. Spinning .

Realized that this book took me almost a month to read, though it was thoroughly enjoyable and it is clearly lack of time rather than interest that interrupted it so often.  It’s actually become one of my favorites.

I’m totally taken in by Bellow’s protagonist, Henderson.  He is a passionate idealist with hands made up of all thumbs.  He is the mid-life crisis that goes awry, aided by wealth to send him off on opportunity.

There is, to me, a touch of magical realism here in Henderson’s larger than life personality, as if it embodies all of man’s dreams and wonderment.  His childhood, his travels, his way with women, the adventures that almost always turn into misadventure are all to the extreme, even beyond that which money and position afford him.  Bellow is asking just as much of us as would Marquez in suspension of disbelief when in the darkest core of Africa he happens upon a village plagued by frogs, a king who plays with a lion. 

The dysfunctional family in which Henderson was reared, by a father who he felt resented him for living while his brother was drowned at a young age, is a script that continues as he cannot seem to communicate nor understand his own five children.  He has a teenage daughter who brings home a baby she’s "found" and hides it in a closet.  There is a reaching out to each other for love that seems to find glass walls that prohibit any real closeness. 

There is also a feeling taken from novels such as Gatsby or Mrs. Dalloway, that smacks of an earlier decade in the century and a wealth that allowed a devil-may-care attitude.  Yet the character of Henderson touches something inside of us that relates to him, that would love to have known him had he been real.  Perhaps it’s the pathos of tragi-comedy in his manner.  He may seem to some to be a bumbling, socially inept bully yet there is an endearing quality about him that says his heart is in the right place and we forgive him the naivete of his nature.

I loved the story, Bellow giving the novel its full complement of conflict and pacing of action to surround the basic character-driven plot.  All the major and minor characters, Lily, Romilayu, Dahfu, and the rest were all fully developed, rounded, serving a purpose to interact with the character of Henderson, admittedly a tough act to follow.  It is a story of quest, a hero that is not quite what we expect and who fails miserably more often than not and so we cheer him on. 

With the intrigue of the opening line: What made me take this trip to Africa? and the incessant I want! we are pulled through the innermost reflections of a man who feels he must find something in himself even as he hears the bell toll.  His latest challenge to himself now has the additional burden of a deadline.  It appears that the spikes of tension that provide excitement for the reader coil like barbed wire around that underlying quest for self.  And the answer he seeks to the voice that cries "I want!"–well, this:

It wanted reality.  How much unreality could it stand?  (p. 298)

I would argue that Henderson’s reality may be in fact unreality to others because of his peculiar worldview.  Does he find what he seeks?  It appears so, as he heads home with the lion cub that represents his friend in his lap and the sworn intention to change and see love as the real source of happiness.  But then, we’ve been fooled by Henderson’s enthusiasm before.  As has he.

(Note:  This official site on Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King makes me think both that I’ve missed much in my comprehension, and also that the reader is free to make anything of anything, just as Barthes insists.

Ah, two more of my favorite subjects, after perception and…I forget the other one (nice; this may be the first online case history of Alzheimer’s to follow as it progresses.  Maybe You-Tube should be incorporated, sort of a reality show?).

But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn’t last forever?  There may be something in this.  And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal?  That is no time in bliss.  All the clocks were thrown out of heaven.  (p. 295)

Henderson is grieving the loss of his friend and facing the future as the next king of the Wariri.  (Not only did the lion kill the king, it was the wrong lion anyway–hah!)  But I love the little sparks of wisdom that Bellow infuses into Henderson. 

Time as an invention of man.  True, as far as the calculation of it and what is time, after all, but a calculation?

As a rule I never read the critical analyses of a novel before I’ve finished it myself, although I have sought help on Faulkner until I got used to him, and always check them out afterwards.  And on a book without a dust jacket, such as this copy of Bellow’s Henderson (which, by the way, I find to be a first edition that I got for $1.00 at a library sale and is likely a bit more valuable!), where I have no idea what the story is about and am deliberating between  books as to what to read next (according to mood), I have checked Amazon’s page for a clue.

There it was said that Henderson possibly represented America in his bold, brash, superior manner towards life and towards third world countries.  Hmm, interesting, I thought.

Keeping this stored somewhere in the back of my mind while reading, I could see a possible basis for the theory and wished that I could become so intuitive as to recognize something such as this in novels all by myself.  Then I got to page 260:

"Americans are supposed to be dumb but they are willing to go into this.  It isn’t just me.  You have to think about white Protestantism and the Constitution and the Civil War and capitalism and winning the West.  All the major tasks and the big conquests were done before my time.  That left the biggest problem of all, which was to encounter death.  We’ve just got to do something about it.  It isn’t just me.  Millions of Americans have gone forth since the war to redeem the present and discover the future.  (…) And it’s the destiny of my generation of Americans to go out in the world and try to find the wisdom of life.  It just is.  Why the hell do you think I’m out here, anyway?"

Well that certainly didn’t take a lot of intuition to arrive at this conclusion, now did it.

While Henderson grits his teeth and plays with the king’s lioness in order to learn something about himself, we’re not sure if he’s really gotten it yet.  The entire premise of this book is based on character change–one of the biggies of story–and God, how badly we want Henderson to succeed.  He’s gotten it into his head that he’s going to go back to school and become a doctor, thus helping humanity. This, in a letter to his wife–which idea to write to her at all may be one sign of change–is still, pure Henderson and just too great to keep to myself and those who’ve already had the pleasure of this novel:

Aren’t you excited?  Dearest girl, as a doctor’s wife you’ll have to be more clean, bathe more often and wash your things.  You will have to get used to broken sleep, night calls and all of that.  I haven’t decided yet where to practice.  I guess if I tried it at home I’d scare the neighbors to pieces.  If I put my ear against their chests as an M.D., they’d jump out of their skins.  (p. 268)

By the way, he’s just asked her in this letter to call a few places such as Johns Hopkins to try to get him signed up.  The letter goes on:

Therefore, I may apply for missionary work, like Dr. Wilfred Grenfell or Albert Schweitzer.  Hey!  Axel Munthe–how about him?  Naturally China is out, now.  They might catch us and brainwash us.  Ha, ha!  But we might try India.  I do want to get my hands on the sick.  I want to cure them.  Healers are sacred.

I love it!  Henderson doesn’t walk, he leaps, thus missing a few steps along the path.  He assumes that with his new outlook the only thing he has to worry about to make it all perfect is warn his wife to wash.  There’s also a touch of self-indulgence, well, more than a touch, in his words that taints the nobility of the intention:  Healers are sacred.

There’s also Henderson’s thoughts interspersed with this that don’t get written into the letter.  At the end of the above quoted section, this:

I have been so bad myself I believe there must be a virtue in me, finally. 

These private reflections are a bit more telling; of what Henderson more honestly believes and of what he still cannot communicate.  Here, we get an idea that he may be catching on:

I had a voice that said, I want! I want!  I?  It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want.  And moreover, it’s love that makes reality reality.  The opposite makes the opposite. (p. 269)

Certainly there is an object that serves as leitmotif throughout this book, as it becomes nearly an annoyance to read again and again and yet be unable to ferret out it’s symbolism.

He said, "Why are you blustering at me so with your face?  You have a perilous expression." (p. 242)

Then he sighed and said, with his ernest mouth which even in the shadow of his hat had a very red color, "Fear is a ruler of mankind.  It has the biggest dominion of all."  (p. 243)

I was gripping the inside of my cheek with my teeth, including the broken bridgework, while my eyes shut, slowly, and my face became, as I was highly aware, one huge mass of acceptance directed toward fate. (p. 210)

He still dangled a skull (perhaps of his father) by the long smooth ribbon and wore human teeth sewed to his large-brimmed hat.  (p. 185)

When she came closer, I saw that her face was covered with a beautiful design of scars that looked like Braille. (p. 164)

I stood laughing under the big soiled helmet, my mouth expanded greatly. (p. 58)

And while of course I can’t find a single instance now, there are many references to noses, in particular, Henderson’s own.

So what is Bellow’s purpose in such display –or perhaps simply his own unacknowledged infatuation, fetish even–of the facial features?  Is he implying that Henderson (or all of us, or all of Henderson’s type of person) are judging ourselves and others on appearance, so thus his search becomes something for the inner man? 

Are mouths representative of lies or truth?  Noses, a sixth sense?  Or is it all a demand to take a closer look at each other and through awareness, communicate.

Or is it nothing at all.

We’ve gotten a good buildup of conflict with Henderson’s adventures, and I’ve just breezed through some more.  With the beginning fifty or so pages giving us a good feel for Henderson’s past, present, his character and his worries for the future, Bellow does bring them to the mind as Henderson faces the culture and challenges of Africa.

As he becomes friends with King Dahfu, both fascinated by the man and a bit fearful of him, he comes to depend upon him to reveal the secret he seeks to fulfill his self-image.  Some of what Dahfu says makes a lot of sense, some of it I’m just not getting because I don’t find it all that profound.  But this is no easy question/answer session; Henderson is invited into a room deep down under the palace where a pet lioness is housed.  He crys, from fear and from the intensity of emotions and physical exertions.

Dahfu feels that Henderson may find answers in observing and interacting with the lioness and reading medical textbooks he’s brought back to the village from school.  Then Bellow winds more interest into the story:  Dahfu’s mother, uncle, and the interrogator seek Henderson’s help.  It seems that the new king must capture the old king in his form as a lion (which he becomes when he’s strangled because he can’t keep up with his harem) only the lioness in the basement is not the old king.  And, the Wariri belief is that all lions except the king lion are evil spirits.  Henderson once again is placed in the middle of a bad situation that also threatens his own progress in reaching his goal.  Unsatisfied with his man Romilayu’s nightly prayer, Henderson takes a shot at it himself:

And I prayed and prayed, "Oh, you…Something."  I said, "you Something because of whom there is not Nothing.  Help me to do Thy will.  Take off my stupid sins.  Untrammel me.  Heavenly Father, open up my dumb heart and for Christ’s sake preserve me from unreal things.  Oh, Thou who tookest me from pigs, let me not be killed over lines.  And forgive my crimes and nonsense and let me return to Lily and the kids."  (p. 238)

"Oh, Thou who tookest me from pigs?"  I’ve fallen in love with Henderson; he is so intense and passionate, naive and bumbling.  He tries so damn hard even when he sabotages himself.  There is the unreal reality of him that walks away from a normal world that he doesn’t feel comfortable within, and into the unreal reality of a simpler and yet more violent society.

Bellow does this so smoothly and efficiently that I’m appreciating his writing style more and more.  It is impossible to pick out and lay them all out here, but there are little events, little worries voiced by Henderson in reminding us of what he feels he is, what he’s doing here in Africa, and the colossal mess he’s made of things so far–the frog episode and the dead man in the hut–that have the reader holding his breath as he takes part in the rain ceremony. 

He makes a wager with the King that on this bright, cloudless day no amount of ritualizing can bring rain, and then worries about exactly what the King wants.  The King, Dahfu, has been friendly but cautious and a bit aloof.  He has already explained to Henderson that all his luxuries, his naked women, the rich and gaudy clothing and his tendency to expend little energy are short-lived, and that he will be dethroned and killed when he shows any sign of weakness (Darwin here, survival of the species in action as the strongest, most virile vie for rights to rule and procreate).  Henderson has plenty then to fret about, and as we watch the contest in the arena to pick up and move the heavy statues of the gods in a bid for rain, we know damn well Henderson’s train of thought.

So inflamed was my wish to do something.  For I saw something I could do.  Let these Wariri whom so far (with the corpses in the night and all in all) I didn’t care for–let them be worse than the sons of Sodom and Gomorrah combined, I still couldn’t pass up this opportunity to do, and to distinguish myself.  To work the right stitch into the design of my destiny before it was too late.  (p. 176)

So little by little we realize just as Henderson does, what it may be that he’s looking for.  In the meantime, Bellow grants us that no-don’t go there stomach churn of the adventure novel.

Bellow uses very out-of-place similes in this adventure in the remotest parts of Africa:

Through my depths as in a tunnel went a shock like the ones big buildings get from trains which pass beneath.  (p. 164)

All the noise had died, had gone like the wrinkles of a cloth under the hot iron. (p. 165)

While we know that Henderson is an American, it seems as if Bellow seeks to remind us with both reference to past events in his life and his similes known only to a civilized contemporary world, that we musn’t get lost with him in the jungle here.  I do find myself very much into Henderson’s experience and already have found that much of his thought is spoken in an oddly formal and yet very colloquial manner:

I was dying to say what I felt  Like, "Oh, King, that was royally done.  Like a true artist.  Goddammit, an artist!  King, I love nobility and beautiful behavior."  But I couldn’t say a thing.  I have this brutal reticence of character.  Such is the slavery of the times. We are supposed to be cool-mouthed.  As I told my son Edward–slavery!  And he thought I was a square when I said I loved the truth.  Oh, that hurt!"  (p. 166)

The mixture makes for interesting reading and pins the character down by its eccentricities.  There may also be another purpose for Bellow’s similes and style besides imagery and grounding, and that may be to specifically contrast the two worlds; the one that Henderson comes from with which we are familiar, to the one we see–and he feels still is the answer he seeks–in this primitive village setting.

One more thing caught me in this portion of the reading, this immediately following the quote above:

Anyway, I often want to say things and they stay in my mind.  Therefore they don’t actually exist; you can’t take credit for them if they never emerge.  (p. 166)

What is Bellow the author, through Henderson, telling us about communication, perhaps writing in particular?

Jeez this is great; what a perfect complement to Augustine’s wondering of soul. 

Henderson and his man, Romilayu find that they’ve been set up with a corpse in their small hut.  After the initial shock and anger, they must decide what to do.

When he came back we squatted down, the two of us, beside the dead man to deliberate and what I felt was not so much fear now as sadness, a regular drawing pain of sadness.  I felt my mouth become very wide with the sorrow of it and the two of us, looking at the body, suffered silently for a while, the dead man in his silence sending a message to me such as, "Here, man, is your being, which you think is so terrific."  And just as silently I replied, "Oh, be quiet, dead man, for Christ’s sake."  (p. 132)

I don’t know how Augustine can top that one for entertainment value.

Henderson, waiting to meet with the officials of the village, finds that he’s broken his bridge and this brings recall of his dentist, his past, and a meeting with his grown son.

But a father is a father after all, and I had gone as far as California to try to talk to Edward. (p. 120)

This doesn’t seem to say much, and yet for me it epitomized Henderson’s thinking.  He’s talking about flying from Connecticut to California.  That’s all, 3000 miles.  This is a man who’s been traveling all over the world all his life.  He doesn’t quite get it, that this should not be considered a great accomplishment for a father to do for his son, particularly one in his situation.  He’s reminded us many times throughout the narrative that a) he has loads of money, and b) he doesn’t have a regular job or responsibilities.  Henderson seems apart from reality, such as shown by the advice he gives his son at this time:

"You should become a doctor.  Why don’t you go to medical school?  Please go to medical school, Edward." 
"Why should I?"
"There are lots of good reasons.  I happen to know that you worry about your health.  You take Queen Bee tablets.  Now I know that…"  (p. 120)

That is just too funny.  It emphasizes that part of Henderson’s feeling of being out of touch with the rest of the world is obviously true, and likely self-imposed.  Bellow then mellows this insight into Henderson’s oddity by this rather heavy philosophical statement he makes just moments later:

"Oh, I am a fighter.  I fight very hard." 
"What do you fight for, Dad?" said Edward. 
"Why," I said, "what do I fight for?  Hell, for the truth.  Yes, that’s it, the truth.  Against falsehood.  But most of the fighting is against myself."  (p. 121)

He knows, and doesn’t know that he knows, so he knows not.  I love this guy.

Though written 1450 years apart, these two books, one an essay of thought and history, one a fictionalized narrative of the same, are very similar in the theme of man seeking self and answers to life and purpose.  How wonderful to have selected these two as concurrent readings!

I had gotten more of a result than I could have known in the first instants, and instead of an answering cry I heard shrieks from the natives, and looking to see what was the matter I found that the dead frogs were pouring out of the cistern together with the water.  The explosion had blasted out the retaining wall at the front end.  The big stone blocks had fallen and the yellow reservoir was emptying fast.  "Oh!  Hell!" I grabbed my head, immediately dizzy with the nausea of disaster, seeing the water spill like a regular mill race with the remains of those frogs.  "Hurry, hurry!" I started to yell.  "Romilayu!  Itelo!  Oh, Judas priest, what’s happening!  Give a hand. Help, you guys, help!"  I threw myself down against the escaping water and tried to breast it back and lift the stones into place.  The frogs charged into me like so many prunes and fell into my pants and into the open shoe, the lace gone.  The cattle started to riot, pulling at their tethers and straining toward the water.  But it was polluted and nobody would allow them to drink. (p. 107)

A dozen guns massed at you is bad business, and therefore I dropped my .375 and raised my hands.  Yet I was pleased just the same, due to my military temperament.  Also that leathery small man had sent us into an ambush and for some reason this elementary cunning gave me satisfaction, too.  There are some things the human soul doesn’t need to be tutored in.  (p. 114)

The confusing thing is that I always have some real basic motivation, and how I go so wrong, I can never understand.  (p. 92)

Bellow gives us insight into his protagonist via the first person pov (Henderson), though this is a self-image and the reader must assimilate it with his own opinions based on what the character relates as his actions, both from the past (colored by the character’s own memory–if this is conforming to the realistic world) and his current situation.  Henderson is being hard on himself, and yet he is no better or worse than most of the human race.

That’s called developing empathy, and Bellow has indeed achieved this element of writing.

Henderson is such a goof–as are we all.  Goofballs down to the core of our souls.

"She say," Itelo translated carefully, "world is strange to a child.  You not a child, sir?"

"Oh, how wonderful she is," I said.  "True, all too true.  I have never been at home in life.  All my decay has taken place upon a child."  I clasped my hands, and staring at the ground I started to reflect with this inspiration.  And when it comes to reflection I am like the third man in a relay race. I can hardly wait to get the baton, but when I do get it I rarely take off in the necessary direction."  (p. 83)

Why do we do it?  Why do we grasp at straws and turn them into I-beams?  Henderson is so anxious to find what he is seeking–and to find out what that is–that he has pronounced this village queen, Willatale, to be a woman of mysterious wisdom who will be capable of handing him all the answers he seeks.  He is now doubly anxious to save these people from the plague of frogs in their water cistern, and as he mentioned, as Moses saved the Egyptians.  Henderson, in his self-deprecating manner, feels that he is unworthy and must do something for others to become of value to himself and be deserving of the love he receives from his family. 

Is it a fact that no matter how well situated we become in life, however we feel about ourselves and our world, whatever our religion and politics, there comes a time that like Henderson we question it all and our place within it?  Do we, like Henderson, wonder if we are out of place in society–who in general seems to flow through its daily business despite great events, joy or grief–and have the nose-pressed-to-the-window feeling?  Not a feeling of envy at not belonging, but of wanting to understand what draws the border between us? 

I have; haven’t you?

Before I go much further with the reading, there’s something to this novel that for some reason I can’t seem to put into words.

The story of Eugene Henderson, a self-proclaimed millionaire of about fifty-plus, is seeking something and while he’s at a loss to understand exactly what it is, the reader can come up with many different ideas.  This theme of inner conflict aroused by desire is typical novel fare, yet this is more than mid-life crisis or boredom borne of wealth.  Many readers likely could not deal with this character and might write him off as self-centered and spoiled.  Henderson is much deeper than that though, representing clearly that voice within all of us that spurs us on to look further for…well…something.

Now I have already mentioned that there was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want!  It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.  It only said one thing, I want, I want!

And I would ask, "What do you want?"

But this was all it would ever tell me.  It never said a thing except I want I want, I want!  (p. 29)

Maybe we’re born with it, maybe that’s what we scream as toddlers, murmur to ourselves as young adults, try to ignore as responsible and mature individuals, miss terribly as the elderly. We’ve all done it (I think…): had a miserably frustrating day and sat out on the back steps and said it aloud: "I want…" and the rest of the sentence hangs there.

So Eugene Henderson has the money to go to Africa.  All this is is a step beyond the normal realm of our individual comfort zone and for the well-traveled Henderson, Africa is virgin territory.  For me, it might be that cabin in the woods, or a freefall from a plane.  It’s testing the water, tasting it and hoping for some sudden lightning bolt of realization.  Even what is sought is looked for not only in different territory and different ways, but since the discovery of what is just as important as where or how, anything goes.  And anything disappoints.

I was very upset, but what upset me was not his expression, which soon changed for the better; it was, among other things, the fact hat he spoke to me in English.  I don’t know why I should have been so surprised–disappointed is the word.  It’s the great imperial language of today, taking its turn after Greek and Latin and so on.  (p. 55)

For Henderson, excited and thrilled at finding a village of people so different from himself, so emotional and as they cry for a sacred cow he believes that he’ll be able to save them, help them.  He comes so close to thinking that he’s discovered his purpose, his want, that when one of them suddenly speaks to him in English it hits him like a dead end.  This wasn’t it.

The beginning of the book sets up Henderson’s story of his life up to that point, focusing on his two wives in particular.  For me, coming off of Updike’s Rabbit, Run, it was too familiar to initiate a posting, carrying me further into the book and the character led by Bellow’s carrot of Africa.  It was a necessary history, of course, but it appears that Henderson’s journey will be much more interesting and telling.

Again, here we must look beyond the circumstances of the character to find the spot where we are him, and he is us.  That’s where the real story lies.