Saul Bellow's 1975 novel, "Humboldt's Gift," tells its story through the eyes of playwright Charlie Citrine and his relationship with his friend, poet Von Humboldt Fleisher.

The book begins with Charlie learning of Humboldt's death and recalling their friendship - a friendship that ended years before the poet's death. After numerous flashbacks, Bellow returns to the postmortem experience, and we learn what Humboldt left to his old friend in his will - the "Gift" referenced in the book's title.

This story is more about narrator Charlie Citrine than about the title character. Citrine's lack of inspiration leads to a crisis in which he fails to think or act for himself. As a result, he withdraws from the world, preferring a life of contemplation to a life of action. As a result, others manipulate him.

The author introduces a cast of characters in Charlie's life: his ex-wife, who is suing him; his girlfriend, Renata, who wants him to propose; Pierre Thaxter and Charlie's brother Julius, both of whom repeatedly pressure Charlie for money to invest in their businesses; and gangster Rinaldo Cantabile, who bullies and extorts him before trying to become his friend.

Although a relatively minor character in this book, who appears entirely in flashbacks, Humboldt is the most interesting of Charlie's friends.

Humboldt is difficult to be around. He emotionally abuses his friends and physically abuses his wife. Their friendship ends when Humboldt becomes jealous of Charlie's success and accuses him of selling out. "He had no old friends, only ex-friends," Charlie describes his ex-friend. When they met, Humboldt was a famous poet, and Charlie was an unknown playwright. But mental illness, exacerbated by drink and drugs, led to Humboldt's decline and his institutionalization.

"Humboldt's Gift" is light on plot, but heavy on character development, which makes it worth reading. It inspired me to reflect on whether a life of action is superior to a life of contemplation. Charlie spends too much energy thinking and not enough doing. At one point, he describes the Pulitzer Prize as "a dummy newspaper publicity award given by crooks and illiterates," which became retroactively ironic the following year when this novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.