Seize the Day (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

In his mid-forties, Tommy Wilhelm retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he seperated from his wife and children, at odds with his successful father, without gainful employment, and at the end of his rope both financially and emotionally. During the course of a day, Wilhelm reviews his past mistakes and his present confusions, sinking more deeply into dispair - until a chance encounter grants him one glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding. Deftly interweaving humor and pathos, Saul Bellow evokes in the climactic events of one day the full drama of one man's search to affirm his own worth and humanity.