SOURCE: Feldman, Adam. “Soulmate in Bloom.” Gay & Lesbian Review 7, no. 4 (fall 2000): 46-7.

In the following favorable review of Ravelstein, Feldman examines Bellow's friendship with Allan Bloom, asserting that evidence presented in the novel could potentially lead readers to conclude “that Bloom was the love of Bellow's life.”

In his last book, Love and Friendship, Allan Bloom (better known for his best-selling opus, The Closing of the American Mind) wrote this about “intimate friendship”:

Although this overwhelming experience seems akin to the love affairs that are so frequent and so attractive in the various literary genres, it does not lend itself to literary depiction. … The eros of souls for one another, experienced by two human beings who can share insights into the nature of man and of all other things, is much less palpable, and hence less believable, than the eros of bodies.

Bloom knew the difficulties involved in...