BELLOW'S INTIMATIONS OF IMMORALITY: "HENDERSON THE RAIN KING"

In a recent perceptive essay, Robert Shulman characterizes the novels of Saul Bellow as "ideological, comic . . . fiction," and demon? strates that, among other things, Bellow's comedy is developed in a style which enables him to "render fully his commitment to metaphor and learning . . . Z'1 Although Shulman devotes most of his space to The Adventures of Angle March and Herzog, Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, coming chronologically between the two National Book Award winners, offers equally vivid illustration of the intellectual rich? ness of Bellows comic style. The book abounds in the wide-ranging literary allusions typical of Bellow. The comedy of this allegorical mock-epic quest for identity and meaning is heightened by the sur? prise we cannot help feeling at the casual, off-hand way in which Eugene Henderson?six feet four, 230 pounds, with woolly hair like Persian lamb's fur, and a twenty-two inch neck?refers to Bible stories ranging from Cain and Abel through Joseph on down to Lazarus, to classical mythology drawn from Homer or Sophocles, to the baroque artistic achievements of Titian and Handel, and to the romantic poetry of Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Wordsworth, ft is these re? curring romantic motifs that interest me most strongly, because I believe that Bellow's central metaphor is drawn from the allusion to Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode with which he closes the book. Be? fore we pursue this thesis, however, there are other significant allusions that we must examine. These are numerous implicit references to various authors prominent on the contemporary scene. These implicit allusions are all grouped closely together in chapters two through five. Basically they are parodies or burlesques of themes or motifs put forward by major contemporary literary figures, and Bellow leads Henderson to express in a ludicrous way and thus implicitly reject each of these modern points of view. As Henderson moves through