Seize the DaySeize the DayA moving portrait of one day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm, a man on the brink of despair.
When I read Henderson the Rain King I admired it, I felt that it was a great book, it provoked thought and emotion, occasionally laughter and tears, basically it moved. I say this for in hindsight I felt it was a good book, during it however it seemed to drag, I remember vividly there were times when I just wanted to do serious injury to this monolithic moronic American (Henderson, not Bellow...), who was so arrogant in his opinions and attitudes, and, I just really didn't like him, his constant 'I want, I want' really grated, and, yes I do realise it was meant to be a literary look at today's 'now' society, and modern arrogance, but that still didn't make me enjoy reading it anymore. I may be unpopular in saying that but I do feel it's true.
Never-the-less this is about Seize the Day, the book that was singles out by The Royal Swedish Academy when bestowing a Nobel Prize upon Mr Bellow. I did feel it was a finely written book, where you really could understand the characters, or rather character, no, I was right the first time, there are at least two characters, Tommy and his father, and the rest are never insignificant, we get to know them: the wife, the doctor, the friends, the agent; all of them, we come to accept them as what they are, as if they actually existed, which is what a good book should do. Yet, and there is a yet, loathe that I do to say it, it was a book I more enjoy having read than reading, there was something uncomfortable about reading it, where you feel that it was wrong to be reading about this guy whose life is falling apart around him, like a voyeur, like a reader of a diary, there's the guilt, there's the awkwardness, and no matter how hard you try, you know it's wrong. I just couldn't get away from that, maybe it's me seeing part of me in him, maybe we all see part of us in Tommy Wilhelm, some of us see the hope from the pit of despair, while others just sit in the pit. Maybe in that way it worked.
Whatever, I kinda liked it, and it is worth a read, but I wouldn't go out of my way...
Score 7/10
Page last updated on 8th February 1999
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