Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow (PDF)

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The most exuberant and funny of all Bellow’s novels, Henderson the Rain King remained the author’s personal favorite. Its outsized hero, Eugene Henderson, a mountain of a man, a millionaire, the father of many, remains adrift. Aggrieved, worn-out, all but defeated he longs to set things straight. Following the promptings of his unforgettable inner voice—“I want, I want, I want”—our hero finds himself in Africa. Henderson makes his way into a mythic sun-baked interior, where among exotic tribes he finds fellow seekers, teachers and soulmates. Whether blowing up a cistern full of frogs or learning to walk without fear among the lions, soulful, zany Henderson intends to burst his “spirit’s sleep.”

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Tales of a poetic pig farmer. ‘At birth I weighed 14 pounds. Then I grew up.’ ‘My face is no common face, but like an unfinished church.’Life story of a big bully of an ugly rich guy, a nuisance to everyone.This is a grotesque book, full of surreal happenings and madcap philosophizing. If you need a name for the genre, you could call this a travel book, though the destination is entirely fictional despite the fact that it has a real name, Africa. You can also call it a Bildungsroman, though the hero is nearer 60 than 20. Or an adventure story.Henderson is an unusual narrator, but not of the deviously unreliable kind. One wonders why one would believe a word that he says. His perception of the world is so off. He keeps assuming things about the meaning of his inexplicable adventures, but we can hardly take him serious. He is jumpy and lacks logic. His actions are not explained, as if he watches himself with disbelief. He is a bit of an over-aged fool, an am-bay-seel.He was unhappy with his life in Connecticut, so he goes on this trip. There is no attempt at the simple Hemingway style. I am often intrigued by the artful language, which is at times humorous and skillful with words, as one would not expect from a pig farmer. Maybe that is a point of criticism. If a narrator is invented, should he not be plausible?Henderson is also good at quirky aphorisms. ‘Even civilized women are not keen on geography, preferring a world of their own’. Isn’t that true.The truest of these: ‘ideas make people untruthful. Yes, they frequently lead them into lies.’Is there anything realistic about Bellow-Henderson’s Africa? I don’t know if Bellow even meant to be realistic in a generic way. I suspect he didn’t bother about that at all. Henderson has no clue where he goes, though his local counterpart, the real king, mentions Lamu and Malindi and Zanzibar as places where he has been. One assumes they serve as anchors in the sea of a fairy continent.The trip to Africa is a bit like Kafka’s sending his young man to ‘Amerika’. Eugene Henderson is a big fat violent Alice in his own Wonderland. An innocent abroad. A Don Quijote he is not though, he fights no windmills but his inner devils.The philosophical core of the story is the artificially mysterious ‘grun-to-molani’, the will to live. Schopenhauer in the lion’s den.This is an irritating book, and that might be its strong point. Don’t we read in order to get shaken or stirred? And find some entertainment on the way?I was quite pleased with it. I re-read it after 30 years and liked it much better this time than then. And way better than Augie March, which had turned me off recently. However, I would have liked it better had it been 100 pages shorter.

⭐Gene Henderson, a 50-something millionaire living in 1950s America, decides to take a trip to Africa to try to quiet the voice inside him that keeps saying, “I want, I want.” Since Henderson already has everything material he could want, he can’t find any way to satisfy that voice, and as he has already tried several other things prior to his African trip, he doesn’t hold out much hope. But it becomes a very strange trip – for only in a very strange place could he find what he actually needs.I can’t read Bellow’s mind, of course, but as I read his book, Henderson represents America – huge, crude, often well-meaning but sometimes causing unintentional destruction. Bellow’s imaginary Africa would then be the entire developing world – or even the whole world outside America. It’s hard to like Henderson at first; even his own first-person narration casts him in a bad light despite his high opinion of himself. As his attempts to help the people in the first tribe he meets end in catastrophe, he definitely seems to represent the American ignorance and arrogance that led to so many disastrous overseas projects in the 1950s and 1960s. Subdued by his first failure, Henderson allows himself to learn from the second tribe, and although he ultimately barely escapes with his life, he comes away with the inner peace he had sought, with a new wisdom, and with a determination to become a healer. The message seems pretty obvious – a call for a wiser America dedicating itself to higher goals.An alternative way to read it makes Henderson representative of anyone who no longer has to work for a living and who searches for something to give life meaning. This should resonate with any young dot com millionaire as much as with any healthy retired person. In that interpretation, Henderson learns that just because you don’t have to work doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work and that to be ennobling, work must be helpful to someone else – not all activity suffices – and not meant to glorify yourself either.Either way, the book reads smoothly and moves along briskly. Read it long enough to get past your initial dislike of Henderson, and it will reward your efforts.

⭐Henderson the Rain King was published in 1959. The author is Saul Bellow the American Nobel Prize winner in Literature who was born in Montreal in 1915 to Russian Jewish immigrants who eventually migrated to Chicago where the author grew to manhood. Bellow usually deals with intellectual characters living in an urban milieu. Among his great works are Herzog; Dangling Man; Humbolt’s Gift; Mr Sammler’s Planet and other novels and short story collections. Henderson the Rain King departs from his usual stories for the following reasons:1. The book takes the hero to Africa a continent which Bellow had not visited at the time of the novel’s publication.2.The author is not an intellectual but an Ivy League School millionaire who is a veteran of World War II who has won a Purple Heart for his being wounded in the Mount Cassino campaign in Italy.3. The subject matter is ribald and Rabelaisian as the 55 year old Eugene Henderson leaves his second wife and family for a vacation in Africa. The book includes long philosophical and unrealistic talks Henderson conducts with the medically educated King of a local tribe. Henderson confronts a lion and experiences his love of life. He becomes known as the rain king who is able to bring rain to a drought stricken region of Africa. I prefer Bellow to stay in more familiar territory but this foray into Africa does manifest the author’s ability to convey the love and excitement of life well lived. A good read!

⭐From such a great and acclaimed author I expected more. There are moments of brilliance but, for the most part, the rambling gets centre stage.

⭐Great quality and great delivery. Thank you.

⭐An interesting read. I came across the title via another book I was reading and was curious.

⭐This is not as good as his other books. I bought it for my husband but he thought it silly.

⭐Der Mittfünfziger Eugene Henderson lebt mit seiner jungen, attraktiven, zweiten Frau auf eigenem Anwesen. Geld ist kein Problem. Dennoch wird Henderson unzufrieden. Er geht nach Afrika und erreicht nach langer Wanderung ein völlig isoliertes Dorf, in dem er sich sofort heimisch und verstanden fühlt. Dort bleibt er eine Weile, später zieht er in ein anderes Dorf.Der Großteil des Romans spielt in afrikanischen Dörfern. Die ersten 60 von 340 Seiten beschreiben jedoch die Zeit in den USA, mit ein paar Ereignissen, die Hendersons Flucht nach Afrika begründen sollen. Auch die Afrika-Kapitel liefern gelegentlich noch Rückblenden auf die US-Zeit, vor allem auf Auseinandersetzungen mit Hendersons zwei Frauen (der Autor selbst war fünfmal verheiratet) und mit anderen Störenfrieden.Die US-Kapitel klingen anregend echt und lebendig. Die Afrika-Kapitel wirken massiv unrealistisch und mit philosophisch-moralisch-esoterischem Zeugs überladen.In den USA-Kapiteln hat Ich-Erzähler Henderson eine prägnante Stimme: Er klingt wie ein von sich überzeugter Selfmade-Typ, ein Kerl von einem Mann, der gern dem eigenen Redestrom lauscht, seine Farm und seinen Revolver im Griff hat. Nicht sympathisch, aber mitreißend echt. Ansatzweise erinnerte mich dieser Henderson an die bombastische Hauptfigur aus Tom Wolfes Ein ganzer Mann (engl. A Man Full). Dass Henderson klassisch Geige spielt und wiederholt humanistische Bildung zitiert, überrascht bei dieser Figur zunächst, doch auch Bellow spielte Geige und war sehr belesen.Das afrikanische Dorf ab Seite 60 wirkt so echt wie eine Pappkulisse in einem 70er-Jahre Bollywood-Film oder wie die Rückprojektion einer Stadtkulisse hinter “autofahrenden” Hollywoodstars in den 50ern. Kein Satz, keine Beschreibung klingt hier passend. Offenbar hat Bellow nicht nur keine Afrika-Erfahrung, er müht sich noch nicht mal mehr um Realismus. Er nutzt das isolierte Dorf lediglich als Vehikel, um Philosophisches zu illustrieren. Episches Theater im Roman.Dazu kommt, dass Hauptfigur Henderson in Afrika unerträglich daherschwafelt. Nicht nur über seine seelisch-moralisch Befindlichkeit mit esoterischer Bejahung banaler Lokal-Weisheiten; er redet auch schlicht zuviel und will die Afrikaner ständig von seinem Standpunkt überzeugen, ohne sich um ein Verständnis der örtlichen Kultur zu bemühen: “Take it from me”, leitet er seine selbstbesessenen Belehrungen gern ein, und dann redet er länger als drei Vorredner zusammen.Henderson the Rain King gilt als eins der besten Bücher Bellows, es soll zu seinen eigenen Lieblingsbüchern gezählt haben, erscheint in Bestenlisten, war für den Pulitzerpreis nominiert und half vielleicht bei Bellows Nobilitierung 1970.Man kann den Roman auch kritisch betrachten, zum Beispiel als “unsuccessful experiment, noble in purpose but dismal in result” mit einem “Africa deliberately distorted so far from reality that one half expects to meet Tarzan” (New York Times). “Etappenweise doch langweiligen Durststrecken” entdeckte der Spiegel.Henderson the Rain King erinnerte mich an andere Autoren, die über Gegenden schreiben, die sie nicht kannten, etwa Karl May über den wilden Westen oder H. R. F. Keating zehn Jahre lang über Indien und den indischen Inspektor Ghote. Mays und Keatings Darstellungen wirken gleichwohl plastischer als Bellows afrikanisches Wolkenkuckucksheim.Ich habe den Rain King nach 100 Seiten abgebrochen.

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