Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

GBF Discussion; Guide online Introduction by Cynthia Ozick.

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Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The weight of the unspoken left them with very little to say. And, yet, Tommy Wilhelm and his father find plenty of words to throw at each other, sniping around the edges of the unspoken, in the course of Bellow's crisp and penetrating fourth novel Tommy bemoaning his father's lack of support for his son at a time of great personal trial, his father complaining about his son's all-around ineptitude. Bellow made his name as one of the towering literary figures of the twentieth century with long, heavily textured novels, weighty in both theme and scope (in particular, The Adventures of Augie March, 1953; Henderson the Rain King, 1959; and Humboldt's Gift, 1975), but early in his career, he wrote three short novels that, despite weaving their magic on a much smaller scale, were no less compelling (Dangling Man, 1944; The Victim, 1947; and Seize the Day, 1956). The latter, which followed on the heels of Augie March, seemed like an aberration to readers who knew Bellow only from the Pulitzer-winning Augie, but in fact, it was thoroughly of a piece with two of the author's first three books. We meet Tommy Wilhelm (his real name is Wilky Adler) when the fortysomething former salesman is living in a Manhattan residential hotel (also home to his retired father) and reeling from multiple failures. Still, Tommy dreams, yet again, of another way to reinvent himself, his previous incarnations as actor, businessman, husband, and father all having crashed and burned in ways more pathetic than spectacular. As Tommy embarks on yet another inevitably ruinous venture playing the commodities market with an obvious con man, the elusive (but bizarrely funny) Dr. Tamkin we listen to this sad sack of an American, New York born, as he whines in excruciating detail, drenched in both pathos and black humor, about a veritable murderers' row of antagonists: ungrateful former bosses, a coldhearted wife who won't grant him a divorce, the various con men who have led him astray, and, most of all, his father, a self-made man with no tolerance for a son who finds putting together the pieces of a self to be a puzzle beyond comprehension. On the face of it, very little happens in this book Tommy has breakfast, observes the action on the floor of the commodities market, and wanders into a funeral of someone he doesn't know but beneath the surface, the drama is remarkably intense, as we watch one nearly anonymous man abandon the attempt to put himself back together. Yes, the book is about the underside of the American Dream but not just the dream of financial success, though that is a large part of it. No, what Bellow shows in crystalline, utterly uncompromising terms is one man's inability to construct an individual myth for himself. When Tommy Wilhelm cries inconsolably at the funeral of an unknown man, he weeps not for the inevitability of death but for the inability to make a life.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915. He attended the University of Chicago, received a Bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from Northwestern University in 1937, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. He taught at several universities including the University of Minnesota, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, New York University, and Boston University.

His first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944. His other works include The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories, More Die of Heartbreak, and Something to Remember Me By. He received numerous awards including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and three National Book Awards for fiction for The Adventures of Augie March in 1954, Herzog in 1964, and Mr. Sammler's Planet in 1970. Also a playwright, he wrote The Last Analysis and three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He died on April 5, 2005.

(Bowker Author Biography)