Book Review: Some days you just feel like an idiot. There are good and bad writers, and there are good and bad readers. I was a bad reader of Humboldt's Gift. Saul Bellow is a famous and lauded writer: he won the Nobel and Humboldt's Gift won the Pulitzer. This book has loads of ideas, references, allusions, and what must be brilliance. I even read up on the poet Delmore Schwartz (who is Humboldt in the book). It wasn't the occasional whiff of bigotry, I just didn't care about the main character, who continually seemed to make stupid and unkind decisions. And Bellow didn't show me why such a smart guy should make such bad decisions. Should I care about such a person? Why turn the page when I don't care what happens? It's not so much that I didn't like the character. I've read many books with unlikable characters, and kept reading because I wanted to know what happened, what choices they made; sometimes I wanted them to get their just desserts. But here it was apathy. No writer should be trying to create apathy -- there's an overabundance already. What was the point, to attack his wife?Could I not relate to the time and place? I've been to the Shire and Westeros, but couldn't get New York? I expected to like Humboldt's Gift, but didn't, and the main character didn't interest me. I did turn all 487 pages, but after all those words the resolution did not seem revelatory. I don't know whether I failed to connect with the book or with Saul Bellow. I have to resign myself: for this book I was a bad reader. And I'm still deciding whether to try again. [3 Stars]
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