Huh — so, the plot of this book, I say to myself, having chosen it at random from Peter Boxall's 1001 Books list, is a rich white guy goes to Africa to learn the meaning of life from the noble savages. Oh, I can see that this will turn out well.Saul Bellow is one of those Big Literary Dudes I've never read, but by reputation I was expecting him to be kind of like Philip Roth or J.M. Coetzee (who I did not love) — lots of manly wangsting to the tune of Fond Memories of Vagina.Okay, let me dial down the snark. If you read Henderson the Rain King with your PC glasses off, it's actually a better book than I was expecting, with a certain exuberance and joie de vivre that endeared it to me. I'm pretty sure "joie de vivre" isn't actually what Saul Bellow was going for, as the protagonist is actually a rather depressive fellow, a middle-aged divorcee whose wife and kids don't understand him, a World War II combat veteran with scars of the sort that that generation never admits to, running off to Africa because despite being rich and comfortable, he can't get no satisfaction, a decade before Mick and the Stones. Actually, Henderson's constant internal refrain is I want, I want, I want, and he spends the entire book trying to figure out what it is he wants.But there is something I liked about that big galoot Henderson, despite the fact that he goes stomping around Africa like the blundering big-nosed American he is. He loves and respects the Africans he meets, referring to them unselfconsciously as "savages" but meaning it in a nice way, and otherwise never displaying any racial prejudices. Is he a great big schmuck? Yes, especially after his attempt to "help" the first tribe he meets goes disastrously wrong. Like the big impervious dumbass white man he is, he walks away unscathed, feeling very, very bad about it. He finds another tribe, becomes a friend and confidant of the king, becomes the Sungo, the Rain God, in an improbable feat that had me rolling my eyes (okay, seriously? You're gonna go there, Mr. Bellow?), but as it turns out, the tribe has been playing their own game all along, using the clueless white guy as an instrument in their machinations since he so kindly presented himself as a useful fool. That being said, just as Henderson has genuine affection for the Africans, in his oblivious, patronizing way, they have genuine affection for him — even if they are willing to literally throw him to the lions, should it come to that.Most of the book, though, is taken up with the inside of Henderson's head, which is a more interesting place than it has any right to be thanks in large part to Saul Bellow's writing."Sometimes a condition must worsen before bettering," he said, and he began to tell me of diseases he had known when he was on the wards as a student, and I tried to picture him as a medical student in a white coat and white shoes instead of the velvet hat adorned with human teeth and the satin slippers. He held the lioness by the head; her broth-colored eyes watched me; those whiskers, suggesting diamond scratches, seemed so cruel that her own skin shrank from them at the base. She had an angry nature. What can you do with an angry nature?Ah, why can't any SF authors write a space opera with prose like that?So this is a book about dudely dissatisfaction, yes, and it is kind of hard to feel sympathy for a millionaire who goes gallivanting off to Africa, deliberately seeking out the untouristed Africa and disappointed that there is so little untouristed Africa left. (As the first tribe he meets out in the hinterlands apologetically explains to him — in English — "We are discovered.") Bearing in mind this was written in the late 50s. Yet I did feel sorry for poor Henderson, and I even liked the guy. He makes a study of his own suffering, but he also tries to do right, ineptly but sincerely. And Saul Bellow paints him in big, bold colors, very much alive, very much complicated, an ultimately puny and comic human figure despite his vigorous strength and enviable wealth.My rating wavered between 3 and 4 stars, so I give it 3.5, and will round to 4. I didn't love it, but would not be averse to reading another of Bellow's works.
Henderson The Rain King certainly provides food for thought. Eugene Henderson's macho character was modeled after another famous E. H. This E. H. was a boozer, went to Africa and carried his macho weight around like a club as does Eugene Henderson, and at times, wanted to blow his brains out. As many people of the day went off to Africa - however, notes Henderson, 'man goes into the external world, and all he can do with it is to shoot it?' Eugene just wants to set the record straight, with himself, because he's grown too fat and feels disgusted, with everything.It's not that Eugene doesn't have everything, because he does. He's inherited a lot of money from his father's estate, he has a wonderful old family home where he raises pigs. He has a wife (second) and lots of children who he rarely bats an eye to. He also strives to play the violin, the same one his father played. But he is a blustery, miserable, drunken sod who yells and carries on - owing to the craving that he is constantly in want.Eugene Henderson decides finally that he has to go to Africa or die in bed. Those are his options. Africa is a wake up call as travel is to live and experience things that one is not accustomed to. He of coarse blunders his way around and is always searching for a foothold. He wants answers and he wants someone to see him for who and what he truly is. And he wants his life to have meaning and purpose. The second African tribe he settles in with (after botching the visit to the first tribe), he makes a good friend in King Dahfu. The king is also in transition trying to abolish some of the old, superstitous ways of his tribe as he is educated and does not rely on superstition alone as the tribe tends to-however, he walks a very fine line.I found this book to be full of little gems such as the allusion to Walt Whitman (Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe!) -"Being. Others were taken up with becoming. Being people have all the breaks. Becoming people are very unlucky, always in a tizzy. The Becoming people are always having to make explanations or offer justifications to the Being people. While Being people provoke these explanations...Enough, enough. Time to have become. Time to be. Burst the spirit's sleep..." I like this sort of thing.Eugene's character grows, he tries to get passed becoming and he realizes the importance of things he took for granted and he also comes to terms with the past and with his own imperfections as a human being. This is a funny book at times, but it wasn't hilarious to me because I realized that much of Eugene's blunders come from his good intentions and from pain itself, but of coarse much of it all is self inflicted and comes from an over inflated ego. At times, Eugene reminded me of Ignatius Reilly with his blowhard, blustery ways of blundering. But throughout the book, I liked him. He does have a good sense of humor.I really enjoyed this book, might not be for all, but if you enjoy a work that speaks for the ages, this is one. Saul Bellow seeks to answer the spirit's call and awaken the soul in the midst of mediocrity, boredom, and uncertainty in an age of material possesions and he does a fine job of it throughout his entire oeuvre. Any one of his books can turn into a soul searching adventure and he does have a magical, rhythmic way with words
What do You think about Henderson The Rain King (1996)?
I read The Adventures of Augie March some 20 years ago and since then have been fully convinced that Saul Bellow is the finest English language novelist of his generation. He is the only one I know of who seems to sum up his age: his work calls for a multiplicity of responses that reflect the multiplicity of his times. Even when his characters seem trapped in some sort of spiritual impasse, the world around them teams with meaning. There is an energy in his world, one that is created through the dynamism and richness of his prose. Yet, for some reason, I’m not sure how much a like him. Some of my uncertainties I can identify – I can forgive male writers who fail to create strong women characters, but Bellow’s women tend to be monstrous: there seems to be an underlying misogynist terror of women in his work – but others I cannot put my finger on...I am just left with a certain disquietude. Henderson the Rain King is one of his most famous and admired works, written in the late 1950s when he is generally regarded to be at his peak, yet, while finding it astonishing in its parts, the work of a great writer, overall I think it is an unsatisfactory work...the failed work of a major writer. Written in first person, the prose is colloquial, lacking obvious literary finesse, and reflects the larger than life central character, dynamic, unruly, unsettled, like a bull in a china shop: it feels as though he is always shouting at us and the world. Typically for Bellow, Henderson’s life is at an impasse. Despite his privileged background and success as a war hero, his life seems aimless, his first marriage has broken down and his second seems rocky, he is alienated from his children and almost on a whim he became a pig farmer...and now a failing pig farmer. His and the book’s way out of this impasse is to have him head for Africa. He comes across one tribe who are peaceful and seemingly wise, but Henderson inadvertently brings disaster upon them. A second tribe are a tougher bunch, more macho, and here Henderson fits in better, is befriended by the king and becomes the ‘Rain King’. But there are dangers. This Africa and the Africans are no more ‘real’ than the South Americans in Voltaire’s Candide: the story remains about Henderson and his development, Africa is a land of symbolisms...at least I presume it is...I am just unsure what the symbolism is. Without a grasp of this the book just seems a series of picturesque adventures, a character of bravado, egotism and the occasional uncertainty, rushing through situations, sometimes successful, sometimes endangered, sometimes a failure. By the end I am unsure that anything has been accomplished, although it feels as though we are being bullied into feeling a certain optimistic hope, but I find it imposed and a little sentimental. It is all vivid and dynamic, but I have no sense what it is all doing...but that might be my failure.
—Nick Jones
Are the modern achievements of civilization good or evil? Isn’t it better to return to the primordial roots and become a part of a nature?Henderson – “a giant shadow, a man of flesh and blood, a restless seeker, pitiful and rude, a stubborn old lush with broken bridgework, threatening death and suicide” – is tired of civilization and in search of human origins he runs away to Africa.“All human accomplishment has this same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!”But an intellectual among the profane people is like a sailor marooned on a deserted island among mice.“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's”.
—Vit Babenco
This is the fifth Saul Bellow novel I have read. I started with his first, The Dangling Man (1944) and moved along. I don't know that he is currently read much (and I don't know why), but I just love his novels. I would think that an author who won three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize should be an American treasure.Henderson is a character who could only have been created by Bellow. Larger than life, literally and figuratively, socially embarrassing, personally challenged as a husband and a father, and richer than Croesus, he moves through life leaving a wake of disaster.Due to various events including having become bored of being a pig farmer, Henderson decides to go to Africa, looking for adventure and personal redemption. He finds both, his well-intentioned but calamitous antics among the natives affording him access to tribal royalty.As I read on, enjoying every page, I began to see that simmering below the picaresque and the improbable was satire of the highest order. Is this the year I learn to understand and appreciate satire? It keeps popping up in the most unexpected novels and I have learned that it must be tastefully done or it drives me mad.So in 1959, Bellow published a novel that spoofs the mid-life crisis, the search for personal fulfillment, the African safari, and the American can-do attitude. At the same time, Henderson actually resolves his mid-life crisis, finds personal fulfillment, has the best ever safari (yes, there are lion hunts), and refines his American bull-headed ways.How did he do that?
—Judy
