Seize the Day Book

The first time I read Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow I wondered what all the fuss was about. The next book I read I started warming to him. And the one after that (Herzog) completely won me over. I hadn't read him in a while, and after finishing Seize the Day I was reminded of the accomplished writer he most certainly was. This novella, set mostly on upper-Broadway, I found to be both funny and profoundly moving, and sees Bellow deal with the age old theme of human weakness. The weakness here is one that is hard to conceal or to acknowledge, but when looked at as closely and compassionately as Bellow has done, it becomes an acutely true image of human existence as it is lived through one single day. A time in which one tries to make the most of things before it starts to dwindle away. Money is a symbol of complex social forces in Seize the Day, and at its core we have salesman Tommy Wilhelm, who is in his early 40s, and despite a wife and two children, has not learned to think of himself as an independent grown man. Now separated, jobless because of his own unstable impulsiveness, wracked by money worries, and resentful of his father for withholding both cash and an emotional shoulder to lean on, Tommy ties himself to an eternal optimist quack psychologist Dr. Tamkin (who steals the show) whom he profoundly distrusts, yet still goes ahead with a risky move to make money. Tamkin believes he can steer Tommy away from the the rocks, and seems to take pleasure from studying Tommy's pessimistic outlook on life. Through a series of flashbacks Bellow ruminates mostly on the sorrows of lost opportunities, and the loss of respect of being a son and a father, but he does so with a great deal of humor in places, especially as Tommy gets more and more wrapped up in a stock market scheme.
Worse off than at the start of the day, there is an unexpected release for Tommy towards the end, when he is emotionally swept up by a funeral for a man he has never known, and is at last able to feel, to accept his own suffering and can confront the greater suffering which has been the dead weight of existence pressing down on him without any release or passion in him for so long.
Despite his intellectual bent, Bellow is less interested in ideologies than in persons. His concern for what really is going on in an individual's mind and heart is what drives the story, with a faithful expression of the private inward lives of men in a crowded and complex city. As an exploration of the father-son relationship, as well as one man's attempt to find happiness and meaning, Seize the Day made for an absorbing read.