The Adventures of Augie March

A Novel

Hardcover, 536 pages

English language

Published Sept. 18, 1953 by The Viking Press.

OCLC Number:
279587
Goodreads:
1068077

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Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March is written on the grand scale, and if a label must be found for it, you can call it heroic comedy. In his search for a large and imaginative form, Bellow has looked side-wise at Cervantes and Rabelais, and the result is a celebration of life that is both fantastic and realistic, tragic and clowning.

Augie, the exuberant narrator-hero, is a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Depression. His neighborhood friends settle down in devious chosen professions, but Augie, as particular as an aristocrat, demands a special destiny. A "born recruit," he latches on to a wild succession of occupations, then proudly rejects each one as too limiting. It is not until he tangles with a glamorous perfectionist named Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, that his independence is seriously threatened. Luckily, his nature (like the eagle's) breaks down under the …

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