(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)As regular readers know, for a long time I've carried a pretty big chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Postmodernist era of literature, which I'm defining here as the period between Kennedy's death in 1963 and September 11th; I suppose it's a natural reaction for any underground artist, in fact, to rebel against the conventional wisdom they were raised on, to yearn for something new and almost diametrically opposite in the arts than what has become the safe status quo. But now that I'm a critic instead of a creative, and especially now that I'm writing the CCLaP 100 essay series (which is as much about examining the grand tapestry of literary history as it is about the individual books themselves), I now find it important to try to understand Postmodernism in a more complex way, to acknowledge not just its limitations but also its strengths, and what led its precepts into becoming the basis for a major movement in the first place. And there's not much of a better way to do this, I thought, than to read the remarkable nine-book series that Philip Roth has written over the decades on this subject, all of them featuring his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman; because not only is Roth considered one of the greatest writers of the Postmodernist period, but his Zuckerman books are an autobiographical look at his life during the Postmodernist years, from his college days right at the start of the era to his elderly years of our current times, a rare opportunity to examine an entire period of history through the related three-act narrative stories of someone who lived through it all, and who wrote most of the tales in nearly real time to when they were actually happening.Last year I got a chance to review the first Zuckerman book, 1979's The Ghost Writer, which I encourage you to read first if you haven't already; taking place exactly twenty years previously, it is like I said a look at Roth's early twenties, when he was first breaking into the east-coast literary scene (i.e. getting his first stories published in magazines like The New Yorker), told through the filter of a dinner one night with a Bernard-Malamud- or Saul-Bellow-type mentor, a fellow Jew but a little older and a lot more famous, and who has a complicated relationship with his public reputation as a groundbreaking author of contemporary Jewish literature. (And in fact, now that I've read Bellow's Pulitzer-winning Humboldt's Gift, published just four years before The Ghost Writer, I've come to understand just what an homage Roth's book is to his, both of them laid-back looks at American intellectualism in the post-war period, and what exact role Jews had in it.) Today's book, then, Zuckerman Unbound, although written only two years after The Ghost Writer, skips ahead an entire decade in its setting: it's now 1971, just a year or two since Zuckerman's novel Carnovsky has become a national sensation, a naughty but witty "smart person's sex romp" published at the exact right moment of the countercultural revolution, and which has thrust Zuckerman into the role of spokesman for an entire generation of young, with-it Jews.And for those who don't know, this is indeed exactly what happened in Roth's real life too -- that after establishing himself at the tail-end of Modernism with a series of stories written in the formal style of such Realists as Henry James, his filthy but funny Portnoy's Complaint from 1969 became a true highlight of the entire countercultural movement, and helped re-define young urban Jews into nebbish yet undeniable sex symbols of a new age (and this in the same years that Woody Allen was doing the same thing in the movie industry). It's something I talk about in detail during my write-up of the first Zuckerman book, but bears repeating, of just how successful such '60s and '70s figures as Roth, Allen, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks and others were at "normalizing" the ins-and-outs of Jewish life in the eyes of their mostly Christian mainstream audiences, so much so that we often forget now just how controversial such a thing was back then. As Roth so expertly reminds us in these books, for a long time after World War Two, Jews were of profoundly different minds regarding just how they should present themselves to society in the first place; after all, before the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was a semi-accepted part of life nearly across the planet, with it only being the pure brutality of the concentration camps that finally snapped so many Westerners out of their own anti-Jewish attitudes. Many Jews during the Mid-Century Modernist period thought that they should take advantage of this newfound collective goodwill, that they should as much as possible simply not remind people that Jews even exist, and the few times they do to make sure it's some example of noble selflessness like Anne Frank, the dead diary-writing teen who single-handedly had more to do with defining Judaism in the '50s and '60s than any other individual on the planet.It was Roth and other young hip Jews of the countercultural period who changed all this, who dared to commit the unspeakable sin of portraying their fellow Jews as actual complex human beings, flaws and tics and all, who dared to talk about such exclusively Jewish subjects in their work as seder and sitting shiva, demanding that mainstream America get caught up to them, instead of them constantly having to dumb down their lives to a lily-white Christian audience. And like I said, although these artists of the Postmodernist period did such a good job at this that we barely even question such a thing anymore, to the generation of Jews who survived the Holocaust this was seen as the ultimate in self-hating behavior, to air their community's dirty laundry to a group of misunderstanding Caucasians who just thirty years ago had been slaughtering their people by the millions, and in these older Jews' minds were just itching for an excuse to start doing so again.Or to cite an excellent example from the book itself, look at the consternation that is caused by including a spindly loser Jew as a character (based believe it or not on tainted quiz-show fallen hero Herb Stempel, who for a time in the '50s was the most famous living Jew in the entire United States), personally repulsive to most and always with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory whenever something doesn't go his way...or in other words, Uncle Leo from Seinfeld. ("HELLLLOOO, Jerry!") It's remarkable, I think, that the mention of a character type that now elicits fond and knowing laughter was just forty years ago seen by most Jews as the height of race-sabotaging behavior; and that is the power of Postmodernism, that writers like Roth and others really were able to bring about a world where Seinfeld is now one of the most beloved television shows in history, a world where Yiddish terms now pepper the everyday vernacular of most Christians, and where nearly every suburban grocery store now has an entire aisle just for various ethnic speciality foods from around the world. And that like I said is the whole reason I'm reading the Zuckerman books in the first place, to understand all the remarkable things that the Postmodernists actually accomplished, instead of just always concentrating on the endless snotty irony and pop-culture worship that became unfortunate side-effects of the age.Ultimately I can give this book no better of a compliment than to state the following, that reading this slyly funny, slow-moving character-based story made me understand what it must've been like to be a middle-aged intellectual in the early '80s -- you know, living in a rehabbed attic loft in Minneapolis or Denver, watching The Big Chill and thirtysomething, reading insightful novels about the human condition whose covers are rendered in big looping script typefaces, having debates at dinner parties over the continued relevance of Norman Mailer. Reading Zuckerman Unbound felt exactly like this, like getting literally transported back to this era, and it's easy to see why it's arguably the best and certainly one of the most popular of all the books in the entire Zuckerman series. It makes me glad that I took on this project in the first place, and I'm now looking highly forward to tackling the next book in the series, 1983's The Anatomy Lesson.
Zuckerman gets famous! I love the quote on the back of the book, from the Village Voice: "Not since Henry Miller has anyone learned to be as funny and compassionate and brutal and plaintive in the space of a paragraph." Personally, what I've read of Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer) I would discredit; but I definitely agree with this description of Roth's writing. Very gripping. I've written about Roth's style just the other day, and this book certainly dittos all that. His subject matter takes it up a notch, taking his alter ego from a budding young writer on the eve of his celebrity to that celebrity and all the encompassing paranoia, as well as the personal crisis that accompany such a drastic life change. It's funny to read all this, as we are really "in the age of the celebrity," now. I know people don't want to hear about the paparazzi stalking Brittany Spears or whatnot, what a pain it is to be rich and famous, whether she deserves it or brings it on herself, or anyone else for that matter... but this is an artistic look at "The Artist" and coming to terms with such changes as being recognized everywhere you turn, having money you felt you never needed, listening to an agent or professional tell you how to live/act, especially an artist such as a writer who creates his own subject matter -- not just an actor -- but one who pulls details from real life, measuring how those published "fictions" will come back to haunt "real" life. I just found that whole storyline interesting. I'm starting to see Roth's greater themes developing as I continue on through his works. He certainly likes to examine Art, his Jewish heritage, family relations and perceptions, and certainly a healthy notion of sex. (OK, I've heard more about the last part than I've read, but I almost feel like I've been expecting it and waiting for it and so what little there is really pops out... no pun intended...)I still think that one of the best features of Roth's novels -- at least the ones I've read -- are his stylistic decisions to use very specific, subtle scenes to illustrate larger themes, and illustrate his ideas in such a way. So much time is skipped between Ghost Writer and Unbound, and by no means do you get the full story filled in, the missing years, countless scenes that are unable to be illustrated; but -- as I've said before -- his Salingeresque style (Hemingwayesque?) of encompassing 90% of the story's "meaning" like an iceburg, below the surface, really makes your brain turn an incredible amount for a 225 page novel. I've got two more Roths on my shelves and feel ready to buy another two right now. You ready for me to continue writing about Salingeresque techniques, Judism, family squabbles, and sex? (I did learn a new vocab word with this story: Onanism. Look it up. You'll be glad you did. Ha!!)
What do You think about Zuckerman Unbound (2011)?
Earlier this year, Philip Roth published the final chapter in his series about his erstwhile Zuckerman, called "Exit Ghost". Now I would profess to being a big fan of Roth's writing, but I am likewise ignorant of the broader catalog of his work. Wanting to be on the right wavelength, I picked up Zuckerman Unbound, with the intention of following him through the chronology. I haven't quite got there yet, and I don't anticipate completing the rounds any time soon, but I do love Mr. Zuckerman. He's a sad mess of contradictions, inhibitions, and loss for my inner Jew. I think it's one of the things I like most about Roth's writing. He writes from a vantage point, most obstensibly Jewish, to which even a mostly goy guy like me can relate.More truthfully, in a strictly logical sense, any of his books about Zuckerman can be read out of order, as any great book should be. I'm just a little funny in that I would prefer to read them as they were written. So, read this, or Portnoy's Complaint for your first taste of Philip Roth, and find within, your inner Jew.
—Sean
Early Roth isn't as powerful as later Roth but the themes are the same. Sex, death, Jews, Newark, authorship, family and the un-tethering of oneself from them all. What's immediately impressive is how compelling his scenarios and characters are. Alvin Pepler is Zuckerman's obsessed fan, a man driven to dangerous behavior by envy, regret and identification with Zuckerman's famous character Carnovsky. The end of the book concerns Zuckerman's father's death. His dying word to his son is a condemnat
—Josh
Zuckerman Unbound recapitulates the post-publication notoriety/misery Nathan Zuckerman experiences in the wake of releasing his novel, Carnovsky (a stand-in for Portnoy's complaint.) Progressively, he detaches himself from his third wife, his New York anonymity, his dream that he'll be rescued by a goyim actress, his father (who dies), his mother (who is unfaltering in her protection of him), his younger brother (who declares that he deserves no such protection after have exposed and abandoned every dimension of his previous experience), and his desolate old neighborhood in Newark, which he views from the security of a limo driven by an armed chauffeur. The theme of this book is more than the experience all writers undergo as they mine their lives for material. It is a meditation on the intermixture of experience and fiction...the impact one has on the other...creating changed dynamics in both.Roth being Roth, this a short novel full of outrageous minor characters, odd moments of poignancy, and off-kilter scenes. New York City helps in this; so does Jewish culture; so does Roth's gift for telling tales tersely, compressing little narratives within narratives, summing up character's with a trait, a quirk, a certain predictable reaction to everything, funny or sad.Nathan Zuckerman is, in some ways, the least persuasive of the characters in the book because he is so earnest, the constant straight man, the only figure who has everything figured out about how you distance yourself from your material (and thereby your life.) There's a kind of yearning in him not to be the author of the send-up satire Carnovsky, but rather the author of filial loyalty or romantic love or marital constancy, if not fidelity. And Roth doesn't really have fun with this; he lets Zuckerman be the observer of everyone else's bizarre reaction to his wealth, his fame, and his repudiation of his family/Jewishness/sexual modesty. So there's a hole in the book. It condemns a lot with force but doesn't project any alternative. And then we are supposed to feel Zuckerman's sense of nostalgic emptiness when he considers his old Newark neighborhood and laments the fact that it does not know him anymore.
—Robert
