The Dean's December (Alison Press Books)

by SaulBellow (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1982

  $6.99

  Corde is a Professor of Journalism and Dean of students at a Chicago university. His beautiful wife Minna is an internationally known astronomer. As the book opens the couple are in Eastern Europe. Minna had to migrated to America many years before, but now her mother has suffered a stroke and is lying semicouscious in the local State hospital. As Corde tries to help Minna grapple with an alien bureaucracy, to adapt to life in his mother-in-law's small apartment and to cope with her relations and family friends, news filters through to him of problems he has left behind in Chicago. One of his students has been murdered by black criminals; his cousin and his nephew line up against him and try to make him drop the case. A series of articles he is writing for a magazine offends powerful and influential Chicagoans he had thought of as friends. A childhood companion, now a television pundit, shows him unsuspected aspects of his own character. Gradually it becomes clear that Corde's trip abroad is more than a brief interlude in a calm and orderly life and that nothing for him will ever be the same again. To the familiar Bellow magic and mastery, The Dean's December adds a new sense of urgency, of topicality, and an almost thriller-like tension. The wit, the erudition, the unique and extraordinary use of language will be a delight to admirers of Herzog and Humboldt's Gift; but the framework in which they are displayed represents a completely new departure.

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $14.70

  Dean Corde is a man of position and authority at a Chicago university. He accompanies his wife to Bucharest where her mother, a celebrated figure, lies dying in a state hospital. As he tries to help her grapple with an unfeeling bureaucracy, news filters through to him of problems left behind in Chicago. A student had been been murdered and Corde had directed that charges be pressed against two black youths, but controversy and pressure are mounting against the university administration. Further, a series of articles written by Corde has offended influential Chicagoans whom he had counted as friends. Corde is troubled: at home the centre is not holding firm, in Eastern Europe authority is cruel and dehumanising.