Seize the Day, Saul Bellows

When Bellows won his Nobel in 1976, the judges, like so many others before and since, singled out Seize the Day as a modern day masterpiece.

I suppose they are all right.

“Right” because the story evokes the peril of personal ambition and the pain of existential loneliness like nothing I’ve read since the incomparable Death of a Salesman. Yet also only “suppose” because flaws somewhere within the plot or the writing style prevent Bellow’s short story from fully conveying the depth of feeling this reader expects from what is essentially a statement on the isolation, failure and despair of modern man.
Memorable