Some secondaries

Why do you think Bellow gave Wilhem a girlfriend, Olive, and a sister, Catherine, a talentless painter who, like Wilhem (Tommy), also has created a new name for herself (Philippa)? I mean, how would the story be different without them?

And what did you think of Mr. Rappaport, the blind chicken guy who smokes big cigars. What was the purpose of Wilhelm's meeting up with him?

Related reading

Speaking of life in 1950s America, I saw "Revolutionary Road" a few months ago and was very taken with it. So I finally picked up the book by Richard Yates, thinking I'd get to it when I finished the several others I've started. I began reading the first page yesterday just to see how it started, and now I'm on page 220. I can't put it down. It's probably the best thing I've read about domestic life in that era. The writing is so clear and moving and seemingly effortless. I never feel, as I did with Bellow, that I'm on the verge of "getting it" but not quite. I get it.

Yates said this of his book:

"I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs — a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witchhunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that — felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit — and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties."

Next book - Love and Friendship

As a change of pace, mood, and time, I suggest Jane Austen's "Love and Freindship" for our next read, though here it looks like the book's publishers have corrected her original misspelling!

You can read it online at a number of places. Here's just one example - http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/lovfrend.html

Shall we get started around Nov. 22? And then we may want to take a breather for the holidays.

$700

I know we're talking 1950s money, but, still, was $700 such a sum to get worked up over, even if it's all he had? Was the amount not important, but just that it was the tail-end of a life of poor money management? What'll he do for money now? (were you disappointed to be left hanging?)

I found a Web site with some fun inflation figures, such as:

In 1950 the average cost of a new car was $1,510.00.

In 1950 a new house cost $8,450.00 and by 1959 was $12,400.

In 1950 the average income per year was $3,210.00 and by 1959 was $5,010.00

In 1950 a gallon of gas was 18 cents and by 1959 was 25 cents.

A Chevrolet Corvette cost $3631 in 1958.

A men's all wool suit cost $28.90.

It's your funeral

Why did Bellow end the book with Wilhelm bawling at the funeral of a stranger? I think we've all had the experience of a particular sadness recalling every sadness and feeling like a conduit for generalized grief, but did this ending work for you as the conclusion to Wilhelm's tale?

The head doctor

What was your feeling about Tamkin? Wilhelm had a soft spot for him even as he saw his own doom in his strange face. Tamkin had a way with words. The narrator notes, "He spoke of things that mattered, and as very few people did this he could take you by surprise, excite you, move you."

I thought that was a great description of him, a perfect summary of his appeal. Wilhelm's in a world where no one talks about anything that matters. It's all business and small-talk from sunup to sundown, and here's this guy who talks about suffering ("don't marry suffering," he wisely tells Wilhelm) and seizing the day and living in the here and now and not thinking too much about what others think of you ("I want you to see how some people free themselves from morbid guilt feelings and follow their instincts"). All good advice, more or less. And then he rips him off. And Wilhelm sees it coming, but he's too enmeshed to stand clear. Why?

What's the significance of having a financial adviser be a "psychologist"?

Wilhelm

Did you like Wilhelm? Did you care about his fate? Could you make sense of the rank hostility shown him by his wife and father? Did he do anything to deserve it, or was it just terrible luck that the only "loved ones" in his life were both cold-hearted creeps? Was Bellow attempting to say something about the American Male in mid-1950s America, just before the Women's Movement and the great tide of 1960s liberalism put their marks on the world?

(I found it interesting that Bellow painted the wife as a heartless power-monger who was making out like a bandit from the marital separation, bringing the hapless husband to financial ruin. I suppose that went on here and there, but overwhelmingly it was women who were financially and socially devastated by divorce in that era ... so, was the wife a monster or merely a realist insisting on her due?)

First impressions

I'm going to get this started while it's fresh in my head, realizing that people may not weigh in for a few days.

My first thought upon finishing "Seize the Day" is that we have now completed the Triple Crown of Depressing Literature, with "Florida" and "Miss Lonelyhearts" being the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

Roses all around.

Good grief.

I'm all for truth and suffering in literature, and I certainly don't require a happy ending, but I do have an expectation of a hint, a smattering, a soupçon of joy in the human condition somewhere in the book. Somewhere. Anywhere. In a nook or cranny, in an odd paragraph. Anything to forestall the feeling that a cheese grater is methodically shredding my soul as I read.

Is that too harsh?

Seize the Day with carbonated sugar

I read about half of "Seize the Day" this morning and was disappointed to discover that our protagonist drinks Coca-Cola for breakfast. Not a good indicator of character, in my book.

(To be fair, there's one scene where he drinks both Coke and coffee, so that made him a pinch more sympathetic)

You guys let me know when you're ready to discuss.