Leventhal is a natural victim; a man uncertain of himself, never free from the nagging suspicion that the other guy may be right. So when he meets a down-at-heel stranger in the park one day and finds himself being accused of ruining the man's life, he half believes it. He can't shake the man loose, can't stop himself becoming trapped in a mire of self doubt, can't help becoming ... a victim.
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Leventhal is a natural victim; a man uncertain of himself, never free from the nagging suspicion that the other guy may be right. So when he meets a down-at-heel stranger in the park one day and finds himself being accused of ruining the man's life, he half believes it. He can't shake the man loose, can't stop himself becoming trapped in a mire of self doubt, can't help becoming ... a victim.
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In a Guggenheim Fellowship application in 1945, Saul Bellow described his then work-in-progress, "The Victim" as "a novel whose theme was guilt." He worked assiduously on this novel between 1945 - 1947 when it was published to poor sales. In 1952, a stage version of the book ran briefly off-Broadway.
"The Victim" explores modernist themes of guilt, loneliness, purposelessness and paranoia in the lives of its main character and his strange double. The book is set in a sweltering New York City summer following WW II. The primary character, Asa Leventhal, works as an editor for a trade paper where he has an uncomfortable relationship with his boss. He is a non-practicing Jew highly conscious of anti-Semitism. Leventhal has had a difficult life with a mother who went mad during his childhood and a distant father. He has an older brother, Max, from whom he has long been estranged. Leventhal left a civil service job in Baltimore after an engagement apparently ended, and he endured months of poverty in New York City before finding a position. When the book opens, Leventhal is alone in the hot New York summer. The broken engagement ultimately was restored, and Leventhal's wife Mary is away for several weeks visiting her sick mother.
Leventhal endures a difficult summer. He is approached, and virtually stalked, by a man named Kirby Allbee whom he had known briefly years earlier. At a party both men attended, Allbee had made anti-Semitic comments to Leventhal. But Allbee used his influence to get Leventhal a job interview with Allbee's then-boss. The interview proved disastrous as Leventhal lost his temper. Allbee, who was a marginal worker at best with a drinking problem, was then fired. Allbee's drinking problem grew worse, his wife left him and soon died, and Allbee became penniless and unemployed - the fate that Leventhal himself had narrowly escaped. Allbee blames Leventhal for his troubles - with the implication that Leventhal deliberately insulted Allbee's boss during the interview to retaliate against Allbee for his anti-Semitism - and seeks his help. Allbee becomes ever more persistent, stalking Leventhal in his daily routines, following him to his flat, moving in, rummaging through Leventhal's drawers and effects, carrying on a brief affair in Leventhal's bed, and ultimately trying to kill himself in Leventhal's kitchen.
Leventhal has other problems of guilt as well. His brother Max has married an Italian Catholic woman, Elena, who lives in Staten Island with two children and an aging mother. Max himself is in Texas looking for work. When Elena's younger child becomes gravely ill, she calls Leventhal. Leventhal tries to reach Max who is unable to return before the child dies. Leventhal fears that his brother's wife and her mother somehow hold him responsible. With prejudices of his own, Leventhal is troubled that his brother has married a non-Jew and finds Elena and her mother superstitious and primitive. During the course of the book, Leventhal and his brother take modest steps to improve their estranged relationship.
Both Leventhal and Allbee are lonely outsiders and one-time members of the class whom Bellow describes as "the lost, the overcome, the effaced, the ruined." The book seems to me heavily influenced by Dostoevsky and by existentialism. Allbee reminded me of Melville's character Bartelby in the famous short story. The novel explores the nature of personal responsibility. It is a study of pervasive, if somewhat repressed anti-Semitism not only in Allbee but in the business world of New York City as well. But Bellow also shows Leventhal's own prejudices, his willingness to think the worst of Allbee and his distrust of his brother's Italian family. The book suggests that guilt, loneliness and redemption can be overcome by friendship. love and purpose.
This book is tightly written and constructed, unlike its successor, the long, diffuse and exuberant "The Adventures of Augie March." As with much of Bellow, the story is framed with many philosophical reflections and discussions, between Leventhal and Allbee, and between Leventhal and his friends. The lonely life on city streets, park benches, cheerless flats, and cheap restaurants plays a dominant role in this early novel is it does in Bellow's later works. But the writing in "The Victim" seems to me formulaic. The scenes which Bellow would later fully bring to life here sometimes tend to fall flat. The book is serious and thoughtful, but it does not move well.
Late in life, Bellow distanced himself from this book and from its predecessor, "Dangling Man", by calling the former novel his M.A. and "The Victim" his PhD. This is an accurate if overly-harsh assessment. This book will have its greatest appeal to readers who are seriously interested in Bellow and his themes.
