Seize the Day (Penguin Classics)

What is so remarkable about Bellow's writing is not merely his keen eye and acute ear for vital details, nor is it his talent for exposing the innermost workings of character in a paragraph, a sentence, or a phrase. Rather, it is Bellow's vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and see beyond it. – Chicago Sun-Times

In this Penguin Classic, the fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached a day of reckoning, and he is filled with trepidation. 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. Over 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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