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The Actual: A Novella (Penguin Classics) Paperback – October 21, 2009

by Saul Bellow (Author), Joseph O'Neill (Contributor)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 57 ratings
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“The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time.” –The New York Times Book Review

A Penguin Classic

In this dazzling work of fiction, Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow writes comically and wisely about the tenacious claims of first love. Harry Trellman, an aging, astute businessman, has never belonged anywhere and is as awkward in his human attachments as he is gifted in observing the people around him. But Harry's observational talents have not gone unnoticed by "trillionaire" Sigmund Adletsky, who retains Harry as his advisor. Soon the old man discovers Harry's intense forty-year passion for a twice-divorced interior designer, Amy Wustrin. At the exhumation and reburial of her husband, Harry is provided, thanks to Sigmund, perhaps the final means for disclosing feelings amassed over a lifetime. Written late in Bellow's career, The Actual is a maestro's dissection of the affairs of the heart.

This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Joseph O'Neill.

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.
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  1. Print length
    96 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    October 21, 2009
  4. Dimensions
    5.06 x 0.24 x 7.75 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0143105841
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0143105848
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"A mature distillation of Mr. Bellow's work . . . a gem."
-The New York Times

" The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time."
-The New York Times Book Review

" [A] wonderful book . . . fully worthy of a place in its author's vastly esteemed oeuvre."
-Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Saul Bellow was praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose. Born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, he was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marines.

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."

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (October 21, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143105841
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143105848
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.84 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.24 x 7.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 57 ratings

About the author

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Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

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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.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
57 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jacob Arnon
5.0 out of 5 stars I like the book very much
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
I've read it many times and it was fun listening to the narration
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B. Ward
4.0 out of 5 stars future reading
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2014
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I bought this book to add to my collection of Saul Bellow works, and I will read it in due course.
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JAK
3.0 out of 5 stars This is actually about the actual
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2013
This is a good novella and really was a pleasant change from the crazy stuff I'd been reading lately.I note that one reviewer absolutely hates the ending.The ending may seem trite but it is indeed about the lead character confronting the actual which is often trite.Harry , needs a bit of "embodying".He's a bit too detached and ethereal.There is no significant plot here.Nothing much happens.My favorite quote from the book is as follows-These were all commonplace persons.I would never let them think so, but it's time to admit that I looked down on them.They were lacking in higher motives.They were run-of -of-the mill products of our mass democracy... -.Now , that's fun(and actually kind of funny on more than one level).That is Harry.If you enjoy this kind of thing -sharp,honest,unflattering- you'll have a good time with this book.Harry faces - not quite the end- but the beginning of the end with considerable intelligence and a fair amount of sense.It's nice to see.Yes, this is an old mans book!
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Bob the norske
5.0 out of 5 stars Saul Bellow, what more is there to say?
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2006
Verified Purchase
Like other later short works, this is a little gem. Bellows account of an old and futile love is full of the kinds of regrets and second guessing that goes with old age. Well worth a read and fully satisfying.
2 people found this helpful
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Alfred J. Kwak
5.0 out of 5 stars Farewell by a giant
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2018
Given his almost Japanese appearance, Jewish Harry Trellman is a life-long outsider, at the orphanage and school (too brainy), on the street. Saul Bellow leaves much of his adult life to his readers’ imagination. There is mention of Burma and Guatemala, dealing in or restoring local art, possibly as a cover for other jobs requiring being a keen observer, listener and analyst. When young he fell in love with Amy, who married other men and for forty years he communes with her mentally, every day. Finally, he resettles in Chicago where he starts an art gallery/consultancy. His analytic talents are noticed during a dinner party by 92-year old hotel mogul Sigmund Adletsky, who hires him as advisor, sounding board on people: they gossip seriously...
To what effect is for readers to find out. Whilst Harry remains largely mysterious, the rest of the cast is much better portrayed, incl. his dream girl Amy, her two husbands, a toy millionaire and his murderous wife, even billionaire Sigmund and his sprightly wife (91), both tiny and razor-sharp in their dotage.
At times philosophical, introspective, ironic, scathing and hilarious, this wonderful novella by a deep writer whose time was almost up, also offers a non-religious, fully realistic resurrection from the grave and a happy ending. A triumphant farewell of a great author.
One person found this helpful
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Stephen P. Daly
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2021
Verified Purchase
The description of this product was "like new." But when I purchased it there were creased pages inside and red ink on the cover. It did seem "like new" to me.
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Jack Ridley
4.0 out of 5 stars Slow Start, But Stronger Finish
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2005
I am a Bellow fan and have read 12 of his 13 novels, and created an amazon guide: "A Guide to Reading Saul Bellow."

In case you are new to Bellow, his novels reflect his life, his writings, and his five marriages during his five active decades of writing. He hit his peak somewhere around the time of "Augie March" in 1953 and continued through to the Pulitzer novel "Humbolt's Gift" in 1973. He wrote from the early 1940s through to 2000. His novels are written in a narrative form, and the main character is a Jewish male, usually a writer but not always, and he is living in either in New York or Chicago. Bellow wrote approximately 13 novels plus other works. Bellow progressed a long way as a writer over the five decades. This story was written near the end of his career in 1997 and is nothing like the early novels "Dangling Man" or "The Victim" written 50 years earlier. Those were heavy slow reads. "Dangling Man" is often boring, and Bellow was in search of his writing style in that period of the 1940s. The present novel is light reading, written in an easy to follow style and is just over 100 pages, barely more than a short story. It has some merit but it is a far cry from the brilliant writing of "Herzog" or the entertaining read "Humbolt's Gift."

What was surprising for myself was the very slow start to the book. The first 20 pages or so seem a bit aimless, and it is not until the central character Harry, a retired businesman re-unites with his teenage flame Amy Wustrin, that the story takes off. They meet by chance and work to help a Chicago millionaire and to look after the burial of Amy's dead husband. As in other Bellow novels, there is a lot of self examination and many recalls by Harry of past memories of the times that Amy and Harry spent together in their early years - decades earlier as teenagers.

The slow pace picks up in the second half and it has a surprise ending. To explain the title would be to explain the plot and surprise ending. It is an interesting read but definitely a notch or two below most of his other works.

This is an interesting Bellow read, but not the first that I would recommend by Bellow. It lacks the charm, the prose, and the complexity of some of his other novels written between 1950 and 1980.
5 people found this helpful
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