The failures of Western civilization and the pleasures of it spin out the thematic thread that runs through the novels under discussion here. As a theme, it is as worthy as any being worked in contemporary fiction, and proof of this is in the unity and persuasiveness of Bellow's oeuvre as compared to any of his contemporaries who might be considered at the same level of seriousness. (p. 36)

Bellow's first three novels—Dangling Man (1944), The Victim (1947), and The Adventures of Augie March (1953)—are interesting, varied, but essentially diverse in theme. Augie March, that large, trumpeting announcement of Self, is in many ways a prototype of Bellow's subsequent use of character, and of those juxtapositions that make a novelist comfortable and fecund within the enclosure of his fictional world. In any event, the major theme, as perceived and discussed in this essay, does not yet make an unequivocal appearance...