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Seize the Day | Introduction

Bellow's fourth novel, Seize the Day was published as a novella in 1956 in a volume that also included three short stories—"A Father-to-Be," "Looking for Mr. Green," and "The Gonzaga Manuscripts"—and a play, The Wrecker. Considered by many critics to be Bellow's finest work of fiction, the novella was immediately singled out from among its companion pieces as a major work. The powerful impact of Seize the Day comes from its tightly constructed plot; from Bellow's ability to control effectively in a concentrated form such enormous themes as victimization, alienation, and human connection; and from his creation of Tommy Wilhelm, one of his most moving protagonists.

Bellow's work before Seize the Day had attracted the attention of readers and critics, but he was particularly praised for his achievement in this fourth novel, which Baker says "demonstrates his attainment of full artistic maturity." Seize the Day deals with themes familiar to readers of Bellow's fiction, such as that of the father-son relationship, yet in this novella the concentrated structure enabled Bellow to render this theme more intensely.

At the heart of the action in Seize the Day, Tommy Wilhelm's relationship with his father revolves around Tommy's neediness and his father's disapproval of him. Tommy's problems with his father feed yet another theme of the novel and of Bellow's fiction in general: alienation from oneself and from humanity. Tommy feels cut off not only from his father and from the rest of his family—his sister, his dead mother, his estranged wife and their two sons—but he also feels alienated from himself and from everyone he meets. Bellow's ability to treat weighty themes in Seize the Day, while making Tommy Wilhelm a pitiable yet sympathetic character, explains the success of this novella: it is capable of seizing both the reader's mind and heart.

Seize the Day Summary

Chapter 1
Saul Bellow's Seize the Day is the story of one day in the life of Wilhelm Adler, a.k.a. Tommy Wilhelm, a man in his mid-forties who is going through a mid-life crisis. As the book opens he is standing outside of the dining room in the residential hotel in which he lives, contemplating his troubles and working up the courage to go in to breakfast and face his father, who also lives in the Gloriana Hotel.

Wilhelm reminisces about how he left school twenty-five years ago in order to go to Hollywood to try to become a movie star. He had at first been approached by a talent scout, Maurice Venice, but even after the screen test went badly and the scout tried to discourage him, Wilhelm decided to change his name to Tommy Wilhelm and go to California. Once there he discovered that Maurice Venice was himself a failure and that a recommendation from him was a curse.

He nevertheless stayed in Hollywood for seven years, unwillingly to admit defeat. Now, twenty-five years later, he finds himself unemployed, broke, and in despair. He is separated from his wife, but she refuses to give him a divorce. He has invested his last money in the commodities market, and he fears it is all lost. And he is endlessly quarreling with his father, who refuses to help Wilhelm and who seems to be ashamed of his son.

Chapter 2
Still working up the courage to face his father at breakfast, Wilhelm collects his mail. He has received a number of bills, including some from his wife, who wants him to pay the premiums on some educational insurance plans for their two boys. He finally goes into breakfast, where his father introduces him to an elderly man named Mr. Perls. They have a quarrelsome breakfast, with Dr. Adler feeling ashamed of his unemployed and slovenly son and Wilhelm resenting his father's unwillingness to help him in any way.

Dr. Adler presses his son to tell Mr. Perls about his former job as a salesman, which he lost after quarreling with his employers. Wilhelm is disgusted with how focused on money his father and Mr.... » Complete Seize the Day Summary