The American Century: Literature since 1945 579he is confined. “I know this double power,” another character tells Augie, “that if you
make a move you may lose, but if you sit still you will decay.” Faced with this double
power, Augie’s solution is to run and dodge: to slip between the fixities and definites
of the social world and the swamp-like inertia of the isolated self – and to find
freedom in movement, the provisional and the possible. “Look at me going
everywhere!” Augie declares at the end of the novel. “Why, I am a sort of Columbus
of those near-at-hand ... this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every
gaze.” It is a characteristically American conclusion, as Bellow knows only too well,
and signals by making the last word of the book “America.” Augie brags for humanity
as much as himself, in expressing the belief, the hope that somehow, somewhere the
double poser can be solved, civilization and consciousness can be squared.
The novel that competes with Augie March as arguably Bellow’s finest, Herzog
(1964), signals a return to a more introspective, meditative form. Moses Herzog, the
narrator, is possessed, as he is only too aware, of a representative modern mind,
“inconstant, divided, vacillating.” He is caught between the isolated ambit of con-
sciousness, a place of retreat for the formulation of ideal patterns, and the teeming
surfaces of society, where those patterns seem to be bombarded out of existence by
a welter of details. “The human soul is amphibian,” Herzog reflects, “and I have
touched its sides.” And his own amphibious nature compels him to vacillate, hysteri-
cally but it seems helplessly. He feels driven out of the world by the waste land of
information, the petty distractions that surround him there, as well as those he calls
“Reality-Instructors” who would shape him in his own image – his second wife, his
mistress, his brother. Yet he senses that to immerse himself in the fluid elements of
his own lonely consciousness can be equally destructive and irresponsible. It might
also be impossible since, as he observes at one point, “public life drives out private
life. The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of ‘political’ – the
obsessions, the compulsions of collectivity) the more individuality seems lost.” He is
torn, a man dangling between pride and humility, self-assertion and self-mockery,
assertion of his power and confession of his impotence. He makes forays, skirmishes
into the streets, then withdraws. He writes “letters” to establish contacts with the
world outside, but he does not complete or read them. No more than Augie March,
or Bellow’s other protagonists, does he heal this gap, this fissure in himself, as well as
between himself and his world. But, just as much as they, he remains convinced of
the possibility of healing, the chance of resolution. “The dream of man’s heart,
however much we may distrust and resent it,” Herzog reflects, “is that life may complete
itself in significant pattern. Some incomprehensible way. Before death.” That dream
stays with him. He refuses to accept that all facts are “nasty,” or that the “intensity,”
the occasional “idiot joy” within him “doesn’t ... mean anything.” And he closes the
story with a sense of peace and promise, which seems to exist outside language.
“At this time he had no messages for anyone,” the novel concludes. “Nothing. Not a
single word.” The conclusion is beautifully, meaningfully equivocal. Since Herzog is
our source of information here, as throughout the narrative, we cannot be sure
whether the peace and promise he has found is an assured discovery or a pious hope.
What we can be sure of, however, is that his creator, Bellow, has taken us on one ofGGray_c05.indd 579ray_c 05 .indd 579 8 8/1/2011 7:31:32 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 32 PM