SOURCE: Jacobs, Rita D. Review of Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow. World Literature Today 74, no. 4 (autumn 2000): 813.

In the following review, Jacobs maintains that Ravelstein “is a minor exercise, albeit with an occasional flourish of mastery.”

The art of the novel often involves transporting the reader into a hitherto unknown world, no matter how familiar the terrain may seem. And even when the novel closely mirrors reality, as graceful a novelist as Saul Bellow has usually been able to transport readers beyond the known. In fact, although there have long been attempts to identify characters in Bellow's novels with “real” people such as Delmore Schwartz and the lesser-known Jack Ludwig, Bellow has most often risen above the clichés of the roman à clef. But in some cases it is just too difficult to resist the autobiographical, both for the writer and the reader. In the case of Ravelstein it is...