein/Bloom. It’s about the narrator, a writer named Chick, who has been treated cruelly by his wife, Vela, a beautiful and brilliant physicist—a wicked caricature of Bellow’s fourth wife, the mathematician Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea. There are also a couple of drive-by take-downs along the way—of Mircea Eliade, a historian of religion at Chicago rumored to have been involved in the fascist Romanian Iron Guard, and of the owner of a restaurant on St. Martin, in the Caribbean, where Bellow contracted a case of food poisoning that nearly killed him. He brings them into the story just to skewer them.
ellauri222.html on line 767: In their quest to find the beaver that gives meaning to life, Bellow's protagonists must also come to terms with death. The message Bellow conveys in almost all of his novels is that one must fear death to know the meaning of life and what it means to be human. Henderson overcomes his fear of death when he is buried and symbolically resurrected in the African king Dahfu's experiment. Similarly, in Seize the Day, Tommy Wilhelm confronts death in a symbolic drowning. Charlie Citrine in Humboldt's Gift echoes Whitman in viewing death as the essential question, pointing out that it is only through death that Sauls can complete the cycle of life by liberating self from the body. Bellow's meditations on death darken in Mr. Sammler's Planet and The Dean's December. While the title character in Mr. Sammler's Planet eagerly awaits the death of the person he most values in the world, Bellow contemplates the approaching death of Western culture at the hands of those who have abandoned humanistic values. The Dean's December presents an apocalyptic vision of urban decay in a Chicago totally lacking the comic touches that soften Charlie Citrone's portrait of this same city as a "moronic inferno" in Humboldt's Gift. An uncharacteristically bleak yarn from he old standup comic. With More Die of Heartbreak and the recent novellas, however, Bellow returns to his more characteristic blend of pathos and farce in contemplating the relationship between life and death. In the recent Ravelstein, Bellow once again charts this essential confrontation when Saul recounts not only his best friend's death from AIDS but also his own near-death experience from food poisoning. Through this foreground, in a fictionalized memoir to his own gay friend Allan Bloom, Bellow reveals the resilient love and tenderness that offer the modern world its saving grace.
9