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Η κλοπή
Ξανθιά, με μεγάλο σκελετό, γοητευτική και πάντοτε καλοντυμένη, η Κλάρα Βέλντε είναι διευθυντικό στέλεχος σε μία εταιρία που πατρονάρει θέματα γυναικείας μόδας. Ζει με τον τέταρτο σύζυγό της, τον Ουάιλντερ Βέλντε. Εξακολουθεί όμως να αγαπά το διάσημο και πανίσχυρο Ίθιελ "Τέντυ" Ρέγκλερ, προσωπικότητα της Ουάσιγκτον, σύμβουλο προέδρων και πολιτικών προσώπων.
Πριν από πολλά χρόνια ο Τέντυ Ρέγκλερ χάρισε στην Κλάρα ένα σμαραγδένιο δαχτυλίδι κι εκείνη το φύλακε σαν σύμβολο του πάθους της γι' αυτόν. Το δαχτυλίδι χάνεται και ύστερα από πολλά χρόνια έρχεται ξανά στην επιφάνεια. Εξαφανίζεται για μιά δεύτερη φορά. Μέσα από τις προσπάθειές της να ξαναβρεί το πολύτιμο δαχτυλίδι, η Κλάρα αναδύεται σαν μιά αληθινή ηρωίδα, σαν μιά γυναίκα με τεράστιο εσωτερικό πλούτο.
Η Κλοπή, είναι μιά έξυπνη και τρυφερή ιστορία και σ' αυτό το μυθιστόρημα ο Μπέλοου εμφανίζεται ζωντανός και αιχμηρός όσο ποτέ άλλοτε.
(από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)
Πριν από πολλά χρόνια ο Τέντυ Ρέγκλερ χάρισε στην Κλάρα ένα σμαραγδένιο δαχτυλίδι κι εκείνη το φύλακε σαν σύμβολο του πάθους της γι' αυτόν. Το δαχτυλίδι χάνεται και ύστερα από πολλά χρόνια έρχεται ξανά στην επιφάνεια. Εξαφανίζεται για μιά δεύτερη φορά. Μέσα από τις προσπάθειές της να ξαναβρεί το πολύτιμο δαχτυλίδι, η Κλάρα αναδύεται σαν μιά αληθινή ηρωίδα, σαν μιά γυναίκα με τεράστιο εσωτερικό πλούτο.
Η Κλοπή, είναι μιά έξυπνη και τρυφερή ιστορία και σ' αυτό το μυθιστόρημα ο Μπέλοου εμφανίζεται ζωντανός και αιχμηρός όσο ποτέ άλλοτε.
(από την παρουσίαση στο οπισθόφυλλο του βιβλίου)
111 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
20 people are currently reading
414 people want to read
About the author
Saul Bellow
251 books1,953 followersNovels 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
May 26, 2020
Κλασσικές αμερικανικές ψυχώσεις ματαιοδοξίας, για το χρήμα, την κοινωνική προβολή και την ευτυχία, όμορφα αποτυπωμένες
July 15, 2012
This is the second novel I've read by Saul Bellow, a Nobel Prize-winning author. The first, Seize the Day, is very good, about a destructive American obsession with success. A Theft is a little trickier. It's about a woman, Clara Velde, with a successful career life, though a failed love life. What makes this novel so troublesome is that it's not very clear what the reader is supposed to make of Clara. Is she supposed to be a highly flawed heroine, or a fount of love and wisdom? Bellow exercises his powers of subtlety a little too well in this novella, to the point that reading it becomes a chore.
Clara grew up in the country, raised by wealthy fundamentalist parents who donate their money to televangelists. She moved to New York, where she met Ithiel Regler, called Teddy, a brilliant scientist who works for the federal government. She fell in love, and supposedly he did too, though the pretty emerald engagement ring he bought for her was not his choosing. He was only caving in to her demands. Their relationship didn't work out, though twenty years later she still feels he is the only man she really loved. As such, she keeps in touch and still wears the ring.
She married four men after breaking off her engagement with Teddy. She complains that her current husband, Wilder, spends too much of his time reading read thrillers by John Le Carre and doesn't help out with their three kids. She married him for sex alone. He happens to enjoy the fact she is still friendly with some of her high profile exes, and tapes interviews of Teddy whenever he's on TV. Clara confides this information, and more, in her friend, Laura Wong. Laura mostly sits and listens. We don't learn much about her, suggesting that Clara holds no interest in her personal life, but she seems to be the only friend Clara has outside of Teddy. Another important character is Gina, an Italian woman who Clara hires to take care of her kids. Clara sees in Gina a character of high quality, though some of Gina's actions seem to contradict this. Clara allows her to bring her Haitian boyfriend over, but only if the kids are in bed, and one night Gina has a party that balloons into more people than Clara thought there would be.
And now we come to the theft. As you might have guessed, the object of the theft is the engagement ring. In his subtle way, Bellow introduces a second theft, which actually happens first, though nobody ever refers to it as a theft. First of all, Clara loses the ring. Because it is insured, she files a claim and collects $15,000. Then, by chance, the ring turns up again, under her bed. However, she doesn't tell the insurance company she found it because, well, she had already spent all the money. Then, the ring is stolen. Clara thinks she knows who the culprit is, and she develops a very low opinion of this person. It never seems to enter her mind that she is also a thief, and her theft is even worse.
Based on what I've just written, you might be thinking this sounds like a good book. And I admit it has the elements in place to be a fascinating read, but the execution is off. Bellow is, perhaps, a little too subtle. To the point it's not very clear what he's trying to get at. The narrator has a limited third-person perspective and seems more or less partial to Clara. We learn much from Clara's dialogues with Laura Wong, Teddy, and her psychiatrist, though she does most of the talking. It's hard to say what these people think of Clara. The psychiatrist is paid to listen to her, and even Laura has a professional connection with her. Teddy seems to genuinely like her, though not enough to marry her. What we do know is what she thinks of herself, which is that she's of a superior caste of people. The problem is, the novel seems to endorse this view of her. I can't tell what Bellow's aims were; it seems he's playing things with a little too much subtlety. He provides too much contradictory evidence for the reader to develop a thoughtful opinion of her.
To make matters worse is this excerpt from the blurb on the back of the book:
"As she attempts to recover the precious ring, Clara emerges as a genuine heroine, a woman of great depth and unsuspected capacities of wisdom and love."
I think the blurb has it wrong, but it's not clear whose view the blurb represents: the author's, the publisher's, or some other party. Clara is self-absorbed and jumps to hasty conclusions. Based on a very minor detail, a supposed change in Laura's tone of voice, Clara has the belief that her friend wants to steal Teddy from her, though it is assumed Laura has never met Teddy. She has romantic ideas about Gina, but negative feelings about her boyfriend, who she has never talked with. She's a poor mother and a poor wife. We never see her interacting with her daughters or her husband, and when she mentions them it's only to complain. To add to that, she's clearly a racist, which we know based on the number of times she claims that she isn't.
Perhaps this sounds like a thought-provoking read, and certainly I've spent a lot of thought on it, but it was a chore to sort out. This is not very enjoyable. At 110 pages it felt at least twice its length. I reread passages again and again to try and figure them out, only to move on in frustration. I have my mind made up about Clara, but I don't know if the conclusion I've drawn is the one Bellow intends. If you were thinking about getting into Saul Bellow's works, I wouldn't start here.
Clara grew up in the country, raised by wealthy fundamentalist parents who donate their money to televangelists. She moved to New York, where she met Ithiel Regler, called Teddy, a brilliant scientist who works for the federal government. She fell in love, and supposedly he did too, though the pretty emerald engagement ring he bought for her was not his choosing. He was only caving in to her demands. Their relationship didn't work out, though twenty years later she still feels he is the only man she really loved. As such, she keeps in touch and still wears the ring.
She married four men after breaking off her engagement with Teddy. She complains that her current husband, Wilder, spends too much of his time reading read thrillers by John Le Carre and doesn't help out with their three kids. She married him for sex alone. He happens to enjoy the fact she is still friendly with some of her high profile exes, and tapes interviews of Teddy whenever he's on TV. Clara confides this information, and more, in her friend, Laura Wong. Laura mostly sits and listens. We don't learn much about her, suggesting that Clara holds no interest in her personal life, but she seems to be the only friend Clara has outside of Teddy. Another important character is Gina, an Italian woman who Clara hires to take care of her kids. Clara sees in Gina a character of high quality, though some of Gina's actions seem to contradict this. Clara allows her to bring her Haitian boyfriend over, but only if the kids are in bed, and one night Gina has a party that balloons into more people than Clara thought there would be.
And now we come to the theft. As you might have guessed, the object of the theft is the engagement ring. In his subtle way, Bellow introduces a second theft, which actually happens first, though nobody ever refers to it as a theft. First of all, Clara loses the ring. Because it is insured, she files a claim and collects $15,000. Then, by chance, the ring turns up again, under her bed. However, she doesn't tell the insurance company she found it because, well, she had already spent all the money. Then, the ring is stolen. Clara thinks she knows who the culprit is, and she develops a very low opinion of this person. It never seems to enter her mind that she is also a thief, and her theft is even worse.
Based on what I've just written, you might be thinking this sounds like a good book. And I admit it has the elements in place to be a fascinating read, but the execution is off. Bellow is, perhaps, a little too subtle. To the point it's not very clear what he's trying to get at. The narrator has a limited third-person perspective and seems more or less partial to Clara. We learn much from Clara's dialogues with Laura Wong, Teddy, and her psychiatrist, though she does most of the talking. It's hard to say what these people think of Clara. The psychiatrist is paid to listen to her, and even Laura has a professional connection with her. Teddy seems to genuinely like her, though not enough to marry her. What we do know is what she thinks of herself, which is that she's of a superior caste of people. The problem is, the novel seems to endorse this view of her. I can't tell what Bellow's aims were; it seems he's playing things with a little too much subtlety. He provides too much contradictory evidence for the reader to develop a thoughtful opinion of her.
To make matters worse is this excerpt from the blurb on the back of the book:
"As she attempts to recover the precious ring, Clara emerges as a genuine heroine, a woman of great depth and unsuspected capacities of wisdom and love."
I think the blurb has it wrong, but it's not clear whose view the blurb represents: the author's, the publisher's, or some other party. Clara is self-absorbed and jumps to hasty conclusions. Based on a very minor detail, a supposed change in Laura's tone of voice, Clara has the belief that her friend wants to steal Teddy from her, though it is assumed Laura has never met Teddy. She has romantic ideas about Gina, but negative feelings about her boyfriend, who she has never talked with. She's a poor mother and a poor wife. We never see her interacting with her daughters or her husband, and when she mentions them it's only to complain. To add to that, she's clearly a racist, which we know based on the number of times she claims that she isn't.
Perhaps this sounds like a thought-provoking read, and certainly I've spent a lot of thought on it, but it was a chore to sort out. This is not very enjoyable. At 110 pages it felt at least twice its length. I reread passages again and again to try and figure them out, only to move on in frustration. I have my mind made up about Clara, but I don't know if the conclusion I've drawn is the one Bellow intends. If you were thinking about getting into Saul Bellow's works, I wouldn't start here.
January 1, 2016
3.5
Αρκετά μικρό σε έκταση μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο δε μου κίνησε το ενδιαφέρον. Ωστόσο θέλω να διαβάσω κάτι πιο γνωστό από Bellow, όπως το "Οι περιπέτειες του Ώγκι Μαρτς", το οποίο κυκλοφόρησε μόλις τον προηγούμενο μήνα από Καστανιώτη και διάβασα εξαιρετικές κριτικές.
Αρκετά μικρό σε έκταση μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο δε μου κίνησε το ενδιαφέρον. Ωστόσο θέλω να διαβάσω κάτι πιο γνωστό από Bellow, όπως το "Οι περιπέτειες του Ώγκι Μαρτς", το οποίο κυκλοφόρησε μόλις τον προηγούμενο μήνα από Καστανιώτη και διάβασα εξαιρετικές κριτικές.
February 18, 2019
What made this a 5 star book for me was that, while I was reading it, I coincidentally read Proverbs chapter 30, a prophecy that was given to Ithiel. One of the main characters of Bellow's novela is a foreign relations consultant with the unusual name of Ithiel (which means "he who understood the signs" in Hebrew). This novela concerns Clara Velde, a big-boned, beautiful woman with an expansive personality. She obsesses over Ithiel, to whom she was briefly engaged as a young woman. She is now on her fourth marriage and is the mother of three girls. She is a remarkably goodhearted woman, but she is also remarkably manipulative. She has been blithely carrying on with Ithiel throughout her four bland and unsatisfactory marriages and is completely unable to recognize that her own vanity, manipulative personality and adultery just might be the root of the problem with her marriages. The "theft" is of Clara's engagement ring from Ithiel. Clara attaches way more significance to the ring (and to her relationship with Ithiel) than is seemly. Reading Proverbs 30 about the seeking of signs and of the vainglorious and oblivious adulterous woman definitely shed light on the meaning of Bellow's book
November 21, 2017
I found this book so irritating! Clara was annoying. Bellow was obsessed with the combination of "farm girl" and aristocrat. How irresistible. When describing a ten year old girl, he said you could tell she would have great legs. Yuck. I'm just glad it was only 100 pages. It was interesting to see the kind of stupid crap people can get worked up about when all of their basic needs are met.
December 22, 2017
Quick, short read but nothing I would recommend......the only theft was the time I took to read it. It's just a tale of a lot of narcissistic, shallow people driven by greed and social status.
January 13, 2019
Ugh! I hated this book. The only reason I finished it is that it only had 109 pages. Shoo.
October 11, 2020
Εξαιρετική απόδοση του Νεοϋορκέζικου entourage της Κλάρας από έναν αριστοτέχνη λογοπλόκο που κινείται με χάρη ανάμεσα στη σατιρική καρικατούρα και το κριτικό πορτρέτο και σε μια εξαιρετική μετάφραση. Και αυτό μπορεί να επιβραβευτεί με ενάμιση άντε δύο αστεράκια
Απ την άλλη η Κλάρα είναι ηλίθια (που στον κορακα, είδε την αληθινή ηρωίδα με τον τεράστιο εσωτερικό πλούτο ο επιμελητής του οπισθόφυλλου), οι υπόλοιποι συμπρωταγωνιστές εξ ίσου ασήμαντοι και η πλοκή χωρίς κανέναν προσανατολισμό, ενδιαφέρον ή σασπένς.
Για να μην πω ότι η μόνη κλοπή ήταν του χρόνου μου θα πώ ότι ούτε ο Bellow κέρδισε τίποτα καλλιτεχνικά (γιατι οικονομικά φαντάζομαι εξαργύρωσε το -σχετικά πρόσφατο όταν πρωτο-εκδόθηκε το βιβλίο- Νόμπελ του) ούτε εγώ (ή οποιοσδήποτε άλλος, μεταξύ μας) διαβάζοντας τη νουβέλα (που κακώς χαρακτηρίζεται ως μυθιστόρημα στο οπισθόφυλλο)
Απ την άλλη η Κλάρα είναι ηλίθια (που στον κορακα, είδε την αληθινή ηρωίδα με τον τεράστιο εσωτερικό πλούτο ο επιμελητής του οπισθόφυλλου), οι υπόλοιποι συμπρωταγωνιστές εξ ίσου ασήμαντοι και η πλοκή χωρίς κανέναν προσανατολισμό, ενδιαφέρον ή σασπένς.
Για να μην πω ότι η μόνη κλοπή ήταν του χρόνου μου θα πώ ότι ούτε ο Bellow κέρδισε τίποτα καλλιτεχνικά (γιατι οικονομικά φαντάζομαι εξαργύρωσε το -σχετικά πρόσφατο όταν πρωτο-εκδόθηκε το βιβλίο- Νόμπελ του) ούτε εγώ (ή οποιοσδήποτε άλλος, μεταξύ μας) διαβάζοντας τη νουβέλα (που κακώς χαρακτηρίζεται ως μυθιστόρημα στο οπισθόφυλλο)
June 15, 2020
This is a short one, folks - even for Saul Bellow! Written in the late 1980s, it is a stream of consciousness conversation between Clara and the world around her, much of which is focused on an amazing emerald ring she received from a lover years before - someone with whom she is still close and involved while they, between them, had seven marriages and several children. The ring has a tendency to disappear - through loss or theft - and then to reappear, and Clara reads a great deal into the comes and goings of the ring. Bellow, as always a masterful writer, has a quirky view of his heroine, but she grows in her understanding of people and her understanding that she does not always assess situations correctly. Clara is sort of a poster child for White Privilege, although the term did not exist back then.
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March 31, 2020I've been going back and dipping my toe into Bellow to see if he holds up 20 years after I was obsessed with him and I...still can't tell? He manages to imbue his creations with a great deal of mythical energy, but sometimes this gets a little bit much, with every side character being an oil magnate or a faded drunken ex-Hollywood star, you get the idea. This is one of the few of his that I can remember reading with a woman as the protagonist and it didn't work absolutely perfectly for me. I dunno, now that I'm quarantined maybe I'll have time to read something more significant by him.
July 10, 2015
This was my first Bellow and I was not impressed. It started out looking like it was going to be a satire but by the end I couldn't tell if the characters were legitimately supposed to be sympathetic or even laudable. Overall it ended up just being a narcissistic woman's boring and kind of pathetic tale. The writing was good enough to keep me reading, however, which is why I give it two instead of only one star.
June 14, 2011
To quote Dorothy Parker, "I did not set this aside lightly...I threw it with great force." Got a third of the way through this, and could not get over thinking that it was nothing more than self-important crap. I really didn't see any way for Bellow to turn around an opinion of such deep hatred, so I quit.
October 23, 2025
3.5 stars. An intriguing novella about Clara Velde, a shapely muddled aged, successful career woman with three daughters and a tolerable fourth marriage. However Clara has never forgotten who love of Ithiel Regler, a foreign affairs expert to presidents who married other woman, who once nearly drove Clara to commit suicide. Ithiel gave Clara a valuable emerald ring. Clara lost the ring and claimed an insurance payout. Later she found the ring but didn’t disclose it to the insurance company as she had already spent all of the insurance payment. Accordingly she decided to gamble with having the ring but not being able to insure it! However she does lose it for a second time and believes she knows who the thief is.
Saul Bellow fans will enjoy the cleverly written prose and wit of this novella, however the plot is fairly insubstantial and Clara’s character is not fully developed.
As a Bellow reader fan, I found this book a satisfying read. Readers new to Bellow should begin with the excellent ‘Herzog’ or ‘The Adventures of Augie March’ or ‘Seize the Day’.
This book was first published in 1989.
Saul Bellow fans will enjoy the cleverly written prose and wit of this novella, however the plot is fairly insubstantial and Clara’s character is not fully developed.
As a Bellow reader fan, I found this book a satisfying read. Readers new to Bellow should begin with the excellent ‘Herzog’ or ‘The Adventures of Augie March’ or ‘Seize the Day’.
This book was first published in 1989.
March 7, 2021
I have struggled to connect with Bellow's writing. I admire his exuberant language, but I get lost as he takes his characters' thoughts in different directions. I often feel unsure that I know what is really going on, and I don't feel like I have a full sense of his characters. The plot in this novella is thin, and the stakes do not feel very high for Clara. Her life choices are interesting to a point, but I couldn't invest much emotional energy in the outcome of her midlife confusion. The other characters felt incomplete to me, or it felt like I had somehow missed something important in the storytelling. I had some similar struggles with my last attempt, "Henderson the Rain King." Lots of masculine energy in the writing, but hard to get a foothold as a reader. I might try "Augie March." Bellow is so often paired with Philip Roth (whose novels and stories I admire and sometimes love) in the post-war Jewish literary pantheon, so I wonder if I haven't landed on the right novel to make me understand why.
May 31, 2021
It's good and bad, complex and simple. It's a character study really but the ring doesn't go missing until we're halfway in and all Velde does till then is crib. What she does after is crib. Somewhere in the middle she realises she's spent all her life chasing phantoms. And there's Gina whose background was the catalyst for the experience. Probably need to read it again at some point to decide if I like it. But I don't dislike it either. So.
February 20, 2024
Uhhh, no. It gets two stars bc the writing itself is interesting, but the characters/the plot…sexist trash.
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October 12, 2025add it to the pile of books describing women discovering the kernel of truth buried inside of them that is themself!
October 21, 2025
When Saul Bellow published *A Theft* in 1989, readers were puzzled at first. Was this a novella, a long short story, a moral anecdote, or a late-life sketch of feminine consciousness? It seemed oddly slender beside the grand symphonic novels that had made Bellow a Nobel laureate. Yet reread *A Theft* today, and you realize that its compactness is deceptive. Within its 90-odd pages, Bellow distills an entire emotional universe—jealousy, regret, forgiveness, vanity—into a crystalline meditation on love’s failures and life’s strange reconciliations. If *Herzog* and *Humboldt’s Gift* were philosophical epics, *A Theft* is a moral miniature: intimate, ironic, and piercing.
At the center of *A Theft* stands **Clara Velde**, one of Bellow’s most complex female creations. Clara is a successful New York fashion journalist—a woman of intelligence, poise, and restless sentiment. She’s had several marriages, several lovers, and one unhealed wound: a lifelong, maddening attachment to a man named Ithiel Regler. Ithiel, married to someone else, has occupied her imagination for decades. Their love affair—never fully consummated, never fully extinguished—becomes the axis around which her emotional life spins.
Bellow, long accused of being a “masculine” writer, surprises us here. *A Theft* unfolds largely through Clara’s consciousness, and what a mind it is—garrulous, self-aware, constantly oscillating between vanity and vulnerability. She’s articulate yet lost, ironic yet romantic. Bellow captures her interior rhythms with uncanny empathy; the prose flows as if we’re listening to her private monologue while she tries to justify her life to herself.
When a cherished emerald ring—symbol of her bond with Ithiel—is stolen by her young au pair, Clara’s entire psychological balance tilts. The “theft” of the title is literal and symbolic: not just the loss of a jewel but the theft of meaning, of sentiment, of self-mythology. The ring was her talisman, her proof that love once mattered. Without it, her story feels hollow. And so begins her inward odyssey toward a different kind of understanding—one that is no longer dependent on possession or passion.
Unlike the sprawling social canvases of *The Adventures of Augie March* or *Henderson the Rain King*, *A Theft* is domestic and urban. The action unfolds in elegant apartments, newsrooms, and Manhattan streets—but the true landscape is psychological. Bellow turns the city into a stage for moral argument, where talk and thought replace physical action. The theft itself happens almost offstage; what matters is how Clara reacts to it, how memory collides with pride, how intellect clashes with longing.
Bellow’s New York is not the glossy metropolis of fashion spreads; it’s an emotional laboratory. People are constantly analyzing, confessing, performing small moral experiments on one another. In this environment, the stolen ring becomes a mirror—reflecting everyone’s hidden motives. Clara’s assistant, the young au pair Gina, is not simply a thief but a projection of Clara’s own lost innocence, her old impulsive hunger. The act of theft becomes an unconscious echo: Clara once “stole” love that wasn’t hers, and now fate repays the gesture.
Bellow constructs the novella like a piece of chamber music—each scene a variation on the theme of loss and renewal. The first movement establishes Clara’s professional world: the glittering yet hollow sphere of style journalism. She writes about beauty but feels ugly inside; she interviews designers but can’t design a satisfying life. Her marriages have failed, her lovers disappointed her, and her daughter keeps her distance. Beneath her brisk professionalism lies the classic Bellowian hunger for transcendence.
Then comes the triggering incident: the ring goes missing. What might have been a minor inconvenience spirals into a metaphysical crisis. Clara’s mind, always analytical, turns the theft into a parable. She sees herself in Gina—her recklessness, her emotional entitlement. Bellow’s narrative shifts between present action and remembered episodes of Clara’s relationship with Ithiel. We see the whole sad arc of their love: passion, resentment, resignation. Ithiel, a worldly, ironic intellectual, represents the kind of man Bellow knew well—the thinker who’s too clever for his own heart. He gives Clara the ring as a gesture of affection, but also as a way of controlling the narrative. It becomes both gift and trap.
When it’s stolen, Clara realizes she has built her identity around borrowed symbols—around things given by men who never truly gave themselves. The theft forces her to reclaim her own narrative, to stop being a character in someone else’s story.
The prose of *A Theft* is late Bellow at his most distilled—lyrical but clipped, witty but tender. His sentences no longer explode with the baroque energy of *Augie March*; they hum with mature irony. The narration moves between free indirect style and interior monologue, giving us Clara’s shifting moods with cinematic intimacy.
Here’s the paradox: though the subject is emotional chaos, the language is serene. Bellow seems to have reached a point in his career where he no longer needs to dazzle; he trusts the rhythm of thought itself. Every paragraph pulses with the quiet authority of a writer who’s seen it all and now speaks with amused compassion.
Clara’s voice—half-intellectual, half-romantic—is perfectly tuned. She muses on love like a philosopher, yet her thoughts are tangled with the vanity of the fashion world. This contrast between her intellectual self and her emotional vulnerability gives the book its tension. It’s not the theft that wounds her—it’s the realization that all her worldly sophistication has not cured her need for love.
All Bellow’s fiction revolves around the question of how to live meaningfully in a disenchanted world. In *A Theft*, that question takes the form of a love story. What does it mean to love when love itself has become a psychological transaction? Clara and Ithiel represent two poles of modern consciousness: the romantic and the rational. She wants faith in love; he wants mastery over emotion. Their long, unresolved relationship dramatizes the difficulty of uniting intellect and passion—a problem that haunted Bellow from *Herzog* to *Ravelstein*.
Yet *A Theft* suggests something new in Bellow’s moral vision. There’s less irony, more compassion. The novella ends not with bitterness but with an acceptance that borders on grace. Clara forgives the girl who stole her ring; she even feels a strange gratitude. The loss liberates her from sentimental bondage. The theft, paradoxically, gives back her freedom.
Bellow treats this not as moral preaching but as revelation. His art has always been about turning worldly failure into spiritual insight. Here, he achieves that with exquisite restraint. The entire emotional resolution hinges on a single gesture—Clara’s refusal to condemn Gina. That act of mercy feels monumental, precisely because it’s understated.
Reading *A Theft* through a contemporary lens, one is struck by Bellow’s attempt to inhabit female consciousness without condescension. Clara is no muse, no foil for a male hero; she is the hero. Her anxieties about aging, relevance, and self-respect feel startlingly modern. She’s a woman who has navigated patriarchal structures—career, marriage, motherhood—only to find herself spiritually alone.
Bellow neither idolizes nor mocks her. Instead, he observes her contradictions with loving irony. Clara’s feminism is intuitive rather than ideological; she asserts her independence but still craves romantic validation. Bellow captures that tension without moralizing. You sense his curiosity—his willingness, late in life, to listen to a voice not his own.
Critics have debated whether *A Theft* represents Bellow’s apology for the male-centric worlds of his earlier fiction. Perhaps it does, in its own quiet way. By giving Clara full narrative authority, he acknowledges that the moral and emotional questions he once explored through men—identity, meaning, mortality—apply equally, if not more poignantly, to women navigating the illusions of modern love.
The ring at the center of *A Theft* carries a symbolic density worthy of Henry James. It’s a literal object—a piece of jewelry—but also a repository of memory and desire. In losing it, Clara confronts the falseness of her sentimental attachments. The ring, given by Ithiel, was supposed to signify enduring affection; instead, it becomes evidence of dependency.
Bellow’s handling of this symbol is masterful. He never spells it out, never leans on allegory. The ring simply circulates—gifted, worn, stolen, replaced—while its meaning evolves in Clara’s consciousness. By the end, it stands for release rather than possession. The theft becomes a secular sacrament, cleansing her of the past.
There’s something profoundly Jewish in this transformation: the idea that loss can be redemptive, that meaning is forged through suffering and relinquishment. Bellow’s Chicago-born intellectualism fuses with a biblical sense of moral testing. Clara doesn’t “find” herself in the modern therapeutic sense; she earns her freedom through humility.
The plot of *A Theft* is minimal, but the interior drama is immense. Bellow compresses decades of emotional history into Clara’s reflections. The result feels like a novel’s worth of psychology condensed into a short form. Every page hums with subtext—the ghosts of past conversations, unspoken regrets, flashes of tenderness.
This inwardness might frustrate readers expecting narrative fireworks, but for those attuned to Bellow’s moral music, it’s intoxicating. The real suspense lies in thought: Will Clara finally stop idealizing Ithiel? Will she forgive herself for loving him? Will she see that meaning does not depend on possession? Each mental turn feels as consequential as any physical action.
At times, the prose borders on aphoristic. Clara’s mind tosses off insights like sparks: “Love is a form of theft. You take from others what you should have found in yourself.” That single line could summarize the entire novella. Bellow, through Clara, redefines love as both delusion and necessity—a paradox no psychology can resolve.
By the late 1980s, Bellow had lived through fame, controversy, and the death of many friends. His earlier novels often bristle with intellectual combat; *A Theft* feels like their afterglow. There’s no anger here, only irony tempered by affection. Even Ithiel, the flawed object of Clara’s devotion, is treated gently. Bellow no longer needs to punish his characters for their vanity. He sees vanity itself as part of the human comedy.
The novella’s final pages radiate a strange calm. Clara, alone in her apartment, contemplates her life with quiet detachment. She realizes that the theft has “righted” something in her—that the loss of the ring has balanced an old moral equation. Bellow leaves her poised between melancholy and peace, like a jazz musician ending on a minor chord that somehow feels complete.
This serenity marks *A Theft* as one of Bellow’s most mature works. It’s the work of a writer who has stopped arguing with the world and begun to listen to its silences.
Upon its release, *A Theft* received polite but muted praise. Critics admired its craftsmanship but found it minor compared to *Humboldt’s Gift* or *Herzog*. Some dismissed it as “a sketch.” Yet with time, its subtlety has gained recognition. What once seemed slight now appears concentrated.
Modern readers, used to autofiction and interior realism, may find *A Theft* prophetic. It anticipates the kind of psychological precision later writers—Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill—would explore from within female consciousness. Bellow’s willingness to narrow his scope and focus on the moral texture of a single consciousness looks visionary now.
Moreover, the novella’s themes—emotional labor, the commodification of love, the longing for authenticity—feel strikingly contemporary. Clara could easily exist in 2025, scrolling through curated images of other people’s happiness, wondering what genuine feeling even looks like anymore. Bellow, writing before the Internet, foresaw that condition of emotional displacement.
What gives *A Theft* its enduring resonance is its moral modesty. It doesn’t try to answer cosmic questions; it asks how one intelligent, wounded person can live honestly after disappointment. The theft, far from being tragic, becomes a gentle correction—a nudge from the universe toward humility.
Bellow’s genius lies in making that moral shift palpable. He doesn’t sermonize; he dramatizes insight. The reader feels Clara’s awakening as a change in texture—her thoughts slow, her sentences calm, her need to possess fades. That psychological precision gives the novella the gravity of a spiritual memoir.
Ultimately, *A Theft* is not about losing a ring or a lover; it’s about reclaiming the self from illusion. Clara’s final awareness—that her worth was never contingent on Ithiel’s love—feels hard-won and luminous. Few writers could convey such transformation without melodrama. Bellow achieves it through rhythm, through the music of ordinary thought turning toward wisdom.
In *A Theft*, Saul Bellow proves that brevity need not mean thinness. The novella is small in size but vast in moral scope. It compresses a lifetime’s worth of reflection into a story about one woman, one ring, one act of mercy.
Clara Velde may not be as famous as Moses Herzog or Charlie Citrine, but she belongs to the same moral lineage. Like them, she struggles against chaos with the only weapon Bellow ever trusted: consciousness. Her victory is quiet, but it’s real. She learns to live without illusion, which in Bellow’s universe is the truest form of freedom.
So yes, *A Theft* may appear minor beside the novels—but only if we confuse scale with significance. In its elegant, shimmering brevity, it delivers what all of Bellow’s greatest work does: the feeling that thought itself can be an act of redemption. And in Clara’s final calm, we hear the faint, forgiving laughter of a writer who has come to terms with the folly of love—and with his own.
At the center of *A Theft* stands **Clara Velde**, one of Bellow’s most complex female creations. Clara is a successful New York fashion journalist—a woman of intelligence, poise, and restless sentiment. She’s had several marriages, several lovers, and one unhealed wound: a lifelong, maddening attachment to a man named Ithiel Regler. Ithiel, married to someone else, has occupied her imagination for decades. Their love affair—never fully consummated, never fully extinguished—becomes the axis around which her emotional life spins.
Bellow, long accused of being a “masculine” writer, surprises us here. *A Theft* unfolds largely through Clara’s consciousness, and what a mind it is—garrulous, self-aware, constantly oscillating between vanity and vulnerability. She’s articulate yet lost, ironic yet romantic. Bellow captures her interior rhythms with uncanny empathy; the prose flows as if we’re listening to her private monologue while she tries to justify her life to herself.
When a cherished emerald ring—symbol of her bond with Ithiel—is stolen by her young au pair, Clara’s entire psychological balance tilts. The “theft” of the title is literal and symbolic: not just the loss of a jewel but the theft of meaning, of sentiment, of self-mythology. The ring was her talisman, her proof that love once mattered. Without it, her story feels hollow. And so begins her inward odyssey toward a different kind of understanding—one that is no longer dependent on possession or passion.
Unlike the sprawling social canvases of *The Adventures of Augie March* or *Henderson the Rain King*, *A Theft* is domestic and urban. The action unfolds in elegant apartments, newsrooms, and Manhattan streets—but the true landscape is psychological. Bellow turns the city into a stage for moral argument, where talk and thought replace physical action. The theft itself happens almost offstage; what matters is how Clara reacts to it, how memory collides with pride, how intellect clashes with longing.
Bellow’s New York is not the glossy metropolis of fashion spreads; it’s an emotional laboratory. People are constantly analyzing, confessing, performing small moral experiments on one another. In this environment, the stolen ring becomes a mirror—reflecting everyone’s hidden motives. Clara’s assistant, the young au pair Gina, is not simply a thief but a projection of Clara’s own lost innocence, her old impulsive hunger. The act of theft becomes an unconscious echo: Clara once “stole” love that wasn’t hers, and now fate repays the gesture.
Bellow constructs the novella like a piece of chamber music—each scene a variation on the theme of loss and renewal. The first movement establishes Clara’s professional world: the glittering yet hollow sphere of style journalism. She writes about beauty but feels ugly inside; she interviews designers but can’t design a satisfying life. Her marriages have failed, her lovers disappointed her, and her daughter keeps her distance. Beneath her brisk professionalism lies the classic Bellowian hunger for transcendence.
Then comes the triggering incident: the ring goes missing. What might have been a minor inconvenience spirals into a metaphysical crisis. Clara’s mind, always analytical, turns the theft into a parable. She sees herself in Gina—her recklessness, her emotional entitlement. Bellow’s narrative shifts between present action and remembered episodes of Clara’s relationship with Ithiel. We see the whole sad arc of their love: passion, resentment, resignation. Ithiel, a worldly, ironic intellectual, represents the kind of man Bellow knew well—the thinker who’s too clever for his own heart. He gives Clara the ring as a gesture of affection, but also as a way of controlling the narrative. It becomes both gift and trap.
When it’s stolen, Clara realizes she has built her identity around borrowed symbols—around things given by men who never truly gave themselves. The theft forces her to reclaim her own narrative, to stop being a character in someone else’s story.
The prose of *A Theft* is late Bellow at his most distilled—lyrical but clipped, witty but tender. His sentences no longer explode with the baroque energy of *Augie March*; they hum with mature irony. The narration moves between free indirect style and interior monologue, giving us Clara’s shifting moods with cinematic intimacy.
Here’s the paradox: though the subject is emotional chaos, the language is serene. Bellow seems to have reached a point in his career where he no longer needs to dazzle; he trusts the rhythm of thought itself. Every paragraph pulses with the quiet authority of a writer who’s seen it all and now speaks with amused compassion.
Clara’s voice—half-intellectual, half-romantic—is perfectly tuned. She muses on love like a philosopher, yet her thoughts are tangled with the vanity of the fashion world. This contrast between her intellectual self and her emotional vulnerability gives the book its tension. It’s not the theft that wounds her—it’s the realization that all her worldly sophistication has not cured her need for love.
All Bellow’s fiction revolves around the question of how to live meaningfully in a disenchanted world. In *A Theft*, that question takes the form of a love story. What does it mean to love when love itself has become a psychological transaction? Clara and Ithiel represent two poles of modern consciousness: the romantic and the rational. She wants faith in love; he wants mastery over emotion. Their long, unresolved relationship dramatizes the difficulty of uniting intellect and passion—a problem that haunted Bellow from *Herzog* to *Ravelstein*.
Yet *A Theft* suggests something new in Bellow’s moral vision. There’s less irony, more compassion. The novella ends not with bitterness but with an acceptance that borders on grace. Clara forgives the girl who stole her ring; she even feels a strange gratitude. The loss liberates her from sentimental bondage. The theft, paradoxically, gives back her freedom.
Bellow treats this not as moral preaching but as revelation. His art has always been about turning worldly failure into spiritual insight. Here, he achieves that with exquisite restraint. The entire emotional resolution hinges on a single gesture—Clara’s refusal to condemn Gina. That act of mercy feels monumental, precisely because it’s understated.
Reading *A Theft* through a contemporary lens, one is struck by Bellow’s attempt to inhabit female consciousness without condescension. Clara is no muse, no foil for a male hero; she is the hero. Her anxieties about aging, relevance, and self-respect feel startlingly modern. She’s a woman who has navigated patriarchal structures—career, marriage, motherhood—only to find herself spiritually alone.
Bellow neither idolizes nor mocks her. Instead, he observes her contradictions with loving irony. Clara’s feminism is intuitive rather than ideological; she asserts her independence but still craves romantic validation. Bellow captures that tension without moralizing. You sense his curiosity—his willingness, late in life, to listen to a voice not his own.
Critics have debated whether *A Theft* represents Bellow’s apology for the male-centric worlds of his earlier fiction. Perhaps it does, in its own quiet way. By giving Clara full narrative authority, he acknowledges that the moral and emotional questions he once explored through men—identity, meaning, mortality—apply equally, if not more poignantly, to women navigating the illusions of modern love.
The ring at the center of *A Theft* carries a symbolic density worthy of Henry James. It’s a literal object—a piece of jewelry—but also a repository of memory and desire. In losing it, Clara confronts the falseness of her sentimental attachments. The ring, given by Ithiel, was supposed to signify enduring affection; instead, it becomes evidence of dependency.
Bellow’s handling of this symbol is masterful. He never spells it out, never leans on allegory. The ring simply circulates—gifted, worn, stolen, replaced—while its meaning evolves in Clara’s consciousness. By the end, it stands for release rather than possession. The theft becomes a secular sacrament, cleansing her of the past.
There’s something profoundly Jewish in this transformation: the idea that loss can be redemptive, that meaning is forged through suffering and relinquishment. Bellow’s Chicago-born intellectualism fuses with a biblical sense of moral testing. Clara doesn’t “find” herself in the modern therapeutic sense; she earns her freedom through humility.
The plot of *A Theft* is minimal, but the interior drama is immense. Bellow compresses decades of emotional history into Clara’s reflections. The result feels like a novel’s worth of psychology condensed into a short form. Every page hums with subtext—the ghosts of past conversations, unspoken regrets, flashes of tenderness.
This inwardness might frustrate readers expecting narrative fireworks, but for those attuned to Bellow’s moral music, it’s intoxicating. The real suspense lies in thought: Will Clara finally stop idealizing Ithiel? Will she forgive herself for loving him? Will she see that meaning does not depend on possession? Each mental turn feels as consequential as any physical action.
At times, the prose borders on aphoristic. Clara’s mind tosses off insights like sparks: “Love is a form of theft. You take from others what you should have found in yourself.” That single line could summarize the entire novella. Bellow, through Clara, redefines love as both delusion and necessity—a paradox no psychology can resolve.
By the late 1980s, Bellow had lived through fame, controversy, and the death of many friends. His earlier novels often bristle with intellectual combat; *A Theft* feels like their afterglow. There’s no anger here, only irony tempered by affection. Even Ithiel, the flawed object of Clara’s devotion, is treated gently. Bellow no longer needs to punish his characters for their vanity. He sees vanity itself as part of the human comedy.
The novella’s final pages radiate a strange calm. Clara, alone in her apartment, contemplates her life with quiet detachment. She realizes that the theft has “righted” something in her—that the loss of the ring has balanced an old moral equation. Bellow leaves her poised between melancholy and peace, like a jazz musician ending on a minor chord that somehow feels complete.
This serenity marks *A Theft* as one of Bellow’s most mature works. It’s the work of a writer who has stopped arguing with the world and begun to listen to its silences.
Upon its release, *A Theft* received polite but muted praise. Critics admired its craftsmanship but found it minor compared to *Humboldt’s Gift* or *Herzog*. Some dismissed it as “a sketch.” Yet with time, its subtlety has gained recognition. What once seemed slight now appears concentrated.
Modern readers, used to autofiction and interior realism, may find *A Theft* prophetic. It anticipates the kind of psychological precision later writers—Rachel Cusk, Jenny Offill—would explore from within female consciousness. Bellow’s willingness to narrow his scope and focus on the moral texture of a single consciousness looks visionary now.
Moreover, the novella’s themes—emotional labor, the commodification of love, the longing for authenticity—feel strikingly contemporary. Clara could easily exist in 2025, scrolling through curated images of other people’s happiness, wondering what genuine feeling even looks like anymore. Bellow, writing before the Internet, foresaw that condition of emotional displacement.
What gives *A Theft* its enduring resonance is its moral modesty. It doesn’t try to answer cosmic questions; it asks how one intelligent, wounded person can live honestly after disappointment. The theft, far from being tragic, becomes a gentle correction—a nudge from the universe toward humility.
Bellow’s genius lies in making that moral shift palpable. He doesn’t sermonize; he dramatizes insight. The reader feels Clara’s awakening as a change in texture—her thoughts slow, her sentences calm, her need to possess fades. That psychological precision gives the novella the gravity of a spiritual memoir.
Ultimately, *A Theft* is not about losing a ring or a lover; it’s about reclaiming the self from illusion. Clara’s final awareness—that her worth was never contingent on Ithiel’s love—feels hard-won and luminous. Few writers could convey such transformation without melodrama. Bellow achieves it through rhythm, through the music of ordinary thought turning toward wisdom.
In *A Theft*, Saul Bellow proves that brevity need not mean thinness. The novella is small in size but vast in moral scope. It compresses a lifetime’s worth of reflection into a story about one woman, one ring, one act of mercy.
Clara Velde may not be as famous as Moses Herzog or Charlie Citrine, but she belongs to the same moral lineage. Like them, she struggles against chaos with the only weapon Bellow ever trusted: consciousness. Her victory is quiet, but it’s real. She learns to live without illusion, which in Bellow’s universe is the truest form of freedom.
So yes, *A Theft* may appear minor beside the novels—but only if we confuse scale with significance. In its elegant, shimmering brevity, it delivers what all of Bellow’s greatest work does: the feeling that thought itself can be an act of redemption. And in Clara’s final calm, we hear the faint, forgiving laughter of a writer who has come to terms with the folly of love—and with his own.
September 17, 2010
The novella, as most understand it, is a long short story or a short novel. Therefore, anything in and around forty-five to one-hundred-and-fifty pages (I’m guessing) qualifies. Saul Bellow’s, A Theft, at one-hundred-and-nine pages, falls readily into this category.
But, for a writer, the definition of a novella must be more particular, because surely the difference between a short story and a novel encompasses more than just page counting. A short story is tight, carefully and deliberately crafted, sparse of character, heavy on precision. A novel -- no less deliberately crafted -- allows for more meandering, many characters, multiple plot lines, and plenty of narrative comment. Having read Saul Bellow’s A Theft, I believe it is a short story that needs some trimming. Or, a novel that needs some filling. Aside from containing just the right number of pages, it just doesn’t work very well as a novella.
The failed love-relationship, and the resulting friendship, between Clara Velde and Ithiel Regler (Teddy) sits at the heart of this story, and this relationship is well-explained, well-explored and leaves the reader highly sympathetic to the plight of these two characters. Without the distraction of a “gogsmagogsville” of characters and their accompanying plot lines, simply exploring this relationship would make for a terrific short story.
But, the plot surrounding Clara’s ring and the theft of the Clara’s ring is anti-climactic. And the numerous characters in the story (Gina and Frederic, Laura Wong, Clara’s children and her husband, the doctor, the lawyer, the detective, Clara’s ex-husbands and Teddy’s ex-wives) are all either underdeveloped or simply distracting. Even Clara’s character, despite her consistent monologuing and self-analysis, seems obscure. The problem, I think, is that she is too complex (for her farm-girl base and her upscale New York status) to be easily put to page. A longer more intricate plot might help, or a shorter more focused plot might do the trick.
Furthermore, the story -- although appealing for Bellow’s gift of language, and the witty banter of his characters, as well as his high and intelligent comments on the human condition, politics and culture – lacks tension. The plot surrounding the ring reeks of melodrama because Clara’s character lacks the substance necessary for the reader to develop the appropriate sympathetic response to her ring’s disappearances and its subsequent reappearances. And because of this, the theft of the ring fails symbolically as well -- as surely the ring is meant to symbolize lost love, or lost life for lost love, or a handful of other things which might be more apparent in a longer more detailed story.
Which leads to a comment on titles: Perhaps this failing of the plot, regarding the theft, wouldn’t seem so glaring, if the story had an alternate title. If the story were titled anything else (barring The Ring) the reader wouldn’t be so fixated on this aspect of the story, and just maybe the relationship between Clara and Teddy (which is so expertly drawn-out) could take center-stage, and the work as a whole would feel less disappointing. So, maybe there is more to a title then just hooking the reader. Maybe a broader, less thematic title, leaves more opportunity for the reader to decide what is and isn’t quite so crucial to the story, and thus, offers a story greater chance of success: Food for thought.
.
But, for a writer, the definition of a novella must be more particular, because surely the difference between a short story and a novel encompasses more than just page counting. A short story is tight, carefully and deliberately crafted, sparse of character, heavy on precision. A novel -- no less deliberately crafted -- allows for more meandering, many characters, multiple plot lines, and plenty of narrative comment. Having read Saul Bellow’s A Theft, I believe it is a short story that needs some trimming. Or, a novel that needs some filling. Aside from containing just the right number of pages, it just doesn’t work very well as a novella.
The failed love-relationship, and the resulting friendship, between Clara Velde and Ithiel Regler (Teddy) sits at the heart of this story, and this relationship is well-explained, well-explored and leaves the reader highly sympathetic to the plight of these two characters. Without the distraction of a “gogsmagogsville” of characters and their accompanying plot lines, simply exploring this relationship would make for a terrific short story.
But, the plot surrounding Clara’s ring and the theft of the Clara’s ring is anti-climactic. And the numerous characters in the story (Gina and Frederic, Laura Wong, Clara’s children and her husband, the doctor, the lawyer, the detective, Clara’s ex-husbands and Teddy’s ex-wives) are all either underdeveloped or simply distracting. Even Clara’s character, despite her consistent monologuing and self-analysis, seems obscure. The problem, I think, is that she is too complex (for her farm-girl base and her upscale New York status) to be easily put to page. A longer more intricate plot might help, or a shorter more focused plot might do the trick.
Furthermore, the story -- although appealing for Bellow’s gift of language, and the witty banter of his characters, as well as his high and intelligent comments on the human condition, politics and culture – lacks tension. The plot surrounding the ring reeks of melodrama because Clara’s character lacks the substance necessary for the reader to develop the appropriate sympathetic response to her ring’s disappearances and its subsequent reappearances. And because of this, the theft of the ring fails symbolically as well -- as surely the ring is meant to symbolize lost love, or lost life for lost love, or a handful of other things which might be more apparent in a longer more detailed story.
Which leads to a comment on titles: Perhaps this failing of the plot, regarding the theft, wouldn’t seem so glaring, if the story had an alternate title. If the story were titled anything else (barring The Ring) the reader wouldn’t be so fixated on this aspect of the story, and just maybe the relationship between Clara and Teddy (which is so expertly drawn-out) could take center-stage, and the work as a whole would feel less disappointing. So, maybe there is more to a title then just hooking the reader. Maybe a broader, less thematic title, leaves more opportunity for the reader to decide what is and isn’t quite so crucial to the story, and thus, offers a story greater chance of success: Food for thought.
.
May 14, 2020
As Bellow did in his novella, What Kind of Day Did You Have?, he brings a woman to the fore in The Theft to make her the protagonist, something he’d never done in his novels, where the women are adjuncts (however intelligent) to some prolix genius. In the What Kind of Day, the protagonist is still an adjunct to that brilliant man, but her smaller, more mundane world is her real bedrock, not the high-flown world of abstractions and theories, no matter how she aspires. In The Theft, Clara Velde is more than adjunct to the brilliant man, and she’s a mover and shaker in her own right, a woman who’s risen from mediocre circumstances to command respect as a tastemaker in NYC.
The story unspools from a ring, and Bellow uses this as the mechanism to relate Clara’s abiding love for Thekiel (Teddy) Regler (a devotion that has survived seven marriages between them over a 20-year period). Teddy Regler is the brilliant man in this novel, but his part is as the adjunct, the sounding board for Clara’s thoughts about what is happening to her and how she should proceed. What has happened is that the Viennese au pair whom she likes for her ability to connect well with her children—particularly her bright, awkward oldest daughter, a ten-year-old—has allowed her Haitian lover access to Clara’s bedroom, from which he steals the ring that means so much to Clara (as symbol of what exists—and might have been—between her and Teddy).
Clara assumes the best of Gina Wegman, her au pair, and when she confronts her about the ring, she tries to be clear that she merely wants it back. Gina takes her leave and moves away (for a while living with the Haitian, then on her own in a seedy place above 125th. After hearing nothing from Gina after several weeks, Clara engages a private eye to make contact. The ring reappears on her dresser, and Clara is even more concerned about Gina, curious and concerned that she might be in danger.
When Gina at last makes contact with Clara, she is on her way back to Vienna to be married to a wealthy banker. Gina explains that it was Clara’s concern for the sentiment around the ring that prompted her to act, to retrieve from her former lover the ring, and then to have Clara’s oldest place it on the dresser. Clara sees in this the goodness she’d assumed, and she is especially moved that Gina had given the task of secret mover to her awkward daughter, both showing and imparting confidence.
Clara’s unabashed positivity has been on trial, but Gina proves to be all that Clara had envisioned. Such validation reassures Clara, and the sense of “things” working out expands to include everything.
Bellow offers up a paean to instinct and sensibility without his novels’ incorporation of far-ranging talk about society and civilization’s movements towards and away from humanistic ideals; instead it’s a humbler character study of a woman trying to make frantic sense of things, whose humble past has instilled in her a fundamental goodness that she has never, really, lost.
The story unspools from a ring, and Bellow uses this as the mechanism to relate Clara’s abiding love for Thekiel (Teddy) Regler (a devotion that has survived seven marriages between them over a 20-year period). Teddy Regler is the brilliant man in this novel, but his part is as the adjunct, the sounding board for Clara’s thoughts about what is happening to her and how she should proceed. What has happened is that the Viennese au pair whom she likes for her ability to connect well with her children—particularly her bright, awkward oldest daughter, a ten-year-old—has allowed her Haitian lover access to Clara’s bedroom, from which he steals the ring that means so much to Clara (as symbol of what exists—and might have been—between her and Teddy).
Clara assumes the best of Gina Wegman, her au pair, and when she confronts her about the ring, she tries to be clear that she merely wants it back. Gina takes her leave and moves away (for a while living with the Haitian, then on her own in a seedy place above 125th. After hearing nothing from Gina after several weeks, Clara engages a private eye to make contact. The ring reappears on her dresser, and Clara is even more concerned about Gina, curious and concerned that she might be in danger.
When Gina at last makes contact with Clara, she is on her way back to Vienna to be married to a wealthy banker. Gina explains that it was Clara’s concern for the sentiment around the ring that prompted her to act, to retrieve from her former lover the ring, and then to have Clara’s oldest place it on the dresser. Clara sees in this the goodness she’d assumed, and she is especially moved that Gina had given the task of secret mover to her awkward daughter, both showing and imparting confidence.
Clara’s unabashed positivity has been on trial, but Gina proves to be all that Clara had envisioned. Such validation reassures Clara, and the sense of “things” working out expands to include everything.
Bellow offers up a paean to instinct and sensibility without his novels’ incorporation of far-ranging talk about society and civilization’s movements towards and away from humanistic ideals; instead it’s a humbler character study of a woman trying to make frantic sense of things, whose humble past has instilled in her a fundamental goodness that she has never, really, lost.
December 26, 2007
Almost identical in size to Seize the Day, but not quite as efficient, A Theft is Bellow's attempt at a female driven novel. Not males driven by female cravings, but a novel with a woman at the center. A damn good woman at that. Clara Velde is the kind of gal most New Yorkers would take home to Mom--with a stop on the side of the highway beforehand. A czarina of the fashion world, a midwestern Christian with endearing morals and a "personal take on the world," she might not be totally believable. But then again I'm not sure she has to be. She has better intentions than either Tommy Wilhelm or Moses Herzog. The novel follows Clara's decades long affair with political hired gun Ithiel Regler. Rather than indulge in the suffering one might expect, Bellow focuses on the joy and ultimately the human connection that comes from such an affair. That the ending has nothing to do with Ithiel is surprising, and its 100 page debate about love and the ability to know another is hopeful. On top of that, no one writes a better paragraph than Bellow. Describing her fourth husband, Clara says:
" 'He's the overweening overlord, and for no other reason than sexual performance. It's stud power that makes him so confident. He's not the type to think it out. I have to do that. A sexy woman may delude herself about the gratification of a mental life. But what really settles everything, according to him, is masculine bulk. As close as he comes to spelling it out, his view is that I wasted time on Jaguar nonstarters. Lucky for me I came across a genuine Rolls-Royce. But he's got the wrong car,' she said, crossing the kitchen with efficient haste to take the kettle off the boil. Her stride was powerful, her awkward, shapely legs going to quickly for the heels to keep pace. 'Maybe a Lincoln Continental would be more like it. Anyway, no woman wants her bedroom to be a garage, and elast of all for a boring car.'"
" 'He's the overweening overlord, and for no other reason than sexual performance. It's stud power that makes him so confident. He's not the type to think it out. I have to do that. A sexy woman may delude herself about the gratification of a mental life. But what really settles everything, according to him, is masculine bulk. As close as he comes to spelling it out, his view is that I wasted time on Jaguar nonstarters. Lucky for me I came across a genuine Rolls-Royce. But he's got the wrong car,' she said, crossing the kitchen with efficient haste to take the kettle off the boil. Her stride was powerful, her awkward, shapely legs going to quickly for the heels to keep pace. 'Maybe a Lincoln Continental would be more like it. Anyway, no woman wants her bedroom to be a garage, and elast of all for a boring car.'"
January 5, 2016
This was my first Saul Bellow book, and with a reputation like his I may have hyped it up too much in my mind. He's a Canadian-born Chicago writer, but Bellow has a European feel and A Theft certainly feels European. The writing is top shelf and I must have underlined a dozen or more lines that read beautifully. Including a line about a romantic tryst in Vienna: "What can be more natural in a foreign place than to accept exotic experiences? Otherwise why leave home at all?" Bellow is full of these, and they read as though they are deeply learned by the characters.
The story is fairly simple, but my main complaint is that at times the conversations are hard to follow. This is most likely my own shortcomings as a reader. I kept losing my place and with the exception of Clara most of the characters seemed reactionary. Filling gaps where Clara could expound, they were all skin and bone. Didn't have anything to say of their own.
Towards the end Clara says: "I never feel so bad as when the life I lead stops being characteristic--when it could be anybody else's life." I think this is the real point of the this little novel. She's terrified of being forgotten or ordinary. She clings to the things that held her dear at any point because of her fear. I'm sure a deeper analysis could give links between her marriages and the theft of the ring that swept over my head. When at the end, she entertains the thought of setting her girl up with Ithiel--that's probably the link there. But she quickly gets distracted in how her young daughter was wrapped up in the plot to return the ring in secret and the explanation I needed was cut short.
All in all, it was a good little challenge of a book, though to me a bit forgettable of a story. I wish it had been a bit more paced and fleshed out. I might have enjoyed more than the writing.
The story is fairly simple, but my main complaint is that at times the conversations are hard to follow. This is most likely my own shortcomings as a reader. I kept losing my place and with the exception of Clara most of the characters seemed reactionary. Filling gaps where Clara could expound, they were all skin and bone. Didn't have anything to say of their own.
Towards the end Clara says: "I never feel so bad as when the life I lead stops being characteristic--when it could be anybody else's life." I think this is the real point of the this little novel. She's terrified of being forgotten or ordinary. She clings to the things that held her dear at any point because of her fear. I'm sure a deeper analysis could give links between her marriages and the theft of the ring that swept over my head. When at the end, she entertains the thought of setting her girl up with Ithiel--that's probably the link there. But she quickly gets distracted in how her young daughter was wrapped up in the plot to return the ring in secret and the explanation I needed was cut short.
All in all, it was a good little challenge of a book, though to me a bit forgettable of a story. I wish it had been a bit more paced and fleshed out. I might have enjoyed more than the writing.
March 6, 2016
This review is titled, "Swoon-Song for Bellow," and it goes like this:
First, I am enchanted by his narrative pacing; he crafts the narrative to take flights and rolls and spirals and loop back to the central plot, all in complete control of his goal. Second, his characters--here, principally, Clara Velde, have a tactile sense of reality. Third, his theme about faith in humanity, about the redeeming quality of humans to get it right in a sea of (perceived) corruption ("Gogsmagogville" is his name for NYC) lifted me on a day when I really needed lifting. And you can read this novella in a day.
It's a short song, this novella, but well worth the reading. It's melody will linger long past the final note.
First, I am enchanted by his narrative pacing; he crafts the narrative to take flights and rolls and spirals and loop back to the central plot, all in complete control of his goal. Second, his characters--here, principally, Clara Velde, have a tactile sense of reality. Third, his theme about faith in humanity, about the redeeming quality of humans to get it right in a sea of (perceived) corruption ("Gogsmagogville" is his name for NYC) lifted me on a day when I really needed lifting. And you can read this novella in a day.
It's a short song, this novella, but well worth the reading. It's melody will linger long past the final note.
December 27, 2011
The issue I had with this novella by Bellow was that it just fell short of really exploring any of the realization and psychological complexities of it's main character: Clara Velde. I wasn't happy with how fast Clara was able to figure herself out and come to epiphanies on her behavior and feelings. It all just felt rushed. There were some great moments in the novella but all in all it just felt as if it was lacking. I was unsatisfied at the end.
I have to say that I really enjoyed Geoff Wisner's book review: http://www.geoffwisner.com/index.php/...
I have to say that I really enjoyed Geoff Wisner's book review: http://www.geoffwisner.com/index.php/...
May 12, 2013
I think Saul has some great scenes and descriptions, but the plot became so repetitive and boring to me. All of the male characters blended into one general "male" to me, and I couldn't connect to any of the characters in a way that drew me into the story. Why couldn't Clara have more going on than falling for rich men?
January 1, 2020
Much ado about nothing could be an alternate title for Saul Bellow's novella, A Theft. Set in NYC, mostly in a luxury apartment on Park Avenue, our heroine tries to keep her life together under aggravating circumstances. The excitement doesn't end after the first loss of a precious piece of jewelry, the au pair from Austria adds to the mayhem with a Haitian lover.
July 22, 2018
“Oh wait a minute, I don’t see any complete persons. In luckier times I’m sure complete persons did exist. But now? Now that’s just the problem. You look around for something to get hold of, and where is it?”
April 24, 2013
A novella that seemed too tossed off and shallow to hook me in.
September 29, 2013
I enjoyed this, but somehow didn't quite buy the climax-to-conclusion.
December 23, 2016
short book, only 109 pages. Not one of Bellows best books but he is still one of my favorite writers.
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