SOURCE: Warren, Robert Penn. “The Man with No Commitments.” New Republic 129, no. 14 (2 November 1953): 22-3.

In the following review, Warren traces Bellow's development as a writer and maintains that The Adventures of Augie March is a “rich, various, fascinating, and important book, and from now on any discussion of fiction in America in our time will have to take account of it.”

The Adventures of Augie March is the third of Saul Bellow's novels, and by far the best one. It is, in my opinion a rich, various, fascinating, and important book, and from now on any discussion of fiction in America in our time will have to take account of it. To praise this novel should not, however, be to speak in derogation of the two earlier ones, The Dangling Man and The Victim. Both of these novels clearly indicated Saul Bellow's talent, his sense of character, structure...