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The Rage Over Ravelstein

This article takes its point of departure from the critical debate over Saul Bellow’s recent novel Ravelstein, whose eponymous main character, Abe Ravelstein, is identified by most reviewers as based on Allan Bloom, former professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago. For many years, Bellow and Bloom were both members of that university’s prestigious Committee on Social Thought, where they together taught classes dealing with politics and literature. But the meaning of Ravelstein cannot be reduced to arguments over how suitable a representation Ravelstein is of the real life Allan Bloom. I argue that Bellow’s real contribution in Ravelstein is to provoke readers’ sense of wonder about the larger relationship of literature to politics, consistent with the orientation of Bloom’s political philosophy as distinct from reviewers’ curiosity about Professor Ravelstein’s lifestyle.