Humboldt's Gift | Charlie's Friends
Ullmann is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she investigates accusations from Charlie’s friends and acquaintances that Charlie is a snob.
Saul Bellow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Humboldt’s Gift is a novel of much thought and little action, a lot like its main character, Charlie Citrine. Charlie spends a great deal of time inside his own head, exploring anthroposophy, thinking about the blight of boredom in contemporary culture, worrying about his girlfriend, worrying about money, trying to communicate with the dead, and reminiscing about the past. As the novel progresses and his reality worsens, Charlie withdraws all the more from society. Despite the reader’s proximity to the narrator through the first-person...
[The entire page is 1704 words long]
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