Word: characterized
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Bellow is the narrator of Ravelstein. He assumes the character of "Chick," long a friend to Ravelstein, an intensely intellectual professor at an elite Midwest university.
Some of the exposition, and there is lots of exposition because the book focus on moments, is necessary-watching Ravelstein finger through silks in a Paris boutique, for example. But the reader often longs for something more concrete than the image of an effete, successful intellectual on a Paris shopping...
At one point, Ravelstein cryptically asks the narrator (the Bellow character, called "Chick") for $500 dollars. I say cryptically because a fuller explanation was written in an earlier draft of the book-Ravelstein had to pay a beautiful, 16-year-old African-American male prostitute for sex. For some reason...
It is often easier to express contraries in literature than life, particularly when they involve that murky thing known as character-what lies behind personality, through artifice, beneath facade, and within the heart.
The performers, however, admirably manage to combine the specific realities of their characters with the supra-reality of The Well. Of significant note are Chaffin, Gravois and Jody Flader '02, who plays Matthew's lost love, Sarah. These three, more so than the other capable cast members, keep the show...