Paperback, 114 pages
English language
Published April 19, 2003 by Penguin Books.
Tommy Wilhelm is a man in his mid-forties, temporarily living in the Hotel Gloriana on the Upper West Side of New York City, the same hotel in which his father has taken residence for a number of years. He is out of place from the beginning, living in a hotel filled with elderly retirees and continuing throughout the novel to be a figure of isolation amidst crowds. The novella traverses one very important day in the life of this self-same Tommy Wilhelm: his "day of reckoning," so to speak.
Wilky as metaphor for every fragile man’s fears. By embracing the chaos rather than fighting it, there finally seems the opportunity for reinvention and growth.
Wonderful written, but very sad novella. Masterpiece!
What an immaculate presentation of the infantile nature of a man too preoccupied with his past and his inflexibly naive worldview. Do not be mistaken, he does not suffer because he is a dreamer, he suffers because he cannot ground himself. The whole of life, up in the air, existing only within the clouds of his thoughts, wherein he has formerly established despondency as his reigning doctrine.
I thought this was incredible. The judiciously crafted narrator, able to stay so close to Wilhelm but not give up an ability to jump into other characters, felt effortless and freed up Bellow to describe the world and these characters with such emotional access. There are interactions here which I found riveting and the stakes were ordinary stakes, yet profoundly implicating. This is a slim novel with a great protagonist written with a set of razor sharp writing chops.
