James Baquet

    I must have been about 22 the first time I read “Henderson the Rain King” (No. 21 on our list of “The 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century”). Saul Bellow was about 45 when he wrote it, and Henderson himself was decidedly middle-aged at 55. So I was too young to get some of the nuance, though the overall story was interesting.

    Looking at it again in my 60s, I wonder how any older man can stand the angst that seeps through Henderson’s journey. Bellow, though, has called this his favorite of all the books he’s written.

    And Mr. Bellow should know a little something about books: He wrote around 15 novels and novellas, three of which — “The Adventures of Augie March” (1953) “Herzog” (1964) and “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” (1970) — won the prestigious National Book Award, given “by writers to writers” via the National Book Foundation. Bellow has also won both a Pulitzer (for “Humboldt’s Gift,” 1965) and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

    Yet he loves the non-prize-winning Henderson the most. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because, as he said, Eugene Henderson is the character he has created who is most like himself. Incidentally, the Pulitzer Committee did recommend “Henderson” for the 1960 prize, but the Pulitzer Board exercised their power to override the recommendation, and gave the prize to someone else.

    Many of Bellow’s protagonists have similar traits, and have been called the “Bellovian hero,” who is usually a “schlemiel” — a Yiddish word for a kind of loser. Henderson himself is in a failing marriage (his second) and not feeling he has met his potential. So one day, he buys a ticket to Africa.

    “What made me take this trip to Africa?” he asks himself. “There is no quick explanation. Things got worse and worse and worse and pretty soon they were too complicated.”

    On that vast continent, he leaves his party and becomes lost — thus finding himself. After various adventures, he is declared the “Rain King” of one tribe. When he discovers he is about to become king, he leaves Africa, determined to revive his youthful dream of studying medicine, thus stilling the incessant voice in his head that cries, “I want, I want, I want.”

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. set aside, ignore

    2. feeling of dread or anxiety

    3. a language used by European Jews, derived from both German and Hebrew

    4. short novels

    5. never stopping

    6. leaks; comes out slowly

    7. definitely

    8. making quiet

    9. subtle meaning

    10. by the way