“Wilhelm is convinced that if he can make money again, he will be fulfilled.  I’ll, um, let you guess the result.”

Bellow’s short novel (or novella) is a tightly written day in the life of a middle-aging New York man whose fortunes seem to have left him dependent upon his estranged father who has little patience for him. Of course, whether it is fortune or personal failure that has led him here, and whether he has the wherewithal to dig himself out is the story. I’ll, um, let you guess the result.

Bellow is, of course, one of the finest of writers. His prose seems often objectively delivered, with a narrator that offers details only as understood as the characters witness them. In other words, we see the world through the eyes of son and of father, but we trust none of them to be related as honestly or wholly as they might be. The narrator gives nothing away. One newspaper seller tells protagonist son Wilhelm that he is “looking sharp today” while his father thinks that he cannot tolerate how slovenly his son has become. What is true here?

This tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More in uncertainty is similar to the larger plot, where despite warnings, Wilhelm has trusted another man to gamble the remainder of his assets in the stock market. More specifically, the futures market. More specifically still, lard futures.  Lard futures. I’ll, um, let you guess the result.

As clean and tight his prose, though, readers cannot help but recognize that Bellow is firmly in charge. The details we see (a poorly sewn coat hem, a small trip to a cigar store) feel significant, if only because the world of a ruptured American Dream bears down so heavily on us. Wilhelm is convinced that if he can make money again, he will be fulfilled.  I’ll, um, let you guess the result.

But if we’ve guessed the ending, Bellow leaves us with the still larger question: then from what must we find meaning?