Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Bellow, Saul (Vol. 200) - Michael Davis (essay date winter 2003)

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Michael Davis (essay date winter 2003)

SOURCE: Davis, Michael. “Unraveling Ravelstein: Saul Bellow's Comic Tragedy.” Perspectives on Political Science 32, no. 1 (winter 2003): 26-31.

[In the following essay, Davis discusses Ravelstein as a comic tragedy.]

Ravelstein begins with the word “odd”; it introduces a reflection on the amusing character of the benefactors of mankind. If this beginning is, as advertised, a “clever or wicked footnote” (2), its clever wickedness surely must consist in making us think of Abe Ravelstein as an exemplar of this oddity.¹ A page later the narrator of the novel, Chick, says of the man he is memorializing, “Ravelstein was one of those large men—large, not stout” (3). This proves to be Ravelstein's leitmotif. “He was very tall” (4) (especially compared to his father who was a “fat neurotic little man” [17]). Ravelstein, a “tall pin- or chalk-striped...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John L. Brown (review date winter 1995)
   2. Sanford Pinsker (essay date spring 1995)
   3. Richard K. Cross (review date spring 1995)
   4. Jerrald Ranta (essay date fall 1995)
   5. Ethan Goffman (essay date winter 1997)
   6. James W. Tuttleton (review date June 1997)
   7. James Wood (review date 16 June 1997)
   8. Alfred Kazin (review date 26 June 1997)
   9. Philip Hensher (review date 9 August 1997)
   10. Karl Miller (review date 22 August 1997)
   11. Marvin J. LaHood (review date winter 1998)
   12. Faye Kuzma (essay date summer 1998)
   13. Martin Corner (essay date spring 2000)
   14. Penelope Fitzgerald (review date 15 April 2000)
   15. Jonathan Yardley (review date 9-15 April 2000)
   16. Jonathan Levi (review date 23 April 2000)
   17. Christopher Hitchens (review date 27 April 2000)
   18. Louis Menand (review date 25 May 2000)
   19. John Leonard (review date 29 May 2000)
   20. Adam Feldman (review date fall 2000)
   21. Adam Phillips (review date fall 2000)
   22. Rita D. Jacobs (review date autumn 2000)
   23. Igor Webb (essay date spring 2001)
   24. Bharat Tandon (review date 21 April 2001)
   25. Diana Hendry (review date 8 December 2001)
   26. Stephen Amidon (review date 10 December 2001)
   27. Gloria L. Cronin (essay date 2001)
   28. Morris Dickstein (review date 18 January 2002)
   29. John L. Brown (review date spring 2002)
   30. David K. Nichols (essay date winter 2003)
   31. Michael Davis (essay date winter 2003)
   32. Algis Valiunas (essay date September 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Saul Bellow