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Seize the Day (Penguin Classics) Paperback – May 27, 2003

by Saul Bellow (Author), Cynthia Ozick (Introduction)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 531 ratings
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“What makes all of this so remarkable is not merely Bellow’s eye and ear for vital detail. Nor is it his talent for exposing the innards of character in a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It is Bellow’s vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and to see beyond it.” –Chicago Sun-Times

A Penguin Classic

Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: He is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain, successful father, failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once cast him as the “type that loses the girl”), and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope….

This Penguin Classics edition contains an introduction by Cynthia Ozick.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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  1. Print length
    144 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Classics
  4. Publication date
    May 27, 2003
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    7.7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    0142437611
  9. ISBN-13
    978-0142437612
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Recommended for Discussion by the Great Books Foundation

About the Author

Saul Bellow was praised for his vision, his ear for detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose. Born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, he was raised in Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second World War he served in the Merchant Marines.

His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944) and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe, where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970); Humboldt's Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Dean's December (1982); More Die of Heartbreak (1987); Theft (1988); The Bellarosa Connection (1989);The Actual (1996); Ravelstein (2000); and, most recently, Collected Stories(2001). Bellow has also produced a prolific amount of non-fiction, collected in To Jerusalem and Back, a personal and literary record of his sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975, and It All Adds Up, a collection of memoirs and essays.

Bellow's many awards include the International Literary Prize for Herzog, for which he became the first American to receive the prize; the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens; the B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish Literature"; and America's Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award has been made to a literary personage. In 1976 Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics; Reissue edition (May 27, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0142437611
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0142437612
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 531 ratings

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  1. Cynthia Ozick

    Cynthia Ozick

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  2. Saul Bellow

    Saul Bellow

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    Saul Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel HUMBOLDT'S GIFT in 1975, and in 1976 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 'for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.' He is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, for THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH, HERZOG, and MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET

    Photo by Keith Botsford [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
531 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Fred Bubbers
5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Catharsis
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2011
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Originally published in 1957, Saul Bellow's Seize the Day is considered one of the twentieth century's finest works of fiction. It chronicles a single day in the life of one Tommy Wilhelm, a failed middle-aged actor, living on a precipice. Out of work, nearly broke, and estranged from his wife and children, he is haunted by all of the setbacks in his life and is searching for salvation in the form of an easy financial win that will solve all of his problems. On the advice of a mysterious psychologist, Dr. Tamkin, he has invested the last of his savings in the commodities market. Dr. Tamkin's advice extends beyond investing and he provides advice to Wilhelm on how he should shed the burdens of his failed past and live in the here-and-now, in other words, to "Seize the Day."

Tamkin's council and Wilhelm's inability to shed his burdens only serve to heighten Wilhelm's sense of failure. Wherever he seeks sympathy, whether it be his estranged wife who continues to make financial demands on him while refusing to divorce him or his father, a comfortably retired doctor, finds nothing but reminders of his failures.

Born Wilhelm Adler, he changes his name to Tommy Wilhelm to further his acting career. His career never takes off and so he fails in his attempt to actually become Tommy Wilhelm, a failure he is constantly reminded of by his father who insists on addressing him as "Wilky," his childhood name.

Seize the Day is a distinctly American story. Whereas British fiction from Daniel Defoe on up through today's Ian McEwan is preoccupied by social and economic class distinctions, American society prides itself on being free from class. No matter what station we are born into, we believe that through hard work, perseverance, and strength of character we can succeed. If we do not succeed, it is obviously due to some flaw in our character. American fiction has always explored the chasm that exists between that Great American Ideal (and mythology) and the stark reality that the Universe has no concept of fairness. American literary characters, unlike their British counterparts, are therefore imbued with a greater sense of anomie. While British heroes and heroines may struggle to overcome the rigid class distinctions in their society, and usually fail, there is at least the idea that there is a sense of order in the Universe, no matter how harsh it may be. American literary figures, from Dreiser's Clyde Griffiths to Fitzgerald's James Gatz to Salinger's Holden Caulfield to Miller's Willy Loman, fight not against society but against nothingness.

Years after writing Seize the Day, Bellow said in interviews that never liked Tommy Wilhelm very much. Indeed, Wilhelm is not particularly likable and the reader is likely to feel as much sympathy for him as the other characters in the novella. "Stop whining, be a man, get a job!" we want to say to him. And yet, the story is compelling and unconsciously reaches those hidden parts of our psyche that fear the stark nothingness, and leads us to the novella's surprisingly cathartic conclusion.
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4.0 out of 5 stars GET THE AUDIOBOOK! Amazing.
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2013
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Saul Bellow was one of the most critically lauded authors in the latter half of the 20th century, receiving numerous awards including a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize in Literature. Unless you have a proper contextual understanding of the author and his work, however, you may wind up like some of the unfortunate readers here, spouting off in an uninformed 1-star review about how depressing and uneventful his stories are. Bellow's savage psychological and philosophical explorations might not appeal to everyone's taste, but those who 'get it' certainly reap the rewards. I suggest perhaps reading a few articles on Bellow (or at least his Wikipedia page) before diving into Seize the Day. This novella is an excellent starting point for newcomers.

I just finished listening to the audiobook edition of this work, and I am extremely pleased with it. Read by Grover Gardner, the novella's characters simply come to life. The corrupt Dr. Tamkin and the spiteful Dr. Adler are presented it all their glory, New York/Jewish accents and all. Play time is 4 hours. Give it a try.
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The Shepherd
3.0 out of 5 stars Where did you go, Saul Bellow?
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2020
I read this book because I wanted to understand why Saul Bellow disappeared so quickly from the American literary consciousness after his death in 2005. He was one of a handful of North American writers to receive the Nobel Prize in the 20th century, but unlike so many of the big names from the 50s and 60s whose influence persists to this day (Vonnegut, Salinger, Heller, Philip Roth, Nabokov and yes, Dylan), Bellow disappeared almost without a trace. Occasionally an overly-ambitious MFA will name-drop him as an early influence, but even then Bellow sounds like a sort of curio from a distant time and country.

Why?

Seize the Day provides us with an excellent case study. All of the characters are unlikeable, the lazy slob Wilhelm, the grifter Tamkin, the a-hole father Dr. Adler, the wife Margaret. Only Wilhelm’s children are spared Bellow’s cold eye, though they hardly appear in the novella at all. Because of this, Bellow fails to engage the average reader. After all, who wants to read a book about a bunch of nasty bourgeois, most of whom live in an apartment/hotel in New York?

Not me.

The novella is also poorly written. Compare Bellow’s flat dialogue to the masterfully rendered conversations found in Kingsley Amis or JD Salinger. Do it. Bellow, on the other hand, writes like an academic who wants to be a writer. He has so little feel for the American idiom that he cannot decide whether Wilhelm should call his father “Dad” or “Father” in conversation, though in fact Americans almost always use the moniker “Dad,” and never use both.

108-109

“Yes, Dad, I’m afraid I trusted him.”

Dr. Adler surrendered his arm to the masseur, who was using wintergreen oil.

“Trusted! And got taken?”

“I’m afraid I kind of –“ Wilhelm glanced at the masseur, but he was absorbed in his work. He probably did not listen to conversations. “I did. I might as well say it. I should have listened to you.”

“Well, I won’t remind you how often I warned you. It must be very painful.”

“Yes, Father, it is.”

(implausibly, Bellow actually suggests that masseurs do not listen to conversations. Not that they maintain a code of confidentiality, but that they do not listen at all!)

The entire text is permeated with this sort of stilted nonsense; it can be found on practically every page.

44

“You’re probably right. I ought to try it one of these days. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, my head was about to bust and I just had to have a little air, so I walked around the Reservoir, and I sat down for a while in a playground. It rests me to watch the kids play potsy and skiprope.”

Can you imagine if we could have forced Clemens to read this, seven decades after Huckleberry Finn? Americans do not “play skiprope” they simply jump rope. He watched the kids jump rope. And, no, it does not “rest me,” it “relaxes me.” Thanks, just had to get that off my chest.

Paradoxically, Bellow is constantly at pains to illustrate his considerable gifts. For example, in order to “show” that Maurice Venice is from a lower class Bellow offers up the following gem: “It was about fifteen months ago right in this identical same office when I saw a beautiful thing in the paper.”

See that? “identical same” A redundancy! My my, Bellow is a clever fellow indeed!

And while he does offer up some wonderful descriptions, even here his writing often falls flat in the most curious ways. “On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight….”

What exactly did Bellow have in mind when he wrote “gassy air?” Does it have something to do with flatulence?

And then there are the “leaden spokes of sunlight.” How could it be? A gray sky, of course, can be leaden. But sunlight? Hmmm….

I could go on, but Saul Bellow bores me terribly, and I am at pains to limit the amount of my life that I devote to his outrages. In its entirety, this novella comes across as irredeemably “square,” to use the jargon of that time. A sort of dull, earnest study of several people you don’t give a damn about.

To summarize: If you want to write forgettable prose introduce unpleasant characters, stilted dialogue and awkward usage.

It might even get you the Nobel Prize.
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mjg526
5.0 out of 5 stars Great
Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2023
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I've read this four or five times and it hasn't gotten old. Bellow's descriptiveness and ability to put the complexity and tension of the human condition in bold relief are what I appreciate most.
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Susanne Kahn
5.0 out of 5 stars soweit gut
Reviewed in Germany on April 9, 2024
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lange wartezeit
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pawelgonzalez
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2023
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It was my first book that it's author wrote. Now I am on the third one. Do not miss a day. An intelligent men are somehow perceptive. The author is such a man. This story makes me want to read more of his work.
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BOËT
4.0 out of 5 stars Un bon pour remuer les tripes
Reviewed in France on June 14, 2017
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Pour décrire la souffrance d'une mauvaise relation Père - Fils... C'est un réussite ... Un peu dur pour ceux qui l'on vécu
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SAHIN REJA MONDAL
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in India on March 23, 2018
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It is a good novel.
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diana garcia de quevedo
5.0 out of 5 stars Diana García de Quevedo
Reviewed in Spain on July 13, 2015
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Magnífica y desconocida película, con una de las mejores interpretaciones dramáticas de la primera época de Williams. El vídeo tiene una imagen relativamente deteriorada, pero proviene de TV y, probablemente, nunca se habrá restaurado.
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