Book Review: "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow

A few years back I read my very first text by Saul Bellow - the American realist author of the mid-20th century and I am not going to lie to you when I say that I hated everything about it. It was dry and droning on and on, I could not stand any of the characters or the writing style and yet, it was supposed to be one of the best books ever written according to a lot of people. The book was called “The Adventures of Augie March”. I read it some years later at the age of around twenty-three and, thinking my nineteen-year-old self had just had a bad day, tried to read it again. It was all the same. I could not stand it still. I tried some other books by Saul Bellow such as “Herzog” and “It All Adds Up”, “Henderson the Rain King” was also one of the fictions of boredom I tried. But all of them were terrible experiences for me. This is nothing on Saul Bellow as a writer, I can appreciate the fact that lots of people love his works but they are just not for me. I find that his characters spend far too much time talking about themselves instead of exploring the deeper and wider angles of life. But that changed slightly when I read a book called “Dangling Man”. This is the Saul Bellow novel which changed my mind ever so slightly, about him and his works.

“Dangling Man” is a book about a man who lives in Chicago and is so sure he will get drafted into the war that he quits his job and gets rid of a lot of clutter in his life such as: things that would routinely take up his time. After the draft comes and goes and he is still in Chicago, he spends his time floundering between unemployment, meeting new people and conscious that the draft may come around at any particular moment. Though not much physically happens in the story, I can appreciate the way it is told. There is an extreme focus on the fact that the man is quite literally ‘dangling’ between these two times in history. There is the first time which is the draft into the army and then there is the second time which is the dissatisfaction with the new and more modern way of life. As he tries to sort out his own life from now on, we get this feeling of anxiousness from him. The anxiousness both caused by having to join the army and not having to join the army. There is both a disappointment in having to go to war but also a disappointment that he may be letting everyone down if he does not. It is a perfect toppling of the patriotic idea of ‘everyone wants to join the army’ - because even though everyone does because it is considered ‘good and right’, nobody really wants to go overseas and have a high chance of getting themselves killed.

“Dangling Man” is written brilliantly with epic precision on the mind’s alteration when what you expect to happen though good or bad, does not actually happen. This feeling of uselessness really reminded me of one of my favourite books entitled “Kafka was the Rage” by Anatole Broyard. It reminded me of the fact that there is almost no life between going to and not going to war and the fact that this was written by Saul Bellow really surprised me. For once I felt like I actually enjoyed this writer and I feel a hell of a lot better about him now than I ever did.