I won’t claim it’s a great book, but Saul Bellow’s debut novel, Dangling Man (1944), made quite an impression when I first read it over forty years ago. Although Bellow had recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was not the style or quality of his writing that grabbed me. Instead, it was a vague feeling of contact with the book’s protagonist. Or more precisely, it was a personal sense of identification with the main character’s plight. Although Bellow’s protagonist/narrator—a Chicago resident named Joseph—was a product of the depression era, his disconnection from his surroundings was a timeless malady to which I could relate.
Joseph is a man in his late twenties, married, no children, with a BA in History from the University of Wisconsin. He considers himself to be intellectually gifted; he even began to write a series of essays on Enlightenment philosophers. Yet Joseph finds himself in limbo, or as he puts it, he is “dangling.” He has quit his job at a travel agency in anticipation of entering the army (it’s 1942 and World War II is underway), but bureaucratic glitches keep delaying his induction. He cannot get another job, since he is clearly draft bait, but he cannot satisfy his draft board’s arcane requirements that stem from his Canadian birth. So he waits. He relies on his wife’s meager income as a librarian. The couple give up their apartment and move into a cheap boarding house. Joseph finds himself unable to concentrate; he knows that he is “deteriorating” mentally, and becomes irritable and withdrawn. Not a very cheerful beginning to the story, and Joseph’s circumstances remain taxing and constricted throughout the book. Yet Bellow’s tale—presented in the format of diary entries—manages to stay interesting and thought provoking; it is even mildly amusing at points.
My own identification with Joseph’s situation was straight-forward enough. I was in my mid-twenties, married, no kids, with a BA in English; I had recently left a good-paying job to focus full-time on my writing projects, while my wife worked as a librarian. I did not fancy myself an intellectual, but I was overly concerned with the kinds of ideas and issues that transcended the “practical” considerations of my immediate station. Unlike Joseph, my cultural points of reference came from the 1960s rather than the 1930s, and—I’m happy to say—I never sank to the level of self-destructive behavior that he did. Still, in important respects I was dangling á la Joseph: attempting to reconcile my present circumstances with the ideals and cultural standards instilled in me by education, reading, travel, and other enriching experiences. When my few months of dangling ended, however, I pretty much forgot about Dangling Man. Years later, during the Covid lockdown of 2020, when, prematurely retired from teaching, with a Ph.D. in History, and unable to physically access libraries, my fitness center, the pool, restaurants, and disinclined (for health reasons) to risk social contact in general, I found myself isolated (except from my wife), without professional commitments, and essentially “dangling” again for the first time in decades. So, it was not surprising that I began to recall selected fragments from Bellow’s novel, maybe even refashioning them to suit my current needs. Recently, I reread the book to see if it still resonated with the more academically minded reader that I have become.
Joseph’s diary musings touch on many topics: human nature, urban decay, class, careerism, social conditions, personal relationships, but perhaps most consequential is his discourse on the nature of freedom. He pens an especially powerful entry on the subject that is worth quoting: “The quest, I am beginning to think, whether it be for money, or notoriety, increase of pride, whether it leads to thievery, slaughter, sacrifice, the quest is the same. All the striving is for one end. I do not entirely understand this impulse. But it seems to me that its final end is the desire for pure freedom.” Curiously, six days earlier, Joseph records: “If I were a little less obstinate, I would confess that I do not know what to do with my freedom.” Indeed, Joseph’s temporary freedom from employment and military service, which ideally could have provided a sabbatical for his intellectual pursuits, has destroyed his ability to engage in any useful activity, and has diminished his self-confidence and sense of worth. (Joseph wastes his days listening to the radio, micro-reading the newspaper, going for aimless walks, running errands; he has an affair with a long-time female friend; he argues with his wife, relatives, friends, and neighbors.) Ultimately, Dangling Man, which has no plot to speak of, ends with a sense of relief, as Joseph finally gets drafted and declares his “freedom cancelled.” His last words are, “Hurray for regular hours! Hurray for the supervision of the spirit! Long live regimentation.”[1]
Photo Portrait of Canadian-American author Saul Bellow used for the first-edition back cover of The Adventures of Augie March (1953). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
What are we to make of such cynicism? I will suggest that Joseph—a man of superior insight and intellect who no doubt bears a resemblance to his creator, young Saul Bellow—has been cursed with too much freedom to think. He is hampered further, because his predicament offers no constructive outlet for his thoughts, hence his resort to a diary. Always the scholar and collector of books, Joseph has lately become an intellectual snob, dividing people “into two groups: those with worthwhile ideas and those without them.” No wonder his relatives think him odd and unreachable. Yet despite his wealth of knowledge, Joseph is vulnerable; admitting that his “beliefs are inadequate, they do not guard me.” He likens them to the front awning of the corner store, providing little protection from rain and wind.[ii]
To my eyes, the major theme of Dangling Man is Joseph’s crisis of faith, though it is not a conventionally religious one. Joseph painfully learns that his personal intoxication with civilization, reason, deep thinking, liberal education, the Western tradition, human genius, or similar sanctifications of the human spirit, cannot guide him toward a satisfying destiny. On the contrary, his obsession with great ideas places him at a practical disadvantage compared to almost everyone he knows. His humanities background condemns him to dreaming big yet living small. He concludes, “A nonprofessional education is something the middle classes can ill afford. It is an investment bound to fail.” Joseph grudgingly relays his father’s criticism, that “I have prepared myself for the kind of life I shall never be able to lead.”[iii] Despite his independent study of the early ascetics, Romanticism and the child prodigy, his quoting of Goethe, and his references to Burckhardt, Boehme, Thoreau, and Trotsky, he watches as his (presumably less gifted or erudite) contemporaries gain material or vocational success. But the worst of it is, his abundance of intellectual knowledge has failed to supply a philosophical understanding of his place in the world, or a meaningful plan of action, or a psychological path to inner peace.
Maybe Joseph expects too much from his scholarly endeavors, and we can simply chalk that up to the unquenchable fires of youth. Upon rereading Dangling Man, I find Joseph’s (or Bellow’s) crisis of the soul to be a literary indulgence that does not survive the patience of my advanced years. And I doubt if most readers of this blog will personally identify with the level of profound disillusionment exhibited in Joseph’s diary. Still, there is plenty here to find compelling or intriguing: the humanities scholar adrift without clear mission, the constant uncertainty over what will happen and when, and above all, the complete lack of control—or even (evidently) of influence—over personal circumstances or life’s direction. We can easily accuse Joseph of moping, of giving in too easily to victimhood; he does present himself as rather passive (except intellectually). But I know what it is like to be stuck in neutral, and I am not so eager to assign blame. I do not admire Joseph, or particularly like him, but I am able to identify with his chief problem: having no sound objective, no immediate release, no available channel for his brain’s stock of knowledge and creative effort.
No one who reads the same book twice over the span of forty-five years will encounter the exact same work. Dangling Man now seems to be a more complex book with many more minor characters appearing in it than I remembered. I also notice the historical setting more acutely: the references to 1930’s politics, the background presence of the war, the of-their-time gender depictions, the ordinariness of boarding houses and cafeterias, the old-fashioned urban ambience of the entire account (just like the movies of the 1940s). It also seems plain to me that Joseph’s dangling was specifically a younger person’s variety of the predicament. He is still a young adult in the process of shaking off the remnants of naivete. So, most likely Bellow’s early book would not have made such a strong impression on me, had I first read it at a later stage of my life. But the practical lesson I take from it has not changed. Namely, intellectual activity cannot be internalized excessively without causing psychological harm. Scholars, thinkers, writers, must find some way to share their thoughts with the wider world.
[1] Saul Bellow, Dangling Man (1944; New York: Penguin, 1988), quotes 154, 151, 191. Joseph’s diary runs for 114 days, from December 15, 1942, to April 9, 1943.
[ii] Ibid., 152, 123.
[iii] Ibid., 125.
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Love this! The existentialism experience or the plague of over-thinking. One must be able to put the mind at ease to live in a world full of contradictions.
For my sixth Christmas, I received a child’s book on ballet history from a ballet class classmate. I remember it was a boy, but not which boy. There were two that came to our beginners’ class in white t-shirts, black tights, white socks and black slippers, while we girls wore black leotards and “ballet pink” tights and slippers.
I loved that book, and I would read it endlessly, scrutinizing the illustrations of different historical ballets, fascinated by Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo. As I grew, I checked out elementary-aged history books and biographies. I would sneak away, hiding in a corner somewhere with a book until my mother would call my name. She’d say, “Who do you think you’re fooling? Get in here and wash dishes.”
She taught me that a woman’s best assurance of a job was to get married and have children. The next was to become an accountant for a sure position if marriage shouldn’t work out. Her most important lesson of womanhood was that women should never stir up trouble by speaking out against abuse or stating their opinions.
Although I went to college and now have advanced degrees, my main work has been caregiving, for children, spouse, and parents. When people asked me what my major was, and I said “history”, that would be met with a short laugh. History, it seems to most people, is a course of study without a clear or valuable career path for women. We often have to make our own intellectual paths, which might not include an income.
I can identity with Joseph’s frustration of being distracted from one’s books. As a woman who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, I was taught there is always something else more important to do, dishes to wash, floors to be vacuumed, pets and children and spouses to feed. I can identify even more with the conclusion that “intellectual activity (need) cannot be internalized excessively without causing psychological harm,” especially in cultures where women are not encouraged to follow their educational dreams and ask their intellectual questions.
This was required reading in American Thought and Culture, a course taught by R. Alan Lawson that I took many years ago. I shall have to take another look at it. I enjoyed your essay.