Yeeesh. What a bummer this book is. Down and out in Paris and London wasn't even this harsh. Wilhelm is a New Yorker that was raised with a decent upbringing, but made all the wrong decisions in his life. It seems he ignored his intuitions and tried to create his own destiny for success. He didn't want to be in the medical field, cause his father already did that. He left college to become an actor in Hollywood; he left his wife and two kids to be with the love of his life Olive, but can't marry her because of her Catholic upbringing and his wife won't divorce him; he quit his sales job because he was destined to be vice president, but the company gave the position to a relative outside; he lost all his money because he put his money in stocks and trust in a lunatic doctor, who sounds like a compulsive liar, but speaks some wisdom about life. In all this, his retired and wealthy doctor of a father, won't lend him a penny because of all his mistakes.

After 100 pages of this... I wished something good happened to this guy. I wished that he would make one right decision. It was hard to decide who was the bad guy. His wife and father came off as the bad parties, but it could have been his conscience. Wilhelm wanted success like the next guy, but everything he acted upon was foolish. I liked how Bellow made the third person perspective neutral, but so much it made me anxious!. Everyone that lived in his hotel building was loony, Wilhelm meant well but made dumb mistakes, and maybe his family was justified for leaving him to fend for himself, but the narrator never concluded who was at fault for Wilhelm's troubles.

I just feel bad for the guy really. AND I thought I would end this book feeling warm and humble inside. I think I have to genuinely be one of those people who laugh at others faults. seriously.

**I remember having my old co-worker's (she was a compulsive liar) husband (poor guy) having been hired and fired for stupidity on the job. He was really incompetent. His name was Wilhelm. What were his parent's thinking? I think they set him up.