Seize the Day - Remembering Saul Bellow

[Scheherazade]

Please post your thoughts and questions regarding Seize the Day here.




Book Club Procedures (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=57103#post57103)

[Scheherazade]

This has been an interesting reading. It is a very short book and events take place in one day. Interestingly, like On the Road and BNW I recently read, I could not find any likable characters in the book...

Do you think the character's refusal of his birth name 'Wilhelm', which sounds very serious, and use 'Tommy', which sounds childish for a grown up man (no offence to 'Tommy's out there) is a sign of his reluctance to 'grow up'?

[Jay]

What's wrong with Tommy? Definitely prefer Tommy to Wilhelm.
Did you say interesting reading? The few pages I read as far sounded anything but interesting, lol. Yeah, I know, give it a chance :p

[Scheherazade]

There is surely nothing wrong with the name 'Tommy' but as I read the book, I couldn't help wondering if his preference for the name 'Tommy' signified anything... usually, little boys are called 'Tommy' when they grow up, they are 'Tom' or 'Thomas' etc...

[blp]

Hi. I've only just started it, but really love it so far. Too early to comment on the name much, though it may also be about trying to fit in with America rather than Europe as a second (is that right?) generation immigrant and an implication that doing that is somewhat infantilising - whether that's to do with America specifically or trying to fit in particularly would be hard to say - not as if the Europeans go in any less for childish epithets, especially the Germans.

Very beautiful writing. Look again, Jay. The breakfast scene with the father, which is all I've read so far, has the vividness of an interior by Manet - which is to say, a vividness founded on conveying not just the scene but the faultiness of our sense impressions in absorbing it all, with its confusion of messages and plays of light, shade etc. This might particularly be a description of how many of us feel in the morning before our senses coalesce (it's 10.00 here and I'm still not compos mentis), so it's appropriate that the plot emerges out of this impressionist fog like dust settling.

[blp]

Interestingly, like On the Road and BNW I recently read, I could not find any likable characters in the book...


I think you're at least supposed to like the characters in On the Road.

[Scheherazade]

I really did not care much about the characters in On The Road, which I expressed in detail here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4360) .

I agree with you about Bellow's language. It is beautiful. I also like the way the story unfolds.

[blp]

:banana:
I really did not care much about the characters in On The Road, which I expressed in detail here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4360) .

I know, but I meant I think Kerouac at least meant for you to like his characters.

[Scheherazade]

:banana:

:eek2:

They have converted you, too????????

:eek2:

I am afraid Kerauac failed for me... big time. I was thinking about Tommy... and the STD... I think it is a book one can appreciate after a certain age... And although I did not like him much, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him either; wondering how I would feel when I am at his age.