When Seize the Day was published in 1956, critics praised the novella and maintained that it followed in a natural progression from Bellow's first three novels, Dangling Man (1944), The Victim (1947), and The Adventures of Augie March (1954). In his 1957 Chicago Review assessment of Seize the Day, Robert Baker wrote that Bellow in all of his novels "has tried to lasso the universe, to explore the splendid, profligate diversity of human experience, and to seek the ties that bind." Baker found that in Seize the Day, Bellow had matured as an artist: "The growth and ripening of Bellow's attitudes have been paralleled by the perfecting of his medium of expression."

Baker alluded in his review to the three short stories that accompany Seize the Day in the volume entitled Seize the Day, but he claimed that "these stories do not match the brilliance of 'Seize the Day,' and...