Book #3

Last night’s reading was Saul Bellow's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow) short novel Seize the Day (1956). I found it a deep, funny, touching work, extremely well crafted.

I thought that one of the novel’s many charms -- if charms is the right word for this contemporary exploration of despair and search for truth -- was the psychological process whereby Tommy Wilhelm, the unreliable narrator, superimposes his opinions and judgments of how he thinks others around him perceive him, with his own self-perceptions, mingling them to a degree that perfectly enables the reader to vicariously experience his sense of confusion and utter loss of true self. This is specially well-realized in his interactions with his father, where one moment Tommy will be thinking that things are a certain way, and the very next, in silent projection of what he assumes his father might be thinking, he changes his opinion entirely to match that new truth; and again, and again; a very effective means of portraying confusion and disorientation in the internal psychological landscape, I thought.

The novel’s combination of pathos and humor makes it feel like it contains the entirety of the human experience. The humor ranges from the outlandish to the subtle, much of it deriving from the juxtaposition of wildly disparate elements. I laughed out loud several times, specially at the ease with which characters orbiting Tommy would defend mutually exclusive positions within a few words. Case in point: Maurice Venice, talent-scout-cum-pimp, who claimed he “never made a mistake. His instinct for talent was infallible, he said.” A paragraph later, in describing Maurice’s rejection of Tommy as potential actor-client: “He couldn’t afford to take a chance on him, he had made too many mistakes already and lived in fear of his powerful relatives.” Right on! Dr. Tamkin is a priceless character. The very notion of practically forcing his metaphysical hogwash of a “poem” upon Tommy in the midst of the extraordinary pressure Tommy feels, the utter sense of crisis, and en route no less to check their investment results at the market (which pretty much represent the very last of Tommy’s money) is nothing short of hilarious!

Bellow’s attention to detail is captivating, to say the least, and matched by his ability to provide deep character insight with economy and vivacious originality. Consider, for example, this description of Tommy’s own sense of tiredness, about a third of the way through:

“He was a little tired. The spirit, the peculiar burden of his existence lay upon him like an accretion, a load, a hump. In any moment of quiet, when sheer fatigue prevented him from struggling, he was apt to feel this mysterious weight, this growth or collection of nameless things which it was the business of his life to carry about.” (pp 38-39)

The use of “a little tired” provides ironic foreshadowing of the shattering truth about to be revealed in the very next sentence, in which the word “hump” comically contrasts with accretion, at once providing a striking image and comic relief. And immediately again, ironic juxtaposition; the word “quiet”, typically used to denote calm, serenity, here signifying little more than motionlessness, the impossibility of movement through exhaustion. The paragraph also expertly conveys that Tommy is at a loss to define what he feels, and yet assumes that he has found true meaning in the experience. His inability to identify his burden is captured by “peculiar burden”, “mysterious weight” and “growth or collection of nameless things”; and yet it is precisely this which Tommy immediately characterizes as that which it is “the business” (again, ironic overtones with this word, considering his failed experience in sales and the image of a once successful executive his father sells to others) “of his life to carry about.” In sixty-one words, Bellow has managed to portray more than most novelists do in an entire chapter.

If you haven’t read this one, seek it out. Go on and seize the day.