Seize The Day

I’m still on my Saul Bellow binge. Three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, and a Nobel Prize for Literature? There’s a reason. Today, I’ll mention yesterday’s read, Seize the Day, a short novella of under 120 pages.

The book is about a man in midlife who has had many failed ventures, both personally and professionally, and is confused about how best to move forward in life. He’s having severe money problems and is living in a long term hotel in Manhattan, on a different floor from his father, who is a successful and very difficult man. Our protagonist, Tommy Wilhelm, has met an older gentleman who may be a profound and helpful psychologist, or else a flamboyant and creative conman. He’s not sure. But the man, Dr Tamkin, talks a great game and says many things Tommy needs to hear.

I’ll share a few brief passages that got me thinking.

About Tommy: <<Maybe the making of mistakes expressed the very purpose of his life and the essence of his being here. Maybe he was supposed to make them and suffer from them on this earth.>> (52)

Tamkin speaks: <<“I want to tell you. Don’t marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and eat and sleep together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it’s adultery.”>> (94)

Tamkin on the free advice he gives: <<“The spiritual compensation is what I look for. Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That’s the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real—the here-and-now. Seize the day.”>> (62)

The psychologist, or possible grifter, continues to help Tommy with his worries about the future, about what’s next: “Nature knows only one thing, and that’s the present. Present, present, eternal present, like a big, huge, giant wave—colossal, bright and beautiful, full of life and death, climbing into the sky, standing in the seas.” He goes on: “You have to pick out something that’s in the actual, immediate present moment,” said Tamkin. “And say to yourself here-and-now, here-and-now, here-and-now. ‘Where am I?’ ‘Here.’ ‘When is it?’ ‘Now.’ Take an object or a person. Anybody. ‘Here and now I see a person.’ ‘Here and now I see a man.’ ‘Here and now I see a man sitting on a chair.’ Take me, for instance. Don’t let your mind wander. ‘Here and now I see a man in a brown suit. Here and now I see a corduroy shirt.’ You have to narrow it down, one item at a time, and not let your imagination shoot ahead. Be in the present. Grasp the hour, the moment, the instant.”>> (86)

Tommy is trying to figure out Tamkin. There are signs he may be a shrewd crook, but other signs that he’s not. He muses: <<He spoke of things that mattered, and as very few people did this he could take you by surprise, excited you, moved you. Maybe he wished to do good, maybe give himself a lift to a higher level, maybe believe his own prophecies, maybe touch his own heart. Who could tell?>> (78)

Again, a fascinating short read that will spark your own thoughts in perhaps unexpected ways.

Get the book HERE.