From Library Journal
Bellow's 1953 novel is among the first crop in Penguin's new "Great Books of the 20th Century" series, which will see 15 additional volumes published through January 2000. Each is a quality trade-size paperback on heavy, ragged-edged, acid-free paper. Volumes range from Conrad's 1902 Heart of Darkness to Toni Morrison's 1987 Beloved. Prices will run from roughly $10.95 to $14.95. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Martin Amis
"The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further."


Book Description
Among the names in the papers in 1953-from Khrushchev to Charlie Chaplin, from Dwight Eisenhower to the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth-was Saul Bellow's, whose The Adventures of Augie March attracted enormous attention for its fresh, bold, exhilarating voice and thrust Saul Bellow into the international literary limelight. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication, Viking is reissuing Bellow's landmark novel in a beautiful new hardcover edition, with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. The Adventures of Augie March set the stage for Bellow's Nobel Prize Award in 1976 and established him as a crucial voice that demanded to be heard. Fifty years later, it remains the best loved of Bellow's works as new readers discover this vital, truly American masterpiece.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1953. It is a picaresque story of a poor Jewish youth from Chicago, his progress, sometimes highly comic, through the world of the 20th century, and his attempts to make sense of it. The Adventures of Augie March won the National Book Award in 1954.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Augie, the exuberant narrator-hero, is a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Depression. His mother, deserted by her husband, has taken in a tough old boarder, Grandma Lausch, who rules the family - slow-witted Georgie, ambitious Simon, super-observant Augie - like a benevolent despot. Augie's friends set out to make their fortunes in various ways, but he sees himself as chosen for a special destiny. A "born recruit," he makes himself available for a series of occupations, then proudly rejects each one as unworthy. Instead of allowing himself to be drafted, he takes matters into his own hands. The choices that he makes independently are - to say the least - eccentric.

"Life among the Machiavellians" is the subtitle Mr. Bellow privately chooses to describe the ups and downs of Augie's unsteady life. Augie's own oddity is reflected in the companions he encounters - plungers, schemers, risk-takers, "hole and corner" operators like the would-be tycoon Einhorn or the would-be siren Thea, who travels with an eagle trained to hunt small creatures.

In this fiftieth-anniversary reissue, with its introduction by Christopher Hitchens, this extraordinary novel is made available to a new generation of readers.

SYNOPSIS

This National Book Award-winning novel takes place in Depression-era Chicago and is not only a testimony on human nature but also of the drive to succeed. The novel follows the adventures of a lifelong dreamer named Augie March, who only through failure after failure finally succeeds in the end. The novel recreates life during the Depression and is filled with memorable characters.

FROM THE CRITICS

Robert Gorham Davis - The New York Times

In writing a long, crowded picaresque narrative of ups and downs of fortune, letting the hero tell his own life history in the first person, Mr. Bellow goes back to the earliest and most generic form of the novel. It is a form which has always been congenial to observant humorists who relish human variety, who are fertile in creating characters and who are not afraid to seem more interested in life than in art.

Martin Amis - The Atlantic Monthly

The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further. All the trails went cold 42 years ago. The quest did what quests very rarely do; it ended.

Christopher Hitchens - The Wilson Quarterly

I do not set up as a member of the jury in the Great American Novel contest, if only because I￯﾿ﾽd prefer to see the white whale evade capture a while longer. It￯﾿ﾽs more interesting that way. However, we do belong to a ranking species, and there￯﾿ﾽs no denying that the contest is a real one. The advantage The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow￯﾿ﾽs third novel, has over The Great Gatsby (1925), which, coincidentally, was F. Scott Fitzgerald￯﾿ﾽs third novel too, derives from its scope, its optimism, and, I would venture, its principles.... Not much in Bellow￯﾿ﾽs preceding work prepared readers for The Adventures of Augie March. It￯﾿ﾽs not necessary to believe, as I do, that the novel is the summit of his career (he has published 19 books to date), but let￯﾿ﾽs call Augie his gold standard.

The New Republic