Saul Bellow

Opening Paragraph From Saul Bellow's 'Augie March'. Is it a great twentieth century novel? Square Corner thinks so. Square Corner also wishes he could right half as well as Bellow.

“I am an American, Chicago-born,Chicago that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes not so innocent. But a man’s character is his fate, says Heraclitis, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.”