Livre

Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, lie still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos : he is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain, successful father, failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as "the type that loses the girl") and in a financial mess. In the course of one climactic day lie reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise, until a mysterious, philosophizing con man grants him a glorious, illuminating moment of truth and understanding, and offers him one last hope... "Saul Bellow is one of the grants of the twentieth-century novel. Read Seize the Day and see why" Irish Times

"Etait-il intelligent ou idiot ? En ce moment, il ne pouvait guère prétendre être intelligent. Il avait peut-être eu un jour les armes pour le devenir, mais il avait plutôt choisi d'être un rêveur et les requins l'avaient nettoyé. Quoi d'autre ? Il perdait ses cheveux. Il lisait les publicités de Thomas, le spécialiste du cuir chevelu, avec le scepticisme de celui dont le désir de croire est profond, désespéré. Spécialiste du cuir chevelu ! Oui, il avait été beau autrefois. Son visage portait les marques des corrections qu'il avait reçues. Mais il l'avait cherché, encourageant ainsi ses assaillants. Ce qui l'amena à réfléchir sur son personnage. Comment le qualifier ? Eh bien, selon le vocabulaire actuel, il était narcissique ; il était masochiste ; il était anachronique".

A penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through life latching on to a wild succession of occupations, including butler, thief, dog-washer, sailor and salesman. He is a'born recruit', easily influenced by others who try to mould his destiny. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, can he attempt to break free. A modern day Everyman on an odyssey in search of reality and identity, Augie March is the star performer in Bellow's exuberant, richly observed human variety show. 'Funny, poignant, crowded with carnivalesque types and yet narrated in a voice that is lonely and simple, it is Bellow's fat comic masterpiece' Observer.