Ravelstein

Ravelstein is Saul Bellow’s last novel published in 2000, when he was 85.  It has a certain affinity with Philip Roth’s Everyman in that it is preoccupied with old age, sex, and death.  The narrator comes across a cranky and cantankerous using outdated slang and descriptions of modern life. Ravelstein is an undisguised Allan Bloom, who comes off as a pompous blow hard. All in all, I found it a bit disappointing since it doesn’t have the vigor of earlier work like Augie March nor the poetry and pathos of Herzog.