Seize the Day by Saul Bellow: Entirely set on one day in New York, this short novel focuses on a man in his mid-forties who is at the end of his rope—unemployed, seperated from his wife and children, badly in debt and facing the disdain of his father, who sees him as a failure. A chance encounter gives him the opportunity to make “barrels of money” in the stock market.
First Sentence:
“When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capapble than the next fellow.”
On Broadway it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight, and sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of butcher shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence–I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scam, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed to Wilhelm to throb at the last limit of endurance. And although the sunlight appeared like a broad tissue, its actual weight made him feel like a drunkard.
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