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Dangling Man (Penguin Classics) Paperback – September 26, 2006
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A Penguin Classic
Expecting to be inducted into the army to fight in World War II, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Saul Bellow's first novel documents Joseph's psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Print length160 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Classics
- Publication dateSeptember 26, 2006
- Dimensions5.1 x 0.41 x 7.7 inches
- ISBN-100143039873
- ISBN-13978-0143039877
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“One of the most honest pieces of testimony on the psychology of a whole generation who have grown up during the Depression and the war,” –Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker
“In this imaginative journal, set against fresh and vivid scenes in Chicago, the author has outlined what must seem to many others an uncannily accurate delineation of themselves.” –The New York Times
“An extraordinary first novel.” –The Observer
About the Author
His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970); Humboldt's Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Dean's December (1982); More Die of Heartbreak (1987); Theft (1988); The Bellarosa Connection (1989);The Actual (1996); Ravelstein (2000); and, most recently, Collected Stories(2001). Bellow has also produced a prolific amount of non-fiction, collected in To Jerusalem and Back, a personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975, and It All Adds Up, a collection of memoirs and essays.
Bellow's many awards include the International Literary Prize for Herzog, for which he became the first American to receive the prize; the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens; the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish Literature"; and America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award has been made to a literary personage. In 1976 Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."
John Michael Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940. He studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa’s highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Classics; Revised edition (September 26, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 160 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0143039873
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143039877
- Item Weight : 4.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.1 x 0.41 x 7.7 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #268,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #97 in Epistolary Fiction (Books)
- #3,032 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #16,704 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Saul Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel HUMBOLDT'S GIFT in 1975, and in 1976 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.' He is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, for THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH, HERZOG, and MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET
Photo by Keith Botsford [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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The novel is set in 1942/43. The US is in WW2, the depression is not fully over. We read the diary of a young Canadian called Joseph, who is waiting to be called up to the US army (North Africa campaign ongoing). He apologizes (to whom?) for writing a diary, which in itself is too soft and emotional and not in line with the requirements of the age of hard-boileddom, as he fears.
He lives in Chicago, is unemployed (as he gave up his job in a travel agency expecting to be called up faster), married, bored, `dangling'. He is something of a lost intellectual. He is alienated from his family, his friends, even from his own former self (he says he wears the cast off clothes of his own former self). When he quit his job, he planned to read and to write essays. It has not happened. He is aggressive, searching fights where he can find them. His poverty is self-inflicted, as his brother, who made it in business, has offered him a job, which he declined, as he also rejects help in form of money. He had been a radical student, but has only contempt for that line of thought now. He wants to be non-conformist, but takes care not to conform too much to non-conformism. A dangling man.
Joseph observes himself and tries to understand his situation. The expected call up for war almost seems like the only salvation in sight. He despises the war. He hopes to survive it, but would rather be a victim than a beneficiary. He does not try to become an officer. What's wrong with being a private?
Life in his circles seems more like St.Petersburg, London or Paris than America. There is writing ancestry in Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Orwell, Camus, Sartre here. Nausea or even The Stranger come to mind.
My personal reaction: I find it much more readable than I expected. Bellow is a bit of an unknown continent to me. I remember that I read Humboldt's Gift 30 years ago, and enjoyed it despite understanding it only half. After this Dangling Man I will certainly go for more.
Top reviews from other countries
Er hat jetzt die totale Freiheit, macht nichts, "hängt herum" und lebt einfach ohne jede Aktivität in den Tag hinein. Den Lebensunterhalt verdient seine Ehefrau. Sie wohnen erbärmlich in einer winzigen möblierten Wohnung mit anderen Mietern zusammen.
Sein Tag besteht aus dem späten Aufstehen, Zeitung gelesen, ab und zu werden kleine Spaziergänge unternommen. Und natürlich nimmt er sein Frühstück, seinen Lunch und sein Dinner außer Haus in irgendwelchen kleinen Lokalitäten zu sich. Das Ganze spielt sich in Chicago ab.
Er genießt diesen Zustand. Er will diese totale Freiheit erproben. Freunde bieten ihm bis zur Einberufung Arbeit an, er lehnt dies jedoch immer wieder hartnäckig ab. Er möchte einfach die absolute Freiheit und Unabhängigkeit ausleben. An Handlung geschieht wenig, gesprochen wird viel. Er erörtert seine Gedanken mit zum Teil fiktiven Personen, zum Teil mit irgendwelchen Bekannten. Diese Gespräche sind teilweise sehr tiefgehend, hochphilosophisch. Grundfragen des Seins werden besprochen. Es ist ein Genuss, diesen Gedanken zu folgen. Auf der anderen Seite zerinnt vieles im Banalen. Die Ehefrau spielt eine seltsam passive Nebenrolle und ist eigentlich nicht einbezogen in seine Gedankenwelt.
Die Welten zwischen denen er schwebt werden vorgeführt. Auf der einen Seite das absolut konservative, nach Erfolg und Wohlstand strebende bürgerliche Leben, welches er u.a. in der eigenen Familie und der seiner Frau bei Einladungen immer wieder vorgelebt bekommt. Dies lehnt der inzwischen absolut und konsequent ab, er gibt diese Kontakte zuletzt auf. Auf der anderen Seite steht der zu erwartende Militärdienst .
Er scheitert jedoch an dieser absoluten Freiheit. Er kann mit diesem Leben schließlich nichts anfangen. In seinem Umfeld ist er immer isolierter, Konflikte nehmen zu, er ist mit sich selbst nicht mehr im Reinen. Er erträgt die Freiheit nicht, sie richtet ihn zu Grunde. Er weiß zwar, dass das "innere Leben", die Gedanken, die "geistige Welt in uns" das Wichtigste überhaupt sind. Er erkennt jedoch schmerzlich, dass dieses Leben in absoluter Einsamkeit, ohne jede Bindung, zwar mit allen Freiheiten, jedoch ohne soziale Kontakte und ohne Liebe für ihn und wohl auch für den Menschen überhaupt nicht erträglich ist. Seine Idee ist gescheitert.
Er entschließt sich ganz kurzfristig zum sofortigen Kriegsdienst in der Armee. Innerhalb von einer Woche wird er eingezogen zum Militärdienst. Er schreit förmlich nach engen Plänen, die andere für ihn aufstellen. Er möchte eingekerkert sein in Zwänge. Er möchte, dass andere für ihn bestimmen, was er zu tun hat.
Der Abschied von seinem so genannten völlig freien Leben und auch der Abschied von seinem früheren etablierten Leben, sowie von seiner Ehefrau ist eigentümlich lau und leer.
Seine Worte zum Schluss beim Einzug in die Armee:
"I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.
Hurray for regular hours! And for supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!"
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