Saul Bellow Mr. Sammler's Planet

Saul Bellow wrote Mr. Sammler's Planet in 1970 with his usual, indeed unrelenting, auto-biographical intensity. Artur Sammler is Polish by origin, Jewish, elderly, and British educated. He lives in New York City with his daughter, supported by an American relative.

On the level of plot, the novel first presents an encounter between Sammler and a pickpocket on a subway car, and follows the anonymous relationship which follows.

Similarly, there is a sub-plot involving another relationship between Sammler and Lal, an East Indian academic. This plot contrasts sharply in one respect at least with the first, because where the Sammler-Lal relationship is characterized by silence, the Sammler-Lal relationship is on the surface at least entirely verbal.

The recurrent element throughout the story is the reaction of Sammler to the world around him. Sammler and persons he meets are defined by Sammler's reactions and he is defined also.

Sammler, the elderly Old World aristocrat and intellectual, plays a role comparable with the wild-west gunslinger. But instead of the six-gun, Sammler carries the accumulated culture of Western Civilization in his mind.

Sammler encounters adversaries, not least the relationship with Lal, but also 70's college radicals, and the shoot-out which ensues is a competition between eras and world outlooks. Likewise, Sammler encounters individuals within his own family which results in a clash of moral values. As readers, we are on Sammler's side, just as we are on Clint Eastwood's side when he rides into Deadwood to assert rightness over the morally lapsed inhabitants there.

The confrontation between Sammler and (then) contemporary culture in American is most pointed when Sammler is invited to address a college audience on the subject of 20th Century European history. Sammler delivers an urbane lecture, punctuated with recall by memory of remarks made in his presence by some the principals, which is suddenly interrupted.

We all take different things from the books we read. Some I suspect appreciate the large statements and others the small detail. I happen to especially enjoy small anecdotal parts. In Sammler those parts that stick in my memory are Artur's command of the soft disarming answer.

As the novel progresses toward its conclusion, Sammler, never abandoning the neutral, even kind, treatment he gives Angela, and indeed everyone, exposes her motives. Sammler, as the hero of the novel and as the reader's hero as well, holds up each character to the light.