Henderson the Rain King

Saul Bellow, 1958 Date Read: 4/22/22

This novel made 39 novels, or 20% of the list, complete in 222 days. That's a novel read about every 5.5 days. At the current rate, I should complete the list on August 27, 2024.

Eugene Henderson is very much like my dad. Unkillable, anxious, kinda high-strung, but essentially fearless. If my dad had gone to an unnamed African country at some point in the 1950s (he'd have been a child then) and stayed with unnamed African tribes, this could have been his story. Henderson is much more philosophically minded than my dad though. My dad isn't out looking for the meaning of life, not that I've heard.

Parts of this novel are very enjoyable, parts are unpleasant, and parts (the main part) are incomprehensible. I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is, assuming there is one.

I can't easily point out any positive or negative aspects of Henderson or his story. He did bad things (and bad things happened to him) in about equal measure with good things. He certainly appeared a misfit, but aren't we all?

I did not add this novel to the "racism/xenophobia" tag on the trigger tracker because, while Henderson certainly does have (and shares) negative views of certain individuals based on their race (ie the "Indian" woman his son wants to marry) he clearly isn't a racist person, given his relationships with the Africans he encounters. So I'm really not sure if he was against her because she was Indian, or against her in general including her being Indian, or against her in general and just referred to her as Indian... it's just not clear.

Tangent: the word niggardly appears in this novel and it reminded me of a scandal that happened a while back where some government official used the word and was called racist. (Turns out to have happened many, many times) It sucks when this happens to a good word. Niggardly has nothing to do with the N-Word. Completely different roots. Not unlike when elementary students laugh about the word for black in Spanish or the country of Nigeria... Please don't judge words on incomplete homophones and folk etymology. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Length: 330 pages

ReReadability: I don't think so. However, another Bellows novel is on the list and I do still plan to read that, despite not fully understanding this one.

Classic: There is a lot of very good word use in this novel, and some great writing. My not understanding all of it doesn't take away from it being very well written. I do think it deserves the Classic label...if only because it uses niggardly.