About this title: In Saul Bellow's title novella, Tommy Wilhelm, at 42, is in the midst of what seems to be a serious decline. He is separated from his wife and family, estranged from his father, unemployed, and broke. Over the course of one day, Tommy reviews the shape of his past and attempts to plot the course of his future--and has a valuable moment of insight when he aimlessly drifts into the funeral of a man he doesn't know. SEIZE THE DAY is a bleak, compassionate tale, widely considered one of Bellow's best novels. Accompanying it are three short stories and a one-act play.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780140189377ISBN:0140189378
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Used sticker on spine. Price cut from back cover. No marks. Tight, square book. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 144 p. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"I was surprised at just how much I ended up empathizing with Tommy Wilhelm. I didn't want to like him or his mid-life crisis breakdown. But there is an odd sort of universality about him that I can't quite pin down. On one level he deserves everything he's gotten for being so reckless. But on another he obviously has to deal with some pretty unfair, screwed up stuff. The relationship with his father and their interactions are just searing to read, Dr. Adler is a total prick. The dialogue here is what stands out most for me. You can imagine actual people talking to each other this way in 1950's New York. In some ways it kind of reminds me of Mrs. Dalloway, everything constrained is constrained in a single day, but we still move back and forth through a character's life at will. This was my first foray into Bellow's work. Maybe Herzog next?"
"I very much enjoyed the way Bellows so vividly draws the reader into the life of his characters and the city. I felt as though I was stepping out onto those 1950s streets that bust out of the screen in technicolor in so many modern Hollywood classics.
I usually don't take to self-loathing losers in books, but there was something train-wreck-like about Wilhelm. I couldn't look away - he was fascinating. I wonder if, perhaps, Tim Winton had wanted to re-create a tragic figure like Wilhelm in 'The Riders', a book that doesn't work at all like this."
"Nerve-rackingly sad and funny, in a George Costanza/ Larry David kind of way. Only 118 pages in the old, library-cast-off version I read, but it took me a while to work through it; I kept putting it down and reading other things. I should give it a five were it not so painful, though that's the point, really."
"Another book I found on my shelf - an old one at that. This is the first book I have read by Bellow. It is a short one and apparently the forerunner to Herzog. Bellows addresses one's awareness of personal failures without the ability to change them - looking to others to give solace and pick up the tragic pieces."
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