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Seize the Day | Year: 1986 Classification: Drama Directed: - Fielder Cook Actors/Actresses: - Robin Williams a grim little entry This book is a lovely piece of painful truth. As I go through each of Bellow's novels one thing that stands out progressively is the assured confidence that grows and grows each time we cross through similar terrain. This is not to say that he repeats himself--certainly not as the on-going philosophy matures through both personal life experience and a further understanding of human nature. Seize the day is, as usual, extremely well-written but with this short novel I believe that Bellow began crossing into that phase of maturity that makes an author ever-lasting and forces his vision upon the world at large. It is no wonder that when Bellow won his Nobel Prize twenty years after the publication of this book that it was singled out for special notice. Basically your middle-class everyman is portrayed (with, of course, the particularities related to Bellow himself to give the human reactions more sincerity) at one of those mid-life boiling points when the decisions made will effect everything that comes later. You read along with a similar urgancy, rooting yet never hoping, aware that many of Tommy Wilhem's mistakes are similar to your own and breathlessly hoping to find an answer to your own questions. Four books into Mr. Bellow's career I am now convinced that all the high-handed praise is, for once, truly justified. This guy is one of the true American wonders, one of the gods of our literature. Lard have mercy "Seize the Day" is a sad little novel about a man, lost in the wilderness of his life, whose struggle "toward the consummation of his heart's ultimate need" can succeed only when he surrenders his composure to his deepest emotions, that secret place in all of us from which we beckon our tears. The one day in which the entire novel takes place completely encapsulates his past, present, and future into the portrait of a man mired in his environment. The man is 44-year-old Tommy Wilhelm who, like some of Bellow's other fictional protagonists Augie March, Eugene Henderson, and Moses Herzog, is a little piece of the chaos of twentieth-century urban America distilled into a single confused character. Wilhelm is a native New Yorker (although it's obvious his author is not), a failed actor, and an unemployed former sales executive. He is separated from his wife, who is always selfishly demanding from him money that he doesn't have, and his two sons. His only financial support now is from his father, a successful physician who is annoyed by his son's lack of discipline but nevertheless brags about his past accomplishments to anyone who will listen. Wilhelm has a friend named Dr. Tamkin who professes to be a psychologist, has many various interests but dubious talents, and persuades him to invest his last dollar in lard commodities. Tamkin, a world traveler, has told Wilhelm that he "had attended some of the Egyptian royal family as a psychiatrist," a statement that evokes an image of the biblical Joseph prophesying for the Pharaoh seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine; but Tamkin's optimistic expectation for lard is all profit, no loss. His philosophy is that the future is not worth the worry; live for the "here-and-now": seize the day. He is undoubtedly a charlatan, but in Wilhelm's eyes he means well. One of the novel's themes is atonement, which is signified by the reference to Yom Kippur. Wilhelm is not very religious and has not planned to attend a synagogue, but he recognizes the importance of saying Yiskor for his dead mother; his sincere but idle threat to the unknown hoodlums who vandalized the bench next to her grave will not suffice to honor her memory. Ironically, the place where he ultimately atones is the funeral of a man who is evidently not Jewish (open casket, presence of flowers) -- and he weeps with the knowledge that death is all we achieve from life. Seize the day, indeed. Wondrous, wistful solemnity This little treasure lacks clear conflict and struggle between characters, instead elaboration one man's slow and pathetic drowning in life. Beautiful language and symbolism, as well as a look into 1950's New York culture. Buy Seize The Day at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Seize The Day Search with the Priority Search Engine on Seize The Day This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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