The Dean's December

by Saul Bellow

Corde is a Professor of Journalism and Dean of students at a Chicago university. His beautiful wife Minna is an internationally known astronomer. As the book opens the couple are in Eastern Europe. Minna had to migrated to America many years before, but now her mother has suffered a stroke and is lying semiconscious in the local State hospital. As Corde tries to help Minna grapple with an alien bureaucracy, to adapt to life in his mother-in-law's small apartment and to cope with her relations and family friends, news filters through to him of problems he has left behind in Chicago. One of his students has been murdered by black criminals; his cousin and his nephew line up against him and try to make him drop the case. A series of articles he is writing for a magazine offends powerful and influential Chicagoans he had thought of as friends. A childhood companion, now a television pundit, shows him unsuspected aspects of his own character. Gradually it becomes clear that Corde's trip abroad is more than a brief interlude in a calm and orderly life and that nothing for him will ever be the same again. To the familiar Bellow magic and mastery, The Dean's December adds a new sense of urgency, of topicality, and an almost thriller-like tension. The wit, the erudition, the unique and extraordinary use of language will be a delight to admirers of Herzog and Humboldt's Gift; but the framework in which they are displayed represents a completely new departure.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Romania, American, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Novels of Saul Bellow, Canadian-American writer, include Dangling Man in 1944 and Humboldt's Gift in 1975 and often concern an alienated individual within an indifferent society; he won the Nobel Prize of 1976 for literature.

People widely regard one most important Saul Bellow of the 20th century. Known for his rich prose, intellectual depth, and incisive character studies, Bellow explored themes of identity and the complexities of modern life with a distinct voice that fused philosophical insight and streetwise humor. Herzog , The Adventures of Augie March , and Mister Sammler’s Planet , his major works, earned critical acclaim and a lasting legacy.

Born in Lachine, Quebec, to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Saul Bellow at a young age moved with his family to Chicago, a city that shaped much worldview and a frequent backdrop in his fiction. He studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and later Northwestern, and his intellectual interests deeply informed him. Bellow briefly pursued graduate studies in anthropology, quickly turned, and first published.

Breakthrough of Saul Bellow came with The Adventures of Augie March , a sprawling, exuberance that in 1953 marked the national book award and a new direction in fiction. With energetic language and episodic structure, it introduced readers to a new kind of unapologetically intellectual yet deeply grounded hero in the realities of urban life. Over the following decades, Bellow produced a series of acclaimed that further cemented his reputation. In Herzog , considered his masterpiece in 1964, a psychological portrait of inner turmoil of a troubled academic unfolds through a series of unsent letters, while a semi-autobiographical reflection on art and fame gained the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1976, people awarded human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture of Saul Bellow. He only thrice gained the national book award for fiction and also received the medal of arts and the lifetime achievement of the library of Congress.

Beyond fiction, Saul Bellow, a passionate essayist, taught. He held academic positions at institutions, such as the University of Minnesota, Princeton, and Boston University, and people knew his sharp intellect and lively classroom presence. Despite his stature, Bellow cared about ordinary people and infused his work with humor, moral reflection, and a deep appreciation of contradictions of life.

People can see influence of Saul Bellow in the work of countless followers. His uniquely and universally resonant voice ably combined the comic, the profound, the intellectual, and the visceral. He continued into his later years to publish his final Ravelstein in 2000.

People continue to read work of Saul Bellow and to celebrate its wisdom, vitality, and fearless examination of humanity in a chaotic world.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you remember the nightmares that poured out of the hearts of the people of Rumania after the brief glory of glasnost?

We shouldn’t soon forget them!

And Saul Bellow here just gives us the barest, but scariest, outline of it, long before the Eastern Bloc had crumbled to dust...

Albert Corde, university dean, is being dragged frustratingly through the penetrating deep-freeze of Communist Rumanian bureaucracy.

Its unearthly silences, half-glimpsed sense of dread, and interminable red tape will only end - by sending him smack dab back into a sizzling American academic frying pan, spitting racial hatred and angst.

There’s no rest for the truly Human being!

And Albert and his wife Minna get no relief in this very warm and longing human heart of a book, beating in strong protest against all the violent inhumanity of this world.

Rumania is a wasteland of suppressed despair for the couple.

A despair that, following the downfall of its atrociously malevolent dictator would erupt in a screaming worldwide cry of “J’accuse!”

The faceless face of deceit is all the old steel-toed, hurry-up-and-wait communist watchdogs show of themselves.

They’re like a sinister glacial iceberg of which the Worst part by far was suppressed from public view, glowering radioactively far beneath the placid, impassive surface.

And the Cordes wander, dazed, from waiting in grotesque and idle angst in the Balkans to nurturing their humane and helpless liberalism back in an in-your-face and grotesquely polarized America.

So which is worse, Bellow seems to ask?

The mutually infuriated polar alienation of democracy, or the velvet glove on an iron communist fist, ready to smash the unwary into dust motes?

Violence, in either case, breeds violence.

There is no alternative, Bellow says, but a consciously compassionate and caring sense of crucified humanity.

For Saul Bellow wore his heart on his sleeve throughout a long and honoured career!

And it’s hard to believe a picaresque rogue like Augie March could have sprung full-grown from the side of this Olympian writer, like Hera from Zeus, only to be followed by the likes of mad, mad Moses Herzog, coolly rational but maladjusted old Artur Sammler and the ruminative but forever-checkmated Albert Corde!

Where on earth did Bellow FIND all these people?

My guess is that his sparkling human imagination pieced them together - bit by bit - from memories of faces gleaned in the emotional and character-breeding hothouses of Chicago, and earlier, the Lachine, Québec of his boyhood.

A Coleridgean type of recollection in solitude must have done the rest of the stitching that produced his endless tapestries of stereotype-bursting, endlessly variegated personality!

You know, growing up back in the early part of the twentieth century, Saul Bellow didn’t think displaying his warm humanity was a crime.

And by the END of that bloody century - the bloodiest since the horrible 16th century - he believed that it was our ONLY hope as a species.

And you know, he was right...

For the day we give up being human we will surely reap the Whirlwind!

[Vit Babenco · Rating 3 out of 5]

December is a cold month… The regime was drab… The times were drab… And that drabness stained the story as well…

Corde, who led the life of an executive in America­ – wasn’t a college dean a kind of executive? – found himself six or seven thousand miles from his base, in Bucharest, in winter, shut up in an old-fashioned apartment. Here everyone was kind – family and friends, warmhearted people – he liked them very much, to him they were “old Europe.” But they had their own intense business. This was no ordinary visit. His wife’s mother was dying. Corde had come to give support. But there was little he could do for Minna. Language was a problem. People spoke little French, less English. So Corde, the Dean, spent his days in Minna’s old room sipping strong plum brandy, leafing through old books, staring out of the windows at earthquake-damaged buildings, winter skies, gray pi­geons, pollarded trees, squalid orange-rusty trams hiss­ing under trolley cables.

Those were the bleak years and they left a bleak imprint on history.

[Paul of Bethesda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dean Albert Corde is having a rough December, even though the deanship he holds at a prestigious Chicago college is a comfortable position at which he should be able to pursue, at his leisure, the life of the mind. And this winter of Corde’s discontent has much to do with choices he has made, as Saul Bellow makes clear in his 1982 novel The Dean’s December.

Bellow was Canadian by birth – born in Lachine, Québec – but he is strongly associated with modern U.S. life, and particularly with the city of Chicago. His insightful, character-driven fiction invokes deep philosophical questions of human meaning, and his work has been very well received; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, and his other honours include a Pulitzer Prize and three National Book Awards.

Bellow’s brilliance as a prose stylist and his gift for telling a compelling story are clear from the novel’s first sentence: “Corde, who led the life of an executive in America – wasn’t a college dean a kind of executive? – found himself six or seven thousand miles from his base, in Bucharest, in winter, shut up in an old-fashioned apartment” (p. 1). The reason for this U.S. college dean’s presence in communist Romania, in the depths of the Cold War, is that the mother of his Romanian-born wife Minna is dying.

Minna, a eminent astronomer at the university where Corde is a dean, left Romania for the U.S.A. but never officially renounced her Romanian citizenship, and therefore her very presence on Romanian soil is potentially problematic. Minna’s ailing mother Valeria, an eminent physician, was once high in the circles of power, but fell out of favour with Romania’s communist rulers. Even seeing the stricken Valeria, in her last days, is difficult for Corde and Minna, depending on the whims of the hospital’s director who is a colonel in the Romanian secret police.

While Minna and the rest of their family tend to family issues, Corde is basically stuck in the family flat; if he goes out on his own, to stroll the streets of Bucharest, there is a very good chance that he’ll be detained by the Securitate on trumped-up charges of selling U.S. dollars on the black market. He drinks a good deal of palincă (plum brandy), and engages in a great many flights of speculation. All of them are erudite; not all of them are healthy.

Corde is facing other complications in his life as well. In a look back to his former days as a journalist, he has published a series of articles for Harper’s magazine; those articles have caused controversy because of their exceptionally tough-minded examination of problems of poverty, crime, and corruption in Chicago. And when a student at his college was thrown out of a window and killed, Corde responded by pushing for a college-sponsored reward for the arrest of a suspect; the case turns out to have racial dimensions, and Corde’s own nephew, who once worked with the suspect, becomes a very public antagonist of Corde. The college’s provost, suave to a fault, smoothly makes clear to Corde just how unwelcome these publicity-generating developments are.

Having visited Romania – a country that today is still working to recover from the traumas of the Ceaușescu dictatorship – I was struck by the details of Bellow’s description of Bucharest: “Coupled rusty-orange tramcars ran with a slither of cables. Pale proletarian passengers looked out. They wore caps, the women kerchiefs. Together with cast-iron sinks and croaking pull-chain toilets, these tramcars belonged to the old days. It was all like looking backwards. You saw the decades in reverse” (p. 107). Ceaușescu is long gone, thank heaven, but there are places in Romania that still feel very much that way. Bellow’s gift for description is that strong.

As The Dean’s December progresses, it becomes ever more clear that Corde is bound up in a cycle of apocalyptic doomsday thinking – part of what caused his Harper’s articles about Chicago to be so poorly received. At one point, Corde remembers interviewing a man named Varennes, a public defender who was representing a defendant in a particularly notorious case of kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. Corde recalls thinking that “I looked ailing and sick. A kind of hot haze came over me. I felt my weakness as I approached the business of the soul – its true business in this age”, and recollects how “I was losing Mr. Varennes. Anguish beyond the bounds of human tolerance was not a subject a nice man like Mr. Varennes was ready for on an ordinary day” (p. 201).

I found myself thinking of Horatio’s words to Hamlet, late in the play while Hamlet is talking a lot about death and decay: “’Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.”

Late in the novel, a conversation with an old friend at the Intercontinental Hotel in Bucharest – a former high school classmate who has become a prominent international-affairs columnist – takes on new life and becomes crucial in the resolution of the book’s various plot threads. Corde, an exceptionally well-read and thoughtful individual, comes to realize that “If you were going to be a communicator, you had to know the passwords, the code words, you had to signify your acceptance of the prevailing standards. You could say nothing publicly, not if you expected to be taken seriously, without the right clearance” (p. 301).

In that regard, the Chicago setting of many of Bellow’s works takes on additional significance. Chicago is famed for being “the City of the Big Shoulders” – a place that valorizes toughness as surely as the Chicago Bears wear dark-navy-and-orange jerseys. The city's qualities of "flinty Chicago toughness" (as President Barack Obama once put it) have been acknowledged by Chicago writers like Nelson Algren and James T. Farrell and Richard Wright -- and, yes, that Hemingway fellow from suburban Oak Park. Bellow, working squarely within that tradition, and at the same time expanding upon it, presents Chicago as an arena where wealthy and successful people play leading roles in business and law and politics and journalism and academia, while harbouring (at least metaphorically) their fair share of Al Capone ruthlessness in dealing with opponents.

I read The Dean’s December over the course of one particular December, and found it a suitable if not cheering accompaniment for this death-of-the-year month. Bellow’s erudition, his gift for character development, and his abilities as a storyteller are all very much on display here.

[Stela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saul Bellow’s The Dean’s December is a “tale of two cities”, Bucharest and Chicago this time (and the time is the nineteen-eighties), two cities so far apart and so close, so different and so eerily similar. Bucharest is an East-European grey and famished place, suffocated by communist bureaucracy and ruled by Securitate. At the other end of the world, here is Chicago, an American dark, dangerous place, suffocated by corrupt politicians and violent gangs, and ruled by the Machine. In between, acting like a narrative hook, is Albert Corde, the dean of an American college married to a Romanian scientist, who arrived in Bucharest because his mother-in-law is dying and who’s forced to deal with the absurd and cruel authorities that do not let his wife visit her mother in the intensive care, while thinking about a murder committed by a black delinquent in Chicago campus, against whom he gathered proof and testimonies, only to be accused of racism, intransigence, elitism etc., by his nephew, his faculty, the press. The two cities are characters as powerful and unforgettable as the main hero, live organisms, like Paris, in Miller’s Tropic of Cancer , like New York in Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer , for

…cities were moods, emotional states, for the most part collective distortions, where human beings thrived and suffered, where they invested their souls in pains and pleasures, taking these pleasures and pains as proofs of reality.

Robert Tower, in his Nytimes review (with a cleverly summative title A Novel of Politics, Wit and Sorrow ) considers The Dean’s December “heavily thematic – and talky”. It is true that he hastily adds that “the themes are fully grounded in the book's matrix of idea and event and language. And the talk is excellent” but I could not help smiling and agree that indeed, it is a little bit talky and this much talking is not quite for everyone, although his intellectualist writing, his fine perspective, the incredible force of his evocations are worth the reading effort. Just listen to the rhythm of this fragment and observe how it builds, from the window of a cold room, the image of a Bucharest plunged in a silent desperation:

December brown set in at about three in the afternoon. By four it had climbed down the stucco of old walls, the gray of Communist residential blocks: brown darkness took over the pavements, and then came back again from the pavements more thickly and isolated the street lamps. These were feebly yellow in the impure melancholy winter effluence. Air-sadness, Corde called this. In the final stage of dusk, a brown sediment seemed to encircle the lamps. Then there was a livid death moment. Night began.

And now let’s compare it with the far away but equally desperate Chicago, “the contempt center of the USA” from the window of an overheated taxi:

…the cab to the airport ran between levees of snow. Winter’s first blizzard had struck Chicago. The cab was overheated and stank of excrement. Of dogs? Of people? It was torrid, also freezing; Arctic and Sahara, mixed.

This is one of Bellow’s masterful pen strokes – to create similitudes from oppositions, to bring to a common denominator apparently very different characters, places, ideas.

Another one is to draw, here and there, some unexpected, delicate sketch:

Nearby was a picture of the beautiful Nadia Comaneci, who didn’t need the support of the solid earth and preferred to live in the air, like a Chagall bride.

Or a fulgurate but strong characterization:

He chose to speak in platitudes; but he interpreted them powerfully, virile bruiser that he was. You were tough or you were nothing.

Or a merciless introspection:

He had publicly given himself the fool test and he had flunked it.

Or a general judgment that never falls into stereotype reading instead like a disturbing forewarning:

It was foreign, bookish — it was Dostoevsky stuff, that the vices of Sodom coexisted with the adoration of the Holy Sophia, cynicism joined with purity in the heart of the paradoxical Russian.

Or ironically dark meditations – ironically mainly because the setting is the conjugal bed, of course:

Minna let him go on, and he stopped himself. It wasn’t exactly the time to develop such views. Evil visions. The moronic inferno. He read too many articles and books. If the night hadn’t been so black and cold, none of this would have been said. The night made you exaggerate. Between them on the pillow was the float of her hair.

Written in a free indirect style, The Dean’s December has, as Robert Tower in the above-quoted article justly observes, a dazzling narrative power that creates a dramatic tension by using “juxtaposition and contrast”:

The crucial oppositions of the novel are political, social and philosophical rather than personal. The rapid switching back and forth between Bucharest and Chicago endows the book with a nervous, flickering energy and lights up the two poles between which the modern world unhappily oscillates: the mean-spirited bureaucracy of a police state that deliberately sets ''the pain-level'' of its citizens and the whirling anarchy of a ''pleasure society'' like America (''which likes to think of itself as a tenderness society'') that cannot tolerate an awareness of the horror in its midst.

[SCARABOOKS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dicono che Saul Bellow viene letto poco e penso sia vero. Intuisco perché, ma è un peccato. Per chi non lo legge, intendo. Ci sono scrittori che si possono o si debbono non consigliare agli amici, anche se ti piacciono moltissimo. Ma Bellow è uno di quelli che è un delitto non consigliare.

Bellow è un osservatore attento, disincantato e insieme gentile, empatico. E’ capace di collegamenti vertiginosi, con una sensibilità straordinaria per le sfumature. Poi ha tutti gli anticorpi armati contro le ipocrisie, le generalizzazioni, le astrazioni, i conformismi, le lenti ideologiche e fideistiche di tutti i colori, le distorsioni prodotte dagli impulsi irrazionali, dalla vanità, dall’esibizionismo. Tutti vizi molto di moda. Poi, l’accuratezza sommata a qualcosa che somiglia ad una forma morale (liberamente scelta, continuamente misurata, ma rigorosamente rispettata) oggi infastidiscono, sanno di pedanteria. Ho pensato anche che al tempo dell’anti-elitismo non può essere di moda un umanista scientifico o una scienziato umanista (per toccare di striscio uno dei temi più interessanti delle tante riflessioni che ci sono nel romanzo). Vera elite intellettuale. E nel senso più nobile del termine. Quella di cui ci sarà sempre bisogno.

Il professor Corde comparve subito dopo il Nobel e fu classificato non a livello dei suoi capolavori. Non saprei dire se sono d’accordo. Costa uno sforzo iniziale per entrare nel suo ritmo, nelle sue atmosfere. Magari angosciano un po’ l’ambientazione tetra, in una Romania comunista descritta come una prigione (la critica dell’occidente democratico e post-illuminista di Bellow qui assume un sapore speciale, non meno intenso, anzi), con la suocera morente, la vicenda di un delitto sullo sfondo e uno stuolo di personaggi inquietanti. Poi però il professore Corde finisce con l'entrarti dentro, il romanzo svela una sua raffinata godibilità. E contagia col suo appello all’attenzione, alla lucidità, alla partecipazione positiva alla vita del mondo e ad una visione olistica e distaccata delle “cose così come sono”. Finisci per proiettarle sulle tue cose e l'esercizio fa bene alla salute.

Tanto per dare un’idea del modo in cui intendeva Bellow la letteratura e non solo:
“Guardava fuori, osservava. Era uno che notava tante cose, lui! Sempre attento all’ambiente circostante. Come se fosse stato inviato a badare al mondo esterno, in missione di ricognizione. A che scopo? Connettere? Classificare? Penetrare? Seguire un camioncino funebre per tetri viali: ecco il compito immediato.”

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing... by FAR Bellow's most accomplished book. Tender, intelligent, passionate, death-haunted...of course, it is Bellow! -- perfectly constructed, far richer in both plot and character than one usually expects from Bellow... coherent...even the intellectual moments are so much more throughly digested... and the poetics of the final movement.... just a masterpiece.

[capobanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da bambina mi piaceva tantissimo uno sconosciuto romanzo della Alcott che si intitolava Una ragazza fuori moda.
La definizione mi è tornata in mente mentre leggevo questo romanzo così distante da tutte quelle comode categorie delle quali ci serviamo ultimamente per cercare di spacciare per competente obiettività quella che sempre più spesso mi appare come una forma di pigrizia, un intorpidimento del gusto, il desiderio di battere le strade note, e solo quelle.
La trama? Praticamente non c’è, è un breve tratto della vita di un professore americano di mezz’età che accompagna sua moglie all’ultimo capezzale della madre in Romania.
Il famoso “scavo dei personaggi” si serve di strumenti che non sono quelli abituali della psicologia, ma appaiono come sonde della loro attitudine intellettuale, della loro profondità spirituale, del loro rapporto intimo con le concrete condizioni del mondo in cui si trovano a vivere, e a morire.
Né è possibile estrarre dal romanzo un messaggio, o almeno una visione delle cose riassumibile in poche righe.
Eppure.
Com’è stato bello questo tempo in compagnia del professor Corde, così bravo a capire il cambiamento della sua città o la natura profonda dei suoi interlocutori -e dei suoi nemici- e così inadeguato a trarre dalla sua intelligenza la forza, o forse la volontà, di viverci bene dentro; per un nocciolo intangibile di moralità, per un’inquietitudine dello spirito, forse addirittura per un eccesso di lucidità su gli altri e su se stesso. Per la consapevolezza della sterilità della conoscenza che non diventa esperienza.
E come mi sono sembrati poveri i troppi scrittori posteriori che ti lasciano tranquillo, con la certezza di aver capito dove volevano andare a parare, con le loro situazioni esemplari -esemplarmente false- e personaggi di carta che ti chiedono solo di dirgli un sì o un no, come da ragazzini ci dicevamo amico e non-amico con la semplice direzione del pollice.
E come penso con piacere al tempo che trascorrerò rileggendo certe pagine che sospetto decisive, ma delle quali so anche che non ho compreso a fondo tutte le implicazioni, perché anche per me la conoscenza non è ancora diventata esperienza.


Forse sono anch’io una ragazza fuori moda.

[Ionuț Anastasiu · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 stele.
O reală dezamăgire. Aveam multe așteptări de la romanul a cărui acțiune are loc în cea mai mare parte în București, în decembrie 1977, însă lectura a fost greoaie, iar cartea teribil de searbădă. Nu mă refer la acțiunea romanului, ce aproape că nu există - nici Herzog nu are o acțiune propriu-zisă, însă este un roman excelent - , ci la faptul că abundă în panseuri mai mult sau mai puțin reușite ce, pentru mine cel puțin, nu prezintă niciun interes real.
Nici narațiunea întortocheată a unei opere literare nu este neapărat un punct slab în general, ba chiar dimpotrivă, cu condiția ca aceasta să fie fascinantă, însă aici nu este nimic pe deplin fascinant, cel puțin din punctul meu de vedere. Scriitura, de asemenea, pare excesiv de încărcată, în sensul prost al cuvântului, ceea ce este de mirare, dat fiind faptul că, în romanele anterioare, Saul Bellow părea să fie un virtuoz al scrisului. Cruntă este și absența acelui umor extraordinar de fin ce părea să fie marcă înregistrată Bellow și care transforma lectura într-o reală plăcere.
Iarna decanului este și nu este un roman al Bucureștiului ceaușist, fiind dedicat într-o măsură considerabil mai mare temelor de real interes pentru eroul romanului, Albert Corde, ce au legătură cu Chicago. În mod oarecum paradoxal, deși Corde se află la București, totuși singura sa preocupare, în afara celei ce are legătură cu familia sa, este America în general și Chicago în special. Ceea ce este, desigur, de înțeles. Dar, din păcate, toate aceste reflecții ale lui Corde despre sistemul penitenciar sau despre cel judiciar etc. nu prezintă un mare interes pentru mine.
Probabil că este inutil de precizat că cea de-a patra soție, dar nu și ultima, a lui Saul Bellow a fost Alexandra, fiica Floricăi Bagdasar, ce a fost Ministru al Sănătății între 1946 și 1948 și a neurochirurgului Dumitru Bagdasar. Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea (după numele primul ei soț) este o matematiciană de renume la nivel global și s-a căsătorit cu scriitorul american în anul 1975. Însă nu asupra amănuntelor biografice vreau să insist, deși ele sunt foarte vizibile în întreaga operă a lui Saul Bellow.
Să revenim însă la Iarna decanului.
Corde este decanul unui colegiu din Chicago. A venit la București în plină iarnă, deoarece mama soției sale, Minna, a suferit un accident cerebral și se află în spital. Minna este astrofiziciană. Descrierea Bucureștiului în iarna din anul cutremurului îngrozitor care a îngropat atât de multe destine este, de altfel, principalul punct forte al cărții: "Și aici, ca pretutindeni în București, lumina era insuficientă. În România se făcea simţită criza de energie electrică - legată de ploile anormal de rare și apa foarte scăzută din hidrocentrale. Bine-înţeles, daţi vina pe natură Obscuritatea maronie de decembrie mijea de pe la ora trei după-masa. Pe la patru cuprindea zidurile vechi, străduţele cenușii ale blocurilor comuniste; întunericul cafeniu înfășura trotuarele și apoi se răsfrângea mai dens din caldarâm, izolând felinarele străzii. Becurile străluceau anemic, gălbui, în scurgerea impură a melancoliei de iarnă. O tristețe a aerului, așa o numea Corde. În stadiile finale ale amurgului, un sediment maroniu părea să învelească felinarele".
Pe de altă parte, Albert Corde este autorul unui lung articol despre Chicago ce stârnise multe controverse. Articolul tratează despre "viața inumană a deținuților din închisoarea districtuală" a "Orașului escrocilor" sau "Primul oraș al heroinei". Albert nu a venit la București fiind preocupat doar de starea de sănătate a soacrei sale, ci în plin conflict, ce devenise de notorietate publică în Chicago, cu unicul său nepot, Mason Zaehner. Tema disputei dintre unchi și nepot are legătură cu uciderea studentului Rickie Lester. Suspectul principal este un bărbat de culoare, Lucas Ebry. Dar ce să vezi? Nepotul decanului este bun prieten cu Lucas, iar Albert însuși a ajuns să fie inclus în mod direct în tabăra acuzării. În paranteză fie spus, acest conflict pare să fie extrem de artificial, rolul decanului în ancheta unei crime fiind unul fără doar și poate mult mai puțin important decât se sugerează în roman. În fond, poliția este aceea care anchetează și nu decanii.
Cine dorește să afle deznodământul nu trebuie decât să citească romanul. În încheiere, o să menționez un amănunt interesant despre Bucureștiul acelor vremuri. Ștergătoarele de parbriz sunt ținute în torpedoul mașinii, altfel ar fi fost furate. Primul lucru pe care îl face șoferul când ajunge la mașină este să fixeze ștergătoarele. Lectură plăcută!

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always interesting when a book's dated material catches up with current realities such as here in "TD's D" where Chicago's south side is crime riddled and crumbling in neigborhoods where the 'underclass' wreaks havoc and a simultaneously call for increased 'socialistic/progressive' taking over is deemed ok by many, mostly youthfull disallusioned tweeners of differing but same equity/equality ideologues, but contrasted here with eastern european communism and its pathetic inadaquencies. A tale of two cities and, it now seems two times of fiction/reality overlapp. Bellow, as usual, goes to the well of philosophy to turn his spitted roast of questing morals trail tale. Bellow and his cast of catalyst others swifting a conundrum of human scale wondering.

[Mia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Now I understand why teachers dissuade overuse of parenthetical notes.

I have come to really dislike the protagonist -- I cannot think of another text that has ever affected me in that way --, as well as Bellow's overuse of the words "feminine," "female," and "lady" to describe anything a woman does. "Female generosity" on page 143, "feminine poise" on page 107, "lady phrases" on 92, "feminized tobacco flavor" on page 90, "female bittersweet fragrance" on page 87, "feminine claims" and "broad femininity" on page 83, "feminine flourishes" on page 82, "feminine boor-control" on page 76, "feminine hierarchy" on page 72, "female speculation" on page 53, "secret feminine reasons" on page 51, and so on.

His writing style is flat, especially compared to Nelson Algren. Maybe reading this text immediately after "The Man With the Golden Arm" is unfair?

[Andrea Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of Albert Corde, a college dean whose Roumanian astronomer wife, Minna, defected to the West with the encouragement and help of her intellectual mother, Dr. Valeria Raresh. Now Dr. Raresh has suffered a stroke, and the Cordes are in Bucharest where the secret police and a bitter bureaucracy is denying them the right to visit to her in the hospital. The depictions of these intellectual women are sublime, especially coming from an author who neglected his female characters in the past. And there are lots of gloomy winter scenes of Corde drinking Slivovitz in his wife's childhood bedroom.

[ranaemoranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

“... è meglio per noi trattare con ciò che è in noi per natura, qualunque cosa sia; ma non vedo gente disposta a far questo. Quel che vedo è, soprattutto, l’evasione. Ma questa è una cosa che agisce sulla sostanza dell’anima: è lo spirito del tempo che è in noi per natura e che opera in ogni anima. Preferiamo però che tali cose ci vengano servite come concetti. Le preferiamo astratte, nate-morte, morte.”

[Spike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong--I love Saul Bellow's work. But this one was a chore to get through. It sputters along on two cylinders, the narrative drive so weak I forgot what the characters wanted at times. While the writing on a sentence-by-sentence basis is very good, the novel suffers from too much rumination and philosophizing. Not his best work.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to learn about a promising if grim juxtaposition of Chicago and Bucharest circa 1980. This novel appears to be based on not only the University-bound dean...Bellow as Corde, professor-manque if in a vaguely defined Dean of Students role despite his lack of a PhD...but I hazard probably his own visit to the era when Ceaucescu reigned over the workers and peasants paradise. Trouble is that so little in this narrative captures people as they sound to you and me. Rather than mouthpieces for intellectual ruminations and sociological speculations. Bellow offers plenty of excoriations about the "soft nihilism" of America and the "hard nihilism" of the Soviet bloc. His prescient critiques of what forty years on we witness as "woke" ideologies and cancel culture tantrums on campus ring true. But the detached air here of privileged professionals of the chattering classes and what used to be the WASP-adjacent establishment wear down the atmosphere into a grating recital of all that ails the West. I happen to sympathize with a lot of Bellow's positions, but the lack of spirited dialogue and the oppressive indirect first-person voice filtered through a grumpy late middle-aged misfit (sounds like me now) doesn't make this a page-turner, but a slow-slogger.

That's the problem with my favorite genre, the novel of ideas. It's catnip for me. Yet so few of its examples turn out to be compelling not only as thoughtful analysis but engrossing stories with characters resembling flesh-and-blood, rather than stock figures, allegory or cardboard cutouts.

I read this when it came out, back in college, as I wanted then as now to find an intelligent immersion into Iron Curtain ideas and institutions. I admit I recalled nothing from my first go in 1982. I'd hoped to discover a nuanced investigation into Romanian clampdowns, but then as now, I realize that I'll have to keep searching. Suggestions welcome and, yes, I read Herta Miller's "Plum" novel years before she won her Nobel...

[Shoshi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book might have gotten 5 stars if it kept its focus on Romania instead of going back and forth to Chicago. I thought the human relationships and family dynamics in Communist Romania were described beautifully. I felt a lot of the frustration with the characters-- trying to cut past bureaucracy to visit their dying elderly family member and meeting political obstacles wherever they turned. I also like the descriptions of the cold outside and the insufficient heating indoors. The husband and wife relationship between the dean and his wife was interesting too.

Chicago was focused on sex crimes and politics and it wasn't my favorite. The academic politics of the Dean's university were fine-- but the city politics seemed out of date-- even though the issues of inner city and minority crime are still a big deal and a topic of conversation we are frequently encountering today. I just wasn't impressed with the Dean's take. I didn't find it racist like his opponents in the book, but I did find it underwhelming and uninformed. The character of the Dean also gave weirdly physically focused descriptions of his sister.

I'll definitely try Bellow again, but I would skip over the Chicago-focused parts of Dean's December.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most powerful of Bellow's novels I've read to date. An aging journalist turned college dean, caught up in situations which emphasize the personal ramifications of the social political storms raging at home and the unforgiving communist bureaucracy of his wife's homeland of Rumania. Haunted by hostile politically correct reactions to his recent freelance articles, Albert Corde maintains a caring and moral course while questioning his own motivations. A chance encounter with a childhood friend oddly provides some answers. This was a timely read for me, while hearing of efforts by neo-conservatives to make the Public Broadcasting Corporation more "balanced", and wondering if there wasn't such a thing as a generally accepted "truth" that becomes more clearly defined with increasing information. This came to my list when all of Bellow's books were added to my reading list following my enjoyment of The Dangling Man.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about Albert Corde, previously a journalist who is now a College dean in Chicago. He becomes involved in the trial of two blacks accused of killing a white student by throwing the gagged white student out of an apartment window. Corde is in Bucharest with his wife, Minna. Minna’s famous Romanian scientist mother is dying and the Corde’s find the Bucharest government bureaucracy stifling. They need permission to see Minna’s mother, and even though they have money and political friends, they are only able to see Minna’s mother for a short while, a couple of times.

Corde is interviewed by Dewey Spangler, a famous American journalist whilst in Bucharest. Dewey and Corde were friends are university. Corde is an intelligent man who has written controversial articles exposing local corruption, that have not endeared him to Alec Witt, Corde’s boss at the Chicago College.

A novel that discusses many political issues that were prevalent in the 1970s and early 1980s, including racism, corruption, the Communist government’s influence of how people behave in public, and private thoughts being publicly aired.

Bellow fans should find this book a very satisfying reading experience. Readers new to Bellow should begin with ‘Herzog’ (1964), ‘Mr Sammler’s Planet’ (1970) or ‘Humboldt’s Gift’ (1975).

This book was published in 1982.

[Descending Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Bellow's a tale of two cities, set in Bucharest Romania and the city of Chicago. Bellow's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel brings up a lot of ideas and interesting questions on oppression, the human condition as well as the media. It gives a picture of systems that have seemingly given up on groups of people, written them off completely, but also shows the everyday people weather it be on the street or under communist ruled Romania getting by with the hand that's been given them.

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bellow’s reputation as a remarkable prose stylist shows here in the way he uses detail to foreshadow. The heightened use of contrast, too, sets the book apart from his other novels; the story itself follows the same template used for Bellow's other novels – the lives of the urban, upper class and educated. What's different this time is a striking aspect of the protagonist here: an ability to express the utter devastation of life in the American underclass. The unflinching exploration of class in America sets this book apart from his others.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another beautiful story from Bellow but quite a bit more melancholy that the others I have read (Herzog, Augie March, Mr Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day...). I liked the Albert Corde character and his wife Minna. Perhaps with the fall of the iron curtain and the disappearance of the hideous dictatorship in Hungary, some of the political weight of the text is lost, but the primary story is really the Dean and his childhood friend am"nd the Dean's own acceptance of himself. Bellow is always so stunningly human in his writing and this was no exception.

[Ana-Maria Bujor · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read about the context of this book, I was excited. And it does start off very well. The language is great and I was definitely interested in the perspective of a foreigner when it comes to one of the darkest periods in Romanian history. But while some aspects are revealing, both when it comes to Romanian communism and violence in USA, so much time is lost on pettiness between rich intellectuals that I found myself thinking about other things while reading. Some parts are very bland and break the pacing and impact of the other scenes. But what is good, is good. Worth checking out.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A humane man struggles with meaning and mortality amid modernity’s failed utopias (East and West).

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I said 8-9 years ago, when I first read this, this probably remains Bellow’s greatest book

[Negar Ebrahimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

همان‌طور که از عنوان کتاب برمی‌آید، یک ماه آخر سال از زندگی مردی چهل و چند ساله را با همه‌ی ارتباط‌های او و انعکاسش در رفتارها و نظرات دیگران دنبال می‌کنیم. نویسنده در این فرصت ۳۷۶ صفحه‌ای به موضوعات مختلفی که ذهنیت یک روشنفکر آمریکایی را در طول زندگی‌اش سر و شکل داده صحبت به میان می‌آورد. به نظر می‌رسد او حال‍ا به بهانه‌ی نظرات افرادی که برایش به دلایل مختلفی اهمیت دارند، کارهایی که پیش از این از سر روشن‌فکری و انسان‌دوستی انجام داده است را با دیده‌ی شک و تردید از نو بررسی می‌کند. به هر حال این رمان برخلاف پراکنده‌گویی‌اش خصوصا راجع به دو شهر، در خدمت شناساندن یک مرد چهل و چند ساله‌ی با عقبه‌ای روشن‌فکرانه و اکنون درگیر شک است. حتی شهر کمونیست‌زده‌ی بخارست هم از دریچه‌ی نگاه آمریکایی او برای مخاطب تصویر می‌شود. با این همه، طبق معمول کتاب‌های پرچانه و با خلوص ایده‌ی پایین، چند تصویر چشمم را گرفت، مثل ایده‌ی بازگشت یک زوج با ریشه‌های متفاوت به زادگاه زن و اقامت همسر غریبه با آن جغرافیا و فرهنگ در خانه‌ی مادری همسرش، علی‌الخصوص در اتاق دوران کودکی و نوجوانی همسرش.
از ترجمه و ویراستاری کتاب به زبان فارسی انتظار بیشتری داشتم. با این که نسخه‌ای که خواندم از چاپ دوم کتاب بود، چند مورد غلط نگارشی داشت و علائم نگارشی به اشتباه استفاده شده بود.

- ‏و چیزی که تو به عنوان مردی عاشق روال عادی هرگز نمی‌توانی ببخشی این است که آن‌ها هیچ طرح و برنامه‌ای در زندگیشان ندارند. آن‌ها برنامه‌ریزی نمی‌کنند، اساساً هیچ «کار»ی نمی‌کنند؛ فقط ول می‌گردند. چیزی که بیش از هر چیز دیگر تو را متنفر و منزجر می‌کند.

- ‏اون بخش از نظریه احتمالاتو یادته، این که اگه یه میلیون میمون به مدت یه میلیون سال روی دکمه‌های ماشین تحریر بالا و پایین بپرن، یکی از اونا بهشت گمشده رو می‌نویسه؟ خوب، این مصداق برخورد تو با خانم‌هاست. این‌قدر بالا و پایین پریدی تا عاقبت به یه شاهکار رسیدی.

- ‏«تو شیکاگو کمتر کسی میاد ذهنش رو مشغول مسئله‌ای مثل عدالت بکنه. عجیبْ کمه تعداد این‌جور آدما. تا وقتی آدم به کسی که همچین دل‌مشغولی‌ای داره برنخوره، این مسئله رو درک نمی‌کنه، و تازه بعدش آدم می‌فهمه که این‌جور دل‌مشغولی‌ها واقعاً نادرن...»

- ‏سعی کردم عنصر اخل‍اق‌گرای دیدن و مشاهده کردن باشم. این را به آن‌ها القا کردم. به همین دلیل، فوق‌العاده از من متنفر بودند. آگاهی واقعی خود من در خل‍ال سالیان ماهیتی متناوب و ادواری پیدا کرده بود. در مورد من، تباه شدن نیز به همین معنی است؛ قطع بودنِ دید.

- ‏«این‌جا شهر من هم هست. من هم حق دارم آن را همان‌طور که واقعاً می‌بینم، تصویر کنم.»

- ‏مثل اینه که آدم به حدّ نهایی ضعفش برسه و بعد برسه به یه در، و اگه اون‌قدر قدرت داشته باشه که بتونه اون در رو باز کنه، با نیروهای جورواجوری روبه‌رو می‌شه و اونا رو جذب می‌کنه.

- ‏مردم اتهامات را به خاطر می‌سپردند و تبرئه‌شدن‌ها را فراموش می‌کردند - الگوی همیشگی.

- ‏زندان ناحیه بودجه‌ی کلونی داره. تدارکات‌چی‌ها و پیمانکارا به دفتر اومدن (شما می‌دونی کی اونا رو می‌فرستاد) و اون کار نمی‌کرد. گفت: «اگه گوشت لُخم شما رو نخرم، در هر پوند معادل شصت سنت صرفه‌جویی می‌کنم. می‌دم همین‌جا استخونای گوشتا رو بگیرن.» صرفه‌جویی‌های زیادی. ‏اون از بودجه‌ش یه میلیون دل‍ار کنار گذاشت و اون پولو به بخش پس‌فرستاد.

- ‏«تو‌ خونواده‌ی صربیایی من تو شیکاگو، زنا می‌گن: «اگه ل‍اغر نشی، چطوری می‌خوای شوهر پیدا کنی؟» اما من بهشون می‌گم: «من حتی اگه غذا هم نخورم شوهر گیرم نمیاد، اون‌وقت هم غذا نخوردم، هم شوهر نکردم.»

- ‏لحنت یه طوری بود که انگار خداوند داشت بهت می‌گفت: «این متن رو به این شکل بنویس.»

- ‏حتی مخالفان دولت در روسیه -به خصوص جناح راست- هم به ما [آمریکایی‌ها] تشر زدن و گفتن: «ما عدالت یا آزادی شخصی نداریم، اما صمیمیت، انسانیت و برادری داریم، و رنج و دردای ما به ما شخصیت داده. شما تنها چیزی که می‌تونین به ما بدین، سوپرمارکته.»

- ‏آیا نرده‌های ایوان تو را به یاد زندان می‌اندازد؟ همین نرده‌ها از سقوط و مرگت هم جلوگیری می‌کنند.

[Andrewh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1982, which was the height of the post-détente cold war, the book is divided between Chicago and Bucharest. The Dean is Albert Corde, who is a former journalist elevated to an academic role who is married to a Romanian scientist, who left her communist state to live in the US. Her mother, a disgraced former party official, is dying, so the Dean and her return to Bucharest to attend to her, which gives Bellow an opportunity to compare and contrast the corruption of life in one of the most oppressive Eastern Bloc states with that in one of America’s most troubled cities.
In Bucharest, the Dean and his wife struggle even to see her mother in hospital, as access is controlled by a mysterious Colonel, and every action they take requires some form of minor bribery (usually in the form of American cigarettes). Meanwhile, back in Chicago, there is a murder trial taking place in which the Dean has a public role, which has strong racial elements and involves his cousin, who is defending the accused. Corde has written about how the underclass is being poisoned by lead, and how the media and academia are morally bankrupt (though he has been in both spheres himself).
The Romanian part of the book allows Bellow to describe in telling detail what life must have been like in a 1980s communist state, and this is the most interesting material - full of gloom, cold flats and poor food. This section also sees an amazing coincidence as an old childhood friend, called Dewey Spangler (not Spengler), turns up. He is a prominent journalist of international renown, and they meet up after the funeral for a chat. This turns out to be an interview of sorts, which is then published after Corde returns to Chicago, and this story [‘A tale of two cities’] then leads to the Dean resigning from his role at the university, following his unwitting revelations about academia.
At the end of the book, he goes with his astronomer wife to a giant telescope to contemplate the vastness of the universe.
The book reads quite awkwardly in places and too many of the characters talk like they are reading out essays from the New York Review of Books – Corde’s lawyer cousin and Spangler in particular are thinly drawn characters, whose conversations seems unreal. Corde himself also often speaks in absurdly long and involved sentences, and quotes liberally from various authors even when talking to to his wife (the ‘ignorant’ scientist, who at least ticks him off for this faux pas). The themes at work are probably too complex and vast for a novel to do justice to them, and here these take precedence over any sense of actual living characters (they are more mouthpieces than living persons).

[Bookaholic]

Iarna decanului nu e o carte uşoară. Nu aş recomanda-o ca lectură de vacanţă decât în cazul unui scenariu mai izolat, de plecat prin munţi şi rupt legăturile cotidiene cu lumea – caz în care cartea îţi va confirma că nu puteai face o alegere mai bună decât să te retragi un pic.

Decanul este chiar Saul Bellow, iar iarna cea a anului 1977, când scriitorul american vine în România, împreună cu soţia sa Alexandra, reputat om de ştiinţă în State, fiica profesorului Dumitru Bagdasar (cel care a creat şcoala română de neurochirurgie) și a doctoriței Florica Bagdasar. Vizita are un motiv cel puţin trist: mama Alexandrei (în roman Alexandra este Mina, iar mama ei Valeria) moare la spitalul Elias, iar perioada petrecută de soţii Bellow (în roman Corde) la Bucureşti vine la pachet cu privaţiunile, absurditatea şi atmosfera sinistră/comunistă. (cronică: http://bookaholic.ro/iarna-decanului-...)

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dean's December is set back in the early '80's when (I guess - need to check the dates) Communist control in Eastern Europe was still in place. The book centers on a middle aged, intellectual Dean who accompanies his wife to Bucharest to be with her mother for her final days of life. The book is mostly conversations and thoughts that the Dean has over the month of December - with the narrative pivoting between events in Bucharest and some chaos that the Dean has left behind in his native Chicago. A very cerebral, thought provoking read - good if you are in the mood for a bit of self discovery with a glimpse into the human condition. I liked all of these interesting, flawed characters seen through the Dean's filter (glad he never met me - he was a bit rough!). Needless to say - it took me a while to get through it but it was worth it in the end.

[Katrina Quick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An effortlessly smooth read as the mood of the book - gloomy and blue - fitted the mood I was experiencing on my return to a culture I feel both alienated and depressed by.

The main character comes across as a slight outsider, due to his high levels of intelligence, awareness, and pessimistic views that at times border faintly on outright nihilism. We follow him on his travels as he wearily enters the communist state of Bucharest, contrasting colourfully with the comfortable and yet sour city of Chicago.

The main character is at once entirely relatable but also demands a level of respect. He is constantly critical of his actions and yet remains strong in his narrative on the society that surrounds him, as he moves between two worlds.

I recommend for those feeling despairing towards their surroundings.

[May Ling]

Saul Bellow is a bad-a$$ writer precisely because he can take a storyline a little done by new millennium standards and make it soo very amazingly readable. I don't think I liked either the storyline or the characters and yet I had to respect the writer while reading it. His way of describing and explaining people, their nuances, and the such.



The characters are real and the entire story very believable. Bravo!

[Paul Grimsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is gentle and somewhat sedate but every thing that happens in it resonates -- I suppose some people must play a billion notes to enthrall you and some can play a few carefully placed harmonies and seduce you with their fictional worlds.