Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Detached, Humorous, Casual
Augie tells us a lot about the people he meets, but he's less interested in the stories they would tell than presenting them as players in his own life. He's not so distant that he doesn't make judgments, but Augie doesn't come across as emotionally invested in their joys and sorrows. He's not unemotional, by any means. He cries. He laughs. He grieves when people he loves die. His emotional responses, however, tend to be self-centered because the world does revolve around him, after all.
This self-centeredness gets him into trouble with others. The obvious example is Augie's doomed love affair with Thea, which we discuss in the Character Roles section. Augie loves Thea, but he never bothers to make her concerns and goals his own simply because they're hers. He doesn't even think to do so. Um, narcissistic much? Another example is Augie's response to damaging Simon's car:
This was just where the error was; it was that I had to feel bad about the back shell of the car and those crustacean eyes that were dragging by the wires, and it wasn't just the accident as my failure to care as I should that he minded. (12.75)
If something doesn't affect Augie, he usually doesn't care about it. There are exceptions, though. When Augie learns from Einhorn that Simon had spent a night in jail, we read, "I suffered to myself for Simon. It was crazy, how. It crushed me to hear and picture" (10.78). But even these moments turn a tad self-centered. With Simon having been arrested, Augie says, "I sat before [Einhorn] stripped; I knew of nowhere to turn and had no force to leave" (10.85). His thoughts are back to himself.
This disposition of his affects the tone of his narrative—or, we could say, Bellow based the tone of his novel on the personality of his narrator. Augie shares details with us about the people he knows—he talks about them more than he talks about himself. Nevertheless, it's their place in his life that interests him. When, for example, Augie goes to Mexico, he goes around and tells his fiends what he'll be doing, but he doesn't ask them what they'll be doing or how his departure with affect their lives. Those matters are mostly off his radar.
Augie's narrative tone is also humorous and casual. He describes off-the-wall antics as if they were merely a little curious. After hearing about Simon's run-in with the law, Augie gets a job at a luxury club for dogs. He picks them up and brings them to the business. The chief, Guillaume, has sadistic fun with the hypodermic needle, yelling "Thees jag-off is goin' to get it!" Augie casually says the man "used the hypo more than I thought he should" (10.105). Understatement! And why does Augie leave the job? "Only the work fatigued me, and I stunk of dog," he informs us (1.105). Not the hyper use of the hypo, in other words.