This novel belongs largely to the same species as those written by Updike, Cheever, etc. - white male writers from Northern suburbs who were straining against the narrow confines of American masculinity in the 60s and 70s. For the most part, I've never cared for novels like these. It has nothing to do with privilege or whatever. More with the boredom resulting from several hundred pages of internalized anguish without action - Dostoevsky, at least, had the decency to open Crime and Punishment with a murder. (Side note, I think the American South was largely blowing out the northerners around this same time.)

Henderson the Rain King is mildly distinguished by its setting and narrator. Unlike Updike, Cheever, etc., Bellow was willing to take the action out of the suburbs and see what happened to his characters. But I was largely bored by this novel. There is much philosophical rambling amounting to very little, which obscures the psychologies of its characters. I found the ending touching, but otherwise don't see to recommend here.