When, many years ago, a grandiose Hollywood agent told him that he should be in the movies, he believed him, moved to Hollywood and overstayed his welcome. He can’t admit to this, of course, and he doesn’t need to: Tommy is a pro at self-deception. But Tommy Wilhelm gladly pays the money, as long as he’s able to, presumably because that gesture of generosity offers him a sort of redemption, a meaning in his otherwise empty and luckless life. He is divorced and financially on shaky grounds yet he pays his former wife far more than he would have to, at least according to his father. He isn’t the smartest of men, nor the most adept at making the best out of a bad situation. Tommy Wilhelm has reached the end of his rope.

This single day is a special, a peculiar day, this we know early on.

By now we the readers are well acquainted with the device of having a novel take place within the narrow confines of twenty-four hours, but, since Seize the Day, structurally, resembles a short story rather than a ‘proper’ novel, reaching into the dustbin of literary history for Joycean analogies is, perhaps, inappropriate. It doesn’t follow a convoluted plot: instead we accompany its protagonist, Tommy Wilhelm, né Adler, on a trek through New York, on one single day. Thus, it is no surprise that Seize the Day, his fourth novel (published in 1956), which is extraordinarily short, in my edition just 119 pages, is a success from start to finish. His insights into his culture and the (male) human beings in it, are valuable throughout, and his prose is a joy to read. Plots, however, are not his forte, most of his books feel somewhat too long after all, all of us remember the labored ending of the otherwise stunningly excellent Humboldt’s Gift. Saul Bellow is a great writer and his novels never disappoint on the contrary most of them belong to the best that this century has to offer in the form. Bellow, Saul (1996), Seize the Day, Penguin

Saul bellow seize the day