Serendipitous Surrealism

Next up for re-reading is Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, borrowed from the local library in the new Penguin Classics edition with a fine introduction from Christopher Hitchens. Sadly, the proof-reading has left a couple of typos in this section, the best being in this quotation from Martin Amis: 'for all its marvels, Augie March, like Henderson the Rain King, often resembles a lecture on destiny fed through a thesaurus of low-life patios.' Even without the misprint this is blithering nonsense, Bellow writing some of the finest prose I've read. A happy quarter of an hour was spent, however, conjuring up images of the decor and personnel of a low-life patio...