“Trouble, like physical pain, makes us actively aware that we are living, and when there is little in the life we lead to hold and draw and stir us, we seek and cherish it, preferring embarrassment or pain to indifference.”

Saul Bellow is a Canadian-born Pulizter Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature winner. In the words of the Nobel Committee, his writing possesses a “subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting.” Dangling Man was his first book.

Dangling Man is a study of a man who cannot find his place in the world, who finds freedom a burden from which he cannot escape. He finds himself growing violent, angry, anything to escape the isolation and monotony of days he cannot seem to fill: he joins the army in order to achieve some blessed regimentation, to eliminate the need for individuality and reflection.

The book is hardly a cheerful one: I would go so far as to call it depressing, painting a picture of the human spirit I do not relish. It’s beautifully written, but as happens with some novels, more interesting after you’ve read it than enjoyable as you do. In a modern world that places an enormous weight on freedom, the idea that freedom might be undesirable presents a dilemma not easily solved. Bellow doesn’t answer the question, but then he doesn’t try to: he paints a vivid portrait of a man trapped in the four walls of his room, not because he cannot leave, but because he doesn’t why he should.