Reception
Some critics, including Malcolm Bradbury, see the novel as a commentary on the increasing commodification of culture in mid-century America. Throughout much of the book, Bellow also analyzes, through the voice of Citrine, his concerns about spirituality, poetry, and success in America.
Read more about this topic: Humboldt's Gift
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
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