New Essays on Seize the Day

This book provides a multifaceted introduction to Nobel Prize-winner Saul Bellow’s most widely read, respected, and taught work of fiction, Seize the Day.. This tragi-comic story of one day in the life of an average man on the brink of failure and despair is a prime example of the Jewish novels of the 1950s. The essays in this volume examine the thematic, stylistic, and critical elements of Bellow’s masterpiece and offer different approaches to how the novel may or may not be thought of as ‘ethnic’.

• First collection of essays focusing on Seize the Day • Will appeal to students of Jewish and ethnic literature

1. The Vanishing Jew: on teaching Bellow’s Seize the Day as ethnic fiction Michael Kramer; 2. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’: Saul Bellow’s Translations Hana Wirth-Nesher; 3. Manner and morals, civility and barbarism Donald Weber; 4. Imaging masochism and the politics of pain Sam Girgus; 5. Yizkor for six million Emily Miller Budick; 6. Death and the Post-Modern hero/Schlemiel Jules Chametzky.