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"I am exhilarated by the tremendous unimportance of my work. It is nonsense. My employers are nonsensical. The job therefore leaves me free. There's nothing to it. In a way it's like getting a piece of bread from a child in return for wiggling your ears. It is childish. I am the only one in this fifty-three-story building who knows how childish it is. Everybody else takes it seriously. Because this is a fifty-three-story building, they think it must be serious. 'This is life!' I say, this is pish, nonsense, nothing! The real world is the word of art and of thought. There is only one worth-while sort of work, that of the imagination." (90-91)

This is Bellow's first novel, written in 1944—near the end of World War II and the beginning of U.S. involvement. It also happens to be the first of his works that I decided to read. Dangling Man comprises a series of journal entries written by a man named Joseph, who finds himself in limbo after quitting his job and waiting to be drafted into the army. The wait drags on for about a year—the 'story' (there is not much in terms of plot) centers on Josephs idealistic past, combined with his musings on idleness and the feelings and thoughts provoked in him by doing nothing. It reads and feels much like an American version/extension of the Russian superfluous man motif, although Joseph is supported by his wife (not an inheritance), and it is not quite as good (as, say, Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man or other comparable consciousness-turned-in-upon-itself type novels). In the end, therefore, I like the idea of Dangling Man more than its execution. Still, I am curious to see how Bellow matured as a writer, this having been his first attempt. I'll definitely read more of his later works.