Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue
Philip Roth, 1979-85
Penguin Group USA
700 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781598530117
Summary
For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities, leading the critic Harold Bloom to proclaim Roth "our foremost novelist since Faulkner." Roth's comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assault on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our time. By special arrangement with the author, The Library of America continues the definitive edition of Roth's collected works.
This fourth volume presents the trilogy and epilogue that constitute Zuckerman Bound (1985), Roth's wholly original investigation into the unforeseen consequences of art—mainly in libertarian America and then, by contrast, in Soviet-suppressed Eastern Europe—during the latter half of the twentieth century.
The Ghost Writer (1979) introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer infatuated with the Great Books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his literary idol, E. I. Lonoff.
Zuckerman Unbound (1981) finds him far from Lonoff's domain—the scene is Manhattan as the sensationalizing 1960s are coming to an end. Zuckerman, in his mid-thirties, is suffering the immediate aftershock of literary celebrity. The high-minded protege of E. I. Lonoff has become a notorious superstar.
The Anatomy Lesson (1984) takes place largely in the hospital isolation ward that Zuckerman has made of his Upper East Side apartment. It is Watergate time, 1973, and to Zuckerman the only other American who seems to be in as muchtrouble as himself is Richard Nixon. Zuckerman, at forty, is beset with crippling and unexplained physical pain; he wonders if the cause might not be his own inflammatory work.
In The Prague Orgy (1985), entries from Zuckerman's notebooks describing his 1976 sojourn among the outcast artists of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia reveal the major theme of Zuckerman Bound from a new perspective that provides the stinging conclusion to this richly ironic and intricately designed magnum opus. As an added feature, this volume publishes for the first time Roth's unproduced television screenplay for The Prague Orgy, featuring new characters and scenes that do not appear in the novella. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 19, 1933
• Where—Newark, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Bucknell University; M.A., University of
Chicago
• Awards—the most awarded US writer—see below
• Currently—lives in Connecticut
After many years of teaching comparative literature—mostly at the University of Pennsylvania—Philip Roth retired from teaching as Distinguished Professor of Literature at Hunter College in 1992. Until 1989, he was general editor of the Penguin book series Writers from the Other Europe, which he inaugurated in 1974 and which introduced the work of Bruno Schultz and Milan Kundera to an American audience.
His lengthy interviews with foreign authors—among them Primo Levi, Ivan Klima, and Aharon Appelfeld—have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1933 and has lived in Rome, London, Chicago, and New York. He now resides in Connecticut. (From the publisher.)
More
Philip Roth's long and celebrated career has been something of a thorn in the side of the writer. As it is for so many, fame has been the proverbial double-edged sword, bringing his trenchant tragic-comedies to a wide audience, but also making him a prisoner of expectations and perceptions. Still, since 1959, Roth has forged along, crafting gorgeous variations of the Great American Novel and producing, in addition, an autobiography (The Facts) and a non-fictional account of his father's death (Patrimony: A True Story).
Roth's novels have been oft characterized as "Jewish literature," a stifling distinction that irks Roth to no end. Having grown up in a Jewish household in a lower-middle-class sub-section of Newark, New Jersey, he is incessantly being asked where his seemingly autobiographical characters end and the author begins, another irritant for Roth. He approaches interviewers with an unsettling combination of stoicism, defensiveness, and black wit, qualities that are reflected in his work. For such a high-profile writer, Roth remains enigmatic, seeming to have laid his life out plainly in his writing, but refusing to specify who the real Philip Roth is.
Roth's debut Goodbye, Columbus instantly established him as a significant writer. This National Book Award winner was a curious compendium of a novella that explored class conflict and romantic relationships and five short stories. Here, fully formed in Roth's first outing, was his signature wit, his unflinching insightfulness, and his uncanny ability to satirize his character's situations while also presenting them with humanity. The only missing element of his early work was the outrageousness he would not begin to cultivate until his third full-length novel Portnoy's Complaint—an unquestionably daring and funny post-sexual revolution comedy that tipped Roth over the line from critically acclaimed writer to literary celebrity.
Even as Roth's personal relationships and his relationship to writing were severely shaken following the success of Portnoy's Complaint, he continued publishing outrageous novels in the vein of his commercial breakthrough. There was Our Gang, a parodic attack on the Nixon administration, and The Breast, a truly bizarre take on Kafka's Metamorphosis, and My Life as a Man, the pivotal novel that introduced Roth's literary alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman.
Zuckerman would soon be the subject of his very own series, which followed the writer's journey from aspiring young artist with lofty goals to a bestselling author, constantly bombarded by idiotic questions, to a man whose most important relationships have all but crumbled in the wake of his success. The Zuckerman Trilogy (The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, and The Counterlife) directly parallels Roth's career and unfolds with aching poignancy and unforgiving humor.
Zuckerman would later reemerge in another trilogy, although this time he would largely be relegated to the role of narrator. Roth's American Trilogy (I Married a Communist, the PEN/Faulkner Award winning The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America), shifts the focus to key moments in the history of late-20th–century American history.
In Everyman (2006), Roth reaches further back into history. Taking its name from a line of 15th-century English allegorical plays, Everyman is classic Roth—funny, tragic, and above all else, human. It is also yet another in a seemingly unbreakable line of critical favorites, praised by Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and The Library Journal.
In 2007's highly anticipated Exit Ghost, Roth returned Nathan Zuckerman to his native Manhattan for one final adventure, thus bringing to a rueful, satisfying conclusion one of the most acclaimed literary series of our day. While this may (or may not) be Zuckerman's swan song, it seems unlikely that we have seen the last Philip Roth. Long may he roar. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)
Literary Awards
Philip Roth is one of the most celebrated living American writers. Two of his works of fiction have won the National Book Award (Goodbye, Columbus; Sabbath's Theater); two others were finalists. Two have won National Book Critics Circle awards (Patrimony; Counterlife); again, another two were finalists. He has also won three PEN/Faulkner Awards (Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman) and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral. In 2001, The Human Stain was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2002, he was awarded the National Book Foundation's Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists still at work, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy. In May 2006, he was given the PEN/Nabokov Award, and in 2007 the first PEN/Saul Bellow Award — both for lifetime achievement.
The May 21, 2006 issue of the New York Times Book Review announced the results of a letter that was sent to what the publication described as "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." Of the 22 books cited, six of Roth's novels were selected: American Pastoral, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. The accompanying essay, written by critic A.O. Scott, stated, "If we had asked for the single best writer of fiction of the past 25 years, [Roth] would have won." ("More" and "Awards" from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Zuckerman Bound: In bringing together in one volume his last three novels ...Philip Roth has presumably completed the saga of his fictional hero, Nathan Zuckerman. It is the story of how an earnest young student of literature grows up, writes a scandalous best seller and experiences the debilitating effects of fame. And it is also a story about the unforeseen consequences of art, the strange, predatory relationship that exists between literature and life, and an American writer's anomalous sense of vocation.
It's hard to say whether the parts of this volume add up to something more than their sum. In the first place, reading the Zuckerman fictions together, one is more acutely aware of fluctuations in Mr. Roth's style—the limber, Jamesian prose and delicate ironies of The Ghost Writer stand in marked contrast to the more staccato rhythms of Zuckerman Unbound and the frenzied, almost incoherent mannerisms of The Anatomy Lesson. The self-reflexive nature of the three novels also feels more pronounced when they are read all at once.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
The Ghost Writer: Philip Roth has given us a beautifully intricate novel that fulfills the promise of [his] early stories.... Now, it might conceivably be argued that as Mr. Roth grows older he is simply recycling the obsessions of his youth—his rebellion against the role of nice Jewish boy he played in his childhood and adolescence (or that his fictional persona played, at any rate); his guilt over exercising his freedom as an artist; and his insistence on the right to imagine in his work the bad people as well as the good who happen to be Jewish. But never before, that I can recall, has he handled these materials so deftly.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times
Zuckerman Unbound: It's really too bad. Zuckerman is unbound, all right, but in the sense of being cut loose from everything that made him what he was. Zuckerman Unbound is masterful, sure in every touch, clear and economical of line as a crystal vase, but there is something diminished about it, as about its immediate predecessors. The usual heartbreak and hilarity are there, but they no longer amplify each other; now both are muted.... And I do wish Mr. Roth would stop apologizing for Portnoy's Complaint. Its bite sinks deepest into the soft spot of something more American than it is Jewish.
George Stade - New York Times Book Review
The Prague Orgy puts [Roth's] self-conscious concerns in perspective and also casts them in a ludicrously comic light. Where the celebrated American writer receives money and fame for writing a sensational novel, the East European writer receives a jail sentence. Where the American writer gets thrown to the critics, the East European writer gets arrested by the police. And where the American writer suffers paranoia over importunate fans, the East European writer suffers real anxiety over informers and bugged rooms. The irony of all this, Mr. Roth implies, is that the freedom enjoyed by writers in the West also reduces them to celebrities—their work is not taken with the moral seriousness conferred upon the work of their comrades in Eastern Europe.... Mr. Roth...demonstrates, in this story, that he is a writer of far greater subtlety and inventiveness than his fictional hero. The Prague Orgy is free of the shrillness and self-pity that mar earlier sections of this volume, and it also possesses a new range and density of ambition. Roth fans can only hope that instead of merely marking the end of the Zuckerman saga, it marks another beginning.
Michikio Kakutani - New York Times
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