Seize the Day

Saul Bellow's short novel is sort of an anti-Ulysses. We follow a day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a failed actor, failed husband, failed father and failed son. As in Ulysses, we follow the middle-aged man as he wanders the city (New York this time). He eats, he talks, he considers things to say and things he wishes he'd said. Through all these interactions we see Tommy's flaws: his shortsightedness, his willingness to be led by people he trusts, whether family or con-men, his impulsiveness. Unlike Leopold Bloom (who planned to attend Dingam's funeral), Tommy is swept up by a passing crowd of mourners, but the experience provides a catharsis for the many failures that he has brought upon himself.

The short, declarative, plucky, title of this novella, Seize the Day, is suggestive of the muscular writing style within. There's a punchiness there along with the intelligence, keen observations of time and place, and psychological and emotional truthfulness. It's as if the protagonist, Tommy Wilhelm, is fighting for his life on what is perhaps the worst day of his life. Tommy is a bit soft but his dad, Doctor Adler, is emotionally distant and tough. Fellow resident of the Hotel Gloriana "doctor" Tamkin is shady. New York City itself, with its enormity, complexity, diversity, concrete, ugliness, overwhelming humanity, heat, light, noise, and anonymity, is a character in and of itself, and not a particularly likeable one. Seize the Day show more takes place in a single day, and traces Tommy's gradual unwinding. But though the actions are limited to a single day, we see that what leads up to the climactic ending, is the overwhelming weight of a lifetime of decisions and choices. Most readers can probably identify with Tommy and sympathize with him. Like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, with which this has a striking similarity, Tommy is a stand in for us all. An Everyman in a country that can be very unforgiving to those who are not "winners." show less

This could be Bellow's 'Crying of Lot 49': the book you read because you can't face reading the 600 page masterpiece. As such, it made me think I might want to read Augie March after all, despite my difficulty believing that big, blond men can have existential crises. It's not you, Seize the Day, it's me. I'm also not particularly clear why some people go into raptures over Bellow's prose. It's fine, even solid, but not rapturous.
It's also like a taster for The Magic Mountain filtered through Dostoevsky. Had I thought that to begin with I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more.

Perhaps someone else has already said it, but there's very little art or artistry in this short story portrait of a man's life masquerading as a train wreck (or perhaps the other way around). In any case Bellow went on to do this many more times, and sometimes with more interesting results. I can forgive Bellow a lot, however, in return for his 'Henderson, The Rain King', and I'd have to say I'm often called upon to do so. Only recommended for those 'filling in the gaps' in their Bellow reading.

Seize the Day was published in 1956. It was Saul Bellow's fourth novel. It is often considered to be one of the great works of 20th century literature.

The novel’s protagonist is Tommy Wilhelm. Unemployed and lonely, Wilhelm is looking for success and a little sympathy. The story explores one day of his life as he tries to reconnect with the world and recover his lost dignity.

The mood of the story is dark and dismal. There is a kind of a hellish quality to Wilhelm’s world. Even before the story really begins we are already feeling his desperation,

“Oh, God,” Wilhelm prayed, “Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out show more of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy.”

For the most part, Wilhelm considers himself to be a victim. He expects his father to sympathize with him. He views the obviously fraudulent Dr. Tamkin as a surrogate father and clings to him. He constantly blames everyone else, his father, his agent, his wife, his boss, even the world around him for the quagmire that is his life.

There are only three main characters that are ‘visible’ throughout the book, Tommy Wilhelm, his father Dr. Adler and Dr. Tamkin.

Wilhelm is immature. He is gullible. In many ways he is still more of a boy than a man.

His father, Dr. Adler, seen through Wilhelm’s eyes seems like a heard headed, unsympathetic and selfish man. But I felt that a lot of his harshness comes from Wilhelm’s distorted view of his father. It is true that Dr. Adler sees making money as the ultimate success and does not want to help his children financially. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person. He just wants his children to grow up and not be dependent on him anymore. Sure, he is cold and even cruel at times but he is not what his son makes him out to be.

Dr. Tamkin is an enigmatic character. He is clearly a liar, a fraud and probably a thief. I don’t understand Wilhelm’s fascination with him. But I suppose he uses Dr. Tamkin as a stand-in for his father. Dr. Tamkin constantly spews out an assortment of philosophical musings. It is from one such musing that we get the title of the book,

“Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.”

There are other key characters who are present in the narrative but we only hear of them through other people. Wilhelm’s wife, his sister, the talent scout Maurice Venice are such characters.

It is astonishing how Bellow paints an amazingly vivid picture of a man’s entire life in little more than a hundred pages. It takes real talent to do that.

At times I felt sorry for Wilhelm. I could actually feel his suffocation. But at the same time I know that he is, for the most part, solely responsible for making a mess of his life. All of his bad decisions have led him to where he is now and even Wilhelm himself knows that.

This is not a happy book and it doesn’t really have a happy ending. The ending is kind of ambiguous. In the end Wilhelm is forced to come face to face with himself. Self realization leads to him breaking down with grief. But even if Wilhelm is not exactly happy and he doesn’t find solutions to his problems, I think he finally stops running away from reality. That counts for something.

Though it is only a short novella it is definitely not a light read. I found Seize the Day to be quite satisfying. It may be a bit gloomy but this is perhaps literature at its best. show less

Seize the day is a difficult book to read, and at first hard to grasp. The main character of the novel, Tommy Wilhelm is an anti-hero. Perhaps this is why the novel is so hard to tackle, as it offers the reader very little to sympathize with its main character. In fact, by the end of the novel, which plays out over the course of a day, the reader thoroughly despises T和main character, unable to feel any compassion or pity for him.

Tommy Wilhelm, whose real name is Wilhem Adler, is a failure. A career in the theatre exists only in him own mind, as he keeps telling himself his career to stardom is just waiting to take off. It is obvious, that his father, Dr. Adler, who appears as a towering and solid rock beside whimpish Tommy, believes show more his son is beyond help, pitying him in his judgement and inability to take his good council. Although they broke up four years earlier, Tommy's wife must be regarded as truly loyal and devoted in her relentless belief that Tommy can still be and should be the breadwinner of their family. She more or less treats him as a spoilt child, who does not want to take responsibility. As his childish name, Tommy, suggests, Wilhelm's faulty judgement is not only in ignoring his well-wishers, but also following wrong advise. Not only his judgement is impaired, he is not even sure to recognize people for who they are, least of all himself.

I had to read Seize the day three times to make any sense of it, and reading it backwards was the most helpful, as obviously, the culmination and the most telling scenes, for instance, the long telephone call with his wife, occur towards the end of the novel.

Seize the day was written in in the 1950s, but makes more sense being set in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Besides his inability to see himself in the right light, he also hangs on to a lifestyle which clearly isn't his. He lives in the same hotel as his father, in an area where many retired and old people live. Wilhelm fails to capture the spirit of the new epoch. As the American Dream started to take shape, the work ethos of Americans changed to exult "hard work" as the key to success for everyone. Tommy spent seven years in Hollywood to be ready for his career in the theatre. He still hold on to hope, speculation and expectation, much to the irritation of the people around him. However, deep inside he does seem to know what is expected of him, as he looks into the distorting and shadowy mirror and wonders: "He had put forth plent of effort, but that was not the same as working hard, was it?" (p.5). show less

Darkly comedic, a tale of a man with a head full of dreams and a life full of failures, desperate to turn his luck around past 40. The main problem with the novella is that the central trouble of the thing is made plain by the protagonist. There are no surprises here, he spells it all out for you, even as it happens. Despite the same God's eye view of the author the protagonist is seemingly unable to predict what befalls him.