Seize the Day
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Narrated by:
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Grover Gardner
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By:
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Saul Bellow
About this listen
Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. 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 placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess. In 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.
Saul Bellow (1915–2005), author of numerous novels, novellas, and stories, was the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards. He also received the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
©1956 1974 by Saul Bellow. renewed 1984 by Saul Bellow (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
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Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
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Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
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To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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The Book of Air and Shadows
- A Novel
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer (or killers) unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for 400 years.
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Not your average story.
- By Nicholas Winn on 06-02-07
By: Michael Gruber
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
- By: Sloan Wilson
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the story of Tom and Betsy Rath, a young couple with everything going for them: three healthy children, a nice home, a steady income. They have every reason to be happy, but for some reason they are not. Like so many young men of the day, Tom finds himself caught up in the corporate rat race - what he encounters there propels him on a voyage of self-discovery that will turn his world inside out.
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great read/listen
- By BBJ on 09-26-16
By: Sloan Wilson
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Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
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For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Herzog
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- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
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THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
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Humboldt's Gift
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For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
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Henderson the Rain King
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
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Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
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Funny and Powerful
- By Michael on 03-17-21
By: Saul Bellow
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Mr. Sammler's Planet
- By: Saul Bellow
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Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York's Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela's sex life, and his daughter's lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon.
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ASTONISHING
- By madeline grunbaum on 01-25-22
By: Saul Bellow
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Ravelstein
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.
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If Voltaire did a bio of Plato
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-23
By: Saul Bellow
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Herzog
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- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
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The Adventures of Augie March
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Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
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THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
- By Darwin8u on 05-09-12
By: Saul Bellow
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Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
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Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
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Henderson the Rain King
- By: Saul Bellow
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Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
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Funny and Powerful
- By Michael on 03-17-21
By: Saul Bellow
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Mr. Sammler's Planet
- By: Saul Bellow
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Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York's Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela's sex life, and his daughter's lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon.
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ASTONISHING
- By madeline grunbaum on 01-25-22
By: Saul Bellow
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Ravelstein
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.
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If Voltaire did a bio of Plato
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-23
By: Saul Bellow
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There Is Simply too Much to Think About
- Collected Nonfiction
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The year 2015 marks several literary milestones: the centennial of Saul Bellow's birth, the tenth anniversary of his death, and the publication of Zachary Leader's much anticipated biography. Bellow - a Nobel laureate, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards - has long been regarded as one of America's most cherished authors. Here, Benjamin Taylor, editor of the acclaimed Saul Bellow: Letters, presents lesser-known aspects of the iconic writer.
By: Saul Bellow
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The Counterlife
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman.
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Eros, Thanatos, and the Male Yenta
- By G. Benett on 10-03-19
By: Philip Roth
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Collected Stories
- By: Saul Bellow, Janis Bellow - editor and preface, James Wood - introduction
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, Richard Poe, Kate Reading, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.
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Didn't love this collection
- By Michael on 05-03-21
By: Saul Bellow, and others
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The Moviegoer
- By: Walker Percy
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A winner of the National Book Award, The Moviegoer established Walker Percy as an insightful and grimly humorous storyteller. It is the tale of Binx Bolling, a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a "search" for something more important, some spiritual truth to anchor him.
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Percy's Prose Dances with Grace, Charm and Style
- By Darwin8u on 10-11-12
By: Walker Percy
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The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Colson Whitehead
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
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Who spoke for the black boys?
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Colson Whitehead
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Lincoln in the Bardo
- A Novel
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.”
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"Where might God stand?"
- By Mel on 02-17-17
By: George Saunders
What listeners say about Seize the Day
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TFN III
- 11-23-20
Seize the terrible freedom of the American Dream
“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bernard N. Howard
- 08-06-23
A Great New York Novel
Not only a great New York novel, but also a great American novel. Highly recommended. Excellent narration.
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- Michael
- 03-17-21
Very Subtlety Funny
I generally like Saul Bellows and this short book did not disappoint. Bellows is often quite indirect and this is a very subtle book. The humor is not at all explicit, and it seems, is missed by many reviewers. Many reviews seem to think this book is about the alienation of the protagonist. I did not. I thought this book was about the insidious ways we lie to ourselves, and others, about our actions, desires, memories, and feelings.
Grover Gardner is one of the few narrations I will go out of my way to listen too, and this narration is excellent.
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- xiangyang zhao
- 10-08-21
What a powerful writer and a great reading
I am shamed to say it is my first bellow. OMG! The power of a generational writer is right there. It has a thinking man needs. The conflicts, family issues and dynamic, philosophy and mystery are fully developed in a tautly packed story.
I can not help moving on next Bellow work.
Grover Gardner is amazingly as always
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1 person found this helpful
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- John A.
- 03-12-22
This book was great
I found this book to be very well written. I further found this book to be developmental and maturative for a young man coming of age like myself. I highly recommended it.
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- Andy
- 05-27-24
Powerfully Moving - Punchy and Concise
A short novel of unexpected tenderness. It gracefully depicts a middle-aged man on the brink of bad times — some of the worst times. It simply follows the internal dialogue of a man who's been down on his luck for a while and things are only getting worse. It follows the man through most of a day in the heat of post WWII New York City. There's something almost Buddhist about this narrative. Attachment leads to suffering. And Life is filled with suffering. The man wants to make things right, but he's always striving to start things over. It doesn't seem like he's living in the here an now. It's like his expectations of others and the love and support that he craves from others prevents him from truly seizing the day.
A moving novel. I feel sorry for the main character and want better for him. But I'm also a little frustrated by his lack of autonomy. This is a tale of modern man in distress. Suffering before enlightenment. No nobility in the suffering. Just sadness and confusion. Despair without the acceptance of Stoicism. Just existence through sorrow and frustration.
This book ends the only way it could have and it didn't end how I expected. Tears and Death at the end, but maybe not in the way that the reader will expect. Beautiful but harsh to define. I'll be thinking about this novel for a while.
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- The idiot
- 07-23-15
A sad day in the life of a man
Today is the day of reckoning for failed actor... Failed extra turned speculator Tommy Willham.
He is a broken man trying to come to grips with an unloving dismissive father and an ex wife wants all and more from Tommy.
This is on of Bellow's sadder tales but worth while and interesting!
Well narrated and full of characters you can't help but relate to.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jonathon Lance
- 11-18-20
Excellent Story and Narration!
SEIZE THE DAY is a novel about Tommy Wilhelm (né Wilhelm Adler), a man who is trying to make something of his life after a series of disappointments, failures, and bad luck. A marriage on the edge of divorce and an affair on the edge of marriage (if the divorce should come through), Wilhelm’s relationship with his father, the aging Dr. Adler (a medical doctor), and the decision to invest his life’s savings in lard futures—these are the concerns of Wilhelm’s present as he tries to “make something of himself” and “find himself” in New York City.
A remarkable novel by Canadian-American novelist Saul Bellow, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and three-time winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.
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- Julie Gray
- 01-24-19
A Powerful Gut Punch
Though published in 1956, Seize the Day is perhaps even more relevant today. An elegy to American, white male ascendence and expectation, the story takes place over one day, in which all of the failures of the main character come into terrible focus. Grover Gardner is great, as usual, and a great choice for the work of Bellow. I consider myself one who is pretty well read in the canon of great American literature but this relatively minor book of Bellow's had escaped me. I highly recommend it.
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- Ernie Reyes
- 05-23-23
Masterful and engrossing
Read Bellow (and “Seize the Day”) for the portraiture of people common and uncommon, for the keen observations of everyday life, for the beautiful prose and the beautiful sentences that you’ll want to read over and over. This one is a “downer” for sure, but a sharply written one, that one will linger, one that will impact and resonate.
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