Augie March: Ch 20 to 26 (finished)

[jennie fitz]

Finally done! I've been on vacation these last two weeks and can you
tell what I've been doing with my time??

The ending of this novel is not at all what I expected. It's abrupt
and strange and unlike the rest of the story. I was expecting more
and more philosophy, maybe a brush with death or some other kind of
big bang event! Instead we get car trouble in the French countryside
while on an errand with the maid. Augie sort of leads us to believe
there will be many more adventures for him. Maybe grand, maybe not;
but he's going on and having them without us.

I started out liking this last section very much. It seemed to have a
little bit of humor. The Russian he meets after the final rejection
from Thea made me laugh: "Don't you know how many things there are to
be disappointed in besides love?" (412) And, back in Chicago, his
"new" millionaire Robey and Robey's mother who thinks she's a queen.
And his new friend Mintochan giving a lecture on the cheating ways of
women, while he himself was cheating on his wife (and also paid off
the husband of his girl-on-the-side). It all seemed a little absurd.

Augie does indeed make it back to Chicago and gets ribbing from
everyone: Padilla, Clem, Mimi, Charlotte, and Kayo. He finally gets
an idea of what he wants to do for himself; what he wants to be. He
wants to build and run a foster home/school. He wants to get married
and have kids. He wants a kind of pastoral life; he's done running
around and being the ward of rich people. He wants to reverse roles
and become the caretaker of others.

But he can't quite make this happen. War breaks out (WWII), and he
enlists. He does see some action, but it's in the form of a pretty
bizarre shipwreck encounter with a crazy person, who comes from the
old neighborhood in Chicago. This was one of the least believable
scenes, not least of which is the coincidence of meeting someone from
many years ago. In Mexico there were details that kept me along (like
the sun and the rocks and the people); in the shipwreck scene
everything seemed flat and uninteresting. All that conversation and
even boredom! Wouldn't you think they'd be afraid for their lives?
Even if they knew they had enough food and water, there has to be real
terror at being on the open sea for so many days. And remember they
were at war! Couldn't an enemy ship come by at any time and take them
prisoner? Or simply shoot them dead?

And after the war, Augie and Stella go to Europe, and I'm still not
sure why. Augie hasn't really learned anything; he still follows
others around blindly and puts himself second. He and Stella are
married, but in the vein of all other women in the book, of course she
hasn't been completely honest with him. Instead of getting angry or
hurt, he forgives her and stay put. He seems happy enough just to be
with her, and he's working for Mintochan; but he's not a self-made man
by any stretch of the imagination. I had thought this novel was
building up for Augie to become a great person, a well-respected
person, a deep thinker and writer. But it doesn't turn out that way.

And we don't get much reflection from Augie on this. It's as if he
just gives up, which is annoying because once the story got going, I
was really rooting for him. And he lets me down. We get a hint of
his thoughts on this: "People don't do what they have a talent for but
what preoccupation leads to. If they're good at auto-repairing they
have to sing Don Giovanni; if they can sing they have to be
architects; and if they have a gift for architecture they wish to
become school superintendents or abstract painters or anything else.
Anything! It's a spite. It's having to prove full and ultimate self-
sufficiency or some such monster dream that you don't need anyone else
to do these things for you." (529)

I got discouraged because I read this as a critique of his own
dreams. But that's not the final word: on the very last page, we get
a little bit more. We get an argument both for and against hope:
"What's so laughable, that [someone] as hard used as that by rough
forces, will still refuse to lead a disappointed life? Or is the laugh
at nature - including eternity - that it thinks it can win over us and
the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will. But that
probably is the joke, on one or the other, and laughing is an enigma
that includes both." He compares himself to Columbus before the
discovery of America. So we don't really know what happens to
Augie.

After finishing the book, I got this from Wikipedia:

The plot of Augie March is never pre-determined. Things
simply happen to Augie, one after another, with no evident story arc
or hint as to where his adventures are leading. This contributes to
the sense that Augie, as the Everyman, is lost in a chaotic world, but
it also enhances the sense that the Everyman, as an autonomous
creation, is in control of his own fate. By turns, Bellow exposes the
alienating forces of the American city, while revealing the great
opportunities that it offers.

I think it's pretty clear that I was expecting self-determination to
win. But this ambiguous ending is maybe more powerful. I think our
author Saul Bellow doesn't want to choose. At first I thought that by
not explicitly choosing self-determination (as I expected), Bellow was
by default choosing fate. My impression was that Augie would just
continue to twist in the wind in France or Chicago or wherever. But
after a more careful reading of the last words of the last scene, I
see that Bellow continues to hold both forces equally in his hands.
It may work out, it may not. That's life.

I guess I'm ending at a place where I don't necessarily like the book,
but I respect it. I'd put it in the top half of my list so far;
better than Lord Jim but not as good as Wide Sargasso Sea.

and as always I'm grateful for the opportunity to post. I discover so
much about myself and my responses through the act of writing.

I have only two more to fully catch up: The Old Wives Tale and
Ironweed. Wish me luck - although I go back to work tomorrow.
booooo....