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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780143105480
ISBN number: 0143105485
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: October 28, 2008
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Release Date: April 28, 2009
Sale Popularity Level: 744141
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Product Description:
BELLOW EVOKES ALL THE RICH COLOR and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson’s awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe—but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
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Rated by buyers 
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The grade reflects my enjoyment rather than the underlying value of this book, which is reputedly a major work by a Nobelist that may well say important things about nineteen-fifties America naively throwing its weight around in the developing world. But I find the title character, a fiftyish millionaire, to be a boor and a blowhard, despite his odd scraps of knowledge and unexpected areas of competence. Yes, he could be a fine comic character if you happen to like him (and you should know after a chapter or so), but I personally resent spending that amount of time with his discursive reflections. And the African country to which he journeys (taking half the book to get there) is as artificial a construct as the locale of Rider Haggard's SHE, so that the improbably eloquent English-speaking King Dahfu who engages Henderson in long philosophical discussions emerges as little more than the author's surrogate.
Rated by buyers 
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Henderson is a big rich idiot. Having got everything he ever wanted through his life because of his riches, he seeks to find fulfillment by going to Africa. As he says,"...it's the destiny of my generation of Americans to go out in the world and try to find the wisdom of life." All he really does is try to accomplish something big to make himself feel better. He doesn't really know what he wants and doesn't figure it out. I wish he was eaten by alion at the end so he wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. The African characters are ridiculously idealized. The prose, however, is vivid. Even though it is not very difficult reading, I found myself losing interest frequently throughout. It's not utter trash, but I can't recommend this book.
Rated by buyers -
There's an Early Bellow, a Somewhat Later Bellow, and an Older Bellow, each of which is more or less independent of the others so far as the reader is concerned. Early Bellow may only consist of Dangling Man. I didn't especially like Dangling Man, though I've seen it referred to in other novels of the time as pathbreaking, heralding a new beginning of some sort. To me it just seemed kind of bland: a guy's trapped back at home while all his buddies are off at the war ... and that's about it. Somewhat Later Bellow is the era of Augie March and the work under examination here. Augie is a Quintessential American, off trying to discover himself and letting others tell him who he is, until he decides to control his own life and decide his own fate. It is a vast, sweeping book, or tries to be. I just found it tiresome.
Which brings us to Henderson the Rain King. I figured it was from the Augie March era even before I read the copyright date. It has an Augie-like character, though it's quite a bit tauter than Augie. Our hero heads off into the wilds of Africa to find himself and fill in a gnawing void in his soul; it keeps crying out to him "I want, I want!" Much craziness happens to him in the wild, but that's not really the point. Nothing very much ever happens to Bellow heroes; any action that does happen to them is purely accidental, and I'm sure Bellow apologizes profusely for it. The real action is in the characters' own minds. They're all trying to figure out who they are, what they want, what they think, or what the world around them is all about. They're confused, stuck in the world as it's given to them, and lost.
Gene Henderson comes from a wealthy family and may have emptied large portions of his inheritance on travel, girls, food ... whatever. He's lived in Paris and London, probably because his spirit continued to cry "I want, I want!" and he thought he could give it what it wanted in Europe. By the time we run into him, he's in his sixties and desperate to know what he wants before he dies. He's gone through a few wives, children who hardly play any role in the story (or, we imagine, in his life), and a few million dollars.
Henderson is a fascinating, repulsive character. He's continually surging forth into a monologue about his internal travails; one African after another who can't understand a word he's saying just keeps telling him "Yes, suh." He finally meets a tribal king who can corral all that internal violence into something productive; their friendship is the center of the whole story, and Bellow delivers it beautifully. It would be very easy to turn this into some schlock about Wise Africans or Man Finding Himself or whatnot, but that would be impossible in a Bellow novel: protagonists go wherever they may but can't escape their own characters. They never really Find Themselves; quite often they're Self-Consciously Trying To Find Themselves, and doing a more or less good job of it.
Older Bellow dispenses with most of the outer garb of Early Bellow: why bother sending your guy off into Africa or the deserts of the Western United States if all the action is inside his own head? Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet don't (if memory serves) leave the immediate vicinity of the protagonists' homes. They're books about nebbishes, and at times they're almost a parody of Allan Bloom (one of Bellow's closest friends): Moses Herzog and Artur Sammler have lived lives of horror, and their posture toward the world is reflective cowering.
Oddly enough, I think Older Bellow is more readable; all the world traveling was kind of needless, as Bellow came to realize. You will take Herzog and Sammler from me when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Rated by buyers -
I am a Saul Bellow fan, and whilst I enjoyed Henderson the Rain King, it seemed to lack something. The story is about Gene Henderson a loud and obnoxious American millionaire who one day decides to go to Africa to satisfy some inner need. The very first third of the book is very amusing culminating in his extermination of the frog plague and unfortunately also tribes water supply. However when Henderson gets to the second tribe what starts out as an interesting story gets bogged down in metaphysical discussions with the king, Dahfu. Ultimately Henderson returns home, no longer the cynical person he was at the beginning, but rather a person who rejoices and celebrates life. However the connection between his experiences and his transformation are not very clear, leaving us to ask what brought about the change in his outlook.
Rated by buyers 
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What do Saul Bellow, Joni Mitchell, Sonic Youth, Counting Crows, and the X-Files all have in common? In his novel, Henderson the Rain King (1959), Bellow (1915-2005) blends philosophy and comic adventure to tell the story of 55-year-old Eugene Henderson who, despite his wealth, is unhappy with "the disorderly rush" of his life. "All is grief," he says, "my parents, my wives, my girls, my children, my farm, my animals, my habits, my money, my music lessons, my drunkeness, my prejudices, my brutality, my teeth, my face, my soul" (p. 3). He asks, "is it any wonder I had to go to Africa?" In an endeavor to escape his troubled existence and the voice in his heart saying, "I want, I want, I want," Henderson sets off for Africa. Upon his arrival, he hires a native guide (Romilayu), who leads him to the village of the Arnewi, where the village water supply is plagued by frogs. After traveling to another village (Wariri), the natives mistake Henderson for the Wariri Rain King, and he becomes friends with the village's western-educated king (King Dahfu), who teaches him how to fill his spiritual void. Transformed from The King of Pain to The King of Rain by his African experience, Henderson returns to America claiming to see life from both sides now, to "dream both upward and downward." "We are the very first generation to see the clouds from both sides," he says. "What a privilege! First people dreamed upward. Now they dream both upward and downward. This is bound to change something, somewhere" (p. 280). Bellow's novel was not only the inspiration for Joni Mitchell's 1967 song, "Both Sides Now," it was also the inspiration for Sonic Youth's song, "Rain King," (on the Daydream Nation cd), for the Counting Crows' song, "Rain King," (on the August and Everything After cd), and for the X-Files' episode, "Rain King," in which agents Mulder and Scully investigate a man who claims to control the weather.
Henderson's mid-life search for meaning is a prominent theme in Bellow's novels. It resurfaces, for instance, in his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, Humboldt's Gift (Penguin Classics) (1975), where Bellow's middle-aged protagonist, Charlie Citrine, observes "how sad about all this human nonsense which keeps us from the large truth." Among Bellow's novels, critics consider Henderson the Rain King either his best or worst work, but Bellow reportedly considered it his personal favorite. It is ranks at 21 on Modern Library's list of The 100 Best Novels.
G. Merritt
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