the mind putting the 'understanding' into abeyance

high above the dun currents of the prosaic

intensified his meliorism

the piles of intellectual slack which truss these schlemiels like babies

We begin the obituary in laughter and end it in tears, in a sublime dapple of emotions

the artist's quizzical and ludic force

Bellow is using detail not to persuade us of the existence of something but almost the opposite - to confirm its absence. Realism is elegiac, a branch of consciousness

his body: simple, broad, sybaritic, and rather too light-footed

sermonising ratiocination

red hats become oblatory fires for Franz Joseph