Some books don’t just sit quietly on your nightstand. They tap you on the shoulder, clear their throat, and say, “Hey… you feeling this too?”

That was me with Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man. A novel written and published in 1944, set in 1942, and yet the story somehow still feels like it crawled out of the group chat in 2026.

Joseph, the protagonist, spends the entire book suspended in bureaucratic limbo, waiting to be drafted, waiting for direction, waiting for life to make sense again. He calls himself a “dangling man,” and honestly… same, Joseph. Same. Because if there’s one thing that defines our current era, it’s the sensation of hanging by a thread while pretending we’re totally fine. We’re all dangling: between jobs, between identities, between versions of ourselves, between whatever the world used to be and whatever it’s becoming next.

And the wild part? Bellow already wrote the manual for this feeling nearly eighty years ago.

The World Was Supposed to Be Stable… Until It Wasn’t

Joseph’s world is full of things that used to feel solid: work, marriage, purpose, the future. But everything is suddenly unpredictable, and he’s left pacing around his apartment, journaling his way through an existential identity crisis.

Sound familiar?

We’re living in a time where the things that once felt steady, careers, housing, relationships, the economy, the climate, the general vibe of society, now feel like they’re held together with duct tape and a prayer. We’re all trying to figure out where the heck we’re going, and half the time we’re doing it in sweatpants.

Joseph would fit right in.

Mid‑century America loved the Hemingway hero: stoic, decisive, emotionally bulletproof. Joseph is… none of that. He’s anxious, introspective, moody, and painfully aware of his own contradictions. He’s the guy who overthinks a simple conversation for three pages.

And honestly? That feels more heroic now than ever, because today’s “hero” isn’t the person who has it all figured out. It’s the person who admits they don’t. The one who says, “Yeah, I’m dangling, but I’m still here.” The one who keeps showing up even when the world feels like a malfunctioning vending machine that ate your last dollar.

Joseph walked so our modern existential dread could run.

We’re Basically Back in 1940’s, Just With Better Snacks

There’s something strangely comforting about realizing that uncertainty isn’t new. People in the 1940s were also wandering around asking big questions like:

• Who am I now?
• What happens next?
• Why does everything feel like it’s shifting under my feet?
• And why is bureaucracy always the villain?

Swap out “draft board” for “customer service portal” and Joseph’s life is basically ours.

We’re all dangling between eras, between what the world was and what it’s becoming. Between the person we thought we’d be and the one we’re trying to grow into. Between stability and whatever this chaotic, transitional chapter is.

It’s messy. It’s uncomfortable. It’s deeply human.

Here’s the thing Bellow doesn’t say outright, but Joseph’s whole existence hints at:

Dangling is where transformation happens.

It’s the in‑between space where you’re not who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming. It’s awkward, like puberty for the soul. But it’s also fertile ground, the place where new identities, new choices, and new directions start to take shape.

And yes, it’s uncomfortable. And yes, it sometimes feels like the universe forgot to hit “unpause” on your life. But dangling also means you’re in motion, even if it doesn’t look like it yet.

So What Do We Do With All This?

Maybe we take a page from Joseph, not the spiraling part (we’ve got that down), but the honesty. The willingness to sit with the uncertainty instead of pretending it’s not there. The courage to admit that the world is shifting and we’re shifting with it.

Maybe dangling isn’t a failure. Maybe it’s a season.

A strange, transitional, slightly chaotic season, but a season nonetheless.

And if Joseph could survive dangling in 1942, maybe we can survive dangling in 2026. Preferably with better coffee, more therapy, and fewer existential monologues in our pajamas… but no promises.