Humboldt's Gift

Saul Bellow · 1975 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Charlie Citrine has prizes, money and a Mercedes, and spends the book losing all three to a divorce court, a demanding girlfriend and a small-time Chicago hood who takes a baseball bat to the car. Behind the farce he keeps circling back to Von Humboldt Fleisher, the ruined poet who befriended him, denounced him and died in a flophouse still owed something. An elegy for Delmore Schwartz that took the Pulitzer, with the Nobel following the year after.

Open Humboldt's Gift in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Information
  Martin Amis · 1995 CE · Novel

  54% · 14 shared
  NovelComedyPsychologicalArt & CreationFame & GloryContemporaryTricksterIronic ReversalThe CityThe Book / Manuscriptvs Selfvs SocietyComicIronic
• In Memory of W. B. Yeats
  W. H. Auden · 1939 CE · Poem

  53% · 10 shared
  PsychologicalArt & CreationFame & GloryDeath & MortalityMemory & TimeCreatorThe CityThe Book / ManuscriptIronicElegiac
• Sabbath's Theater
  Philip Roth · 1995 CE · Novel

  49% · 14 shared
  NovelPsychologicalDeath & MortalityMemory & TimeContemporaryTricksterNonlinear / FracturedIronic Reversalvs Selfvs SocietyComicIronicElegiacModern / American
• City Without a Name
  Czesław Miłosz · 1969 CE · Poem

  49% · 12 shared
  PsychologicalDeath & MortalityMemory & TimeContemporaryGhostNonlinear / FracturedThe CityThe Ghostvs Selfvs SocietyIronicElegiac
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro
  Ernest Hemingway · 1936 CE · Short Story

  48% · 10 shared
  PsychologicalArt & CreationDeath & MortalityWealth & GreedMemory & TimeNonlinear / Fracturedvs SelfIronicElegiacModern / American
• Zuckerman Unbound
  Philip Roth · 1981 CE · Novel

  47% · 13 shared
  NovelComedyPsychologicalFame & GloryDeath & MortalityContemporaryIronic ReversalThe Cityvs Selfvs SocietyComicIronicModern / American