THINKING ABOUT ROTH I

So, I'm a good pile of Roth into my summer reading, and so it's time for an update before moving totally takes over. A few caveats first:

Most of what follows is fairly raw, unfiltered and impressionistic. To give you a sense of what goes into writing a review like this, I'm pulling back the curtain on the "mulling things over" stage. It's the point in the process when I'm reading the author's previous works and simply noticing things. They might not be profound, they might not be important, they might not make it anywhere near the final review. But I notice them nevertheless, and it's too early to know what will count. One of the pitfalls I work hard to avoid is developing a thesis too early, and then looking for the facts to back it up. I prefer my thesis to emerge at the end of my reading. Perhaps that belabors the obvious, but the point of this exercise is to take nothing about this process for granted.

I'm about to sit down and read Indignation for the first of what will be at least two times. My deadline on this piece is September 2, but since I am leaving for Australia on August 24, I'm aiming to have a solid first draft by then, so I am only polishing language on the road.

So what I have sussed out so far? Well, years ago, I went to see The Marriage of Figaro at the LA Opera, and when it was over, I called my mother – my opera going companion in my New York days – and marveled that I'd managed to forget it was a masterpiece, and just listen; and in listening experienced precisely why it was a masterpiece. My time with Roth has been a bit like that. He's become such a literary institution, nearly embalmed in his reputation, so that it's become easy to accept his brilliance without allowing ourselves to experience it firsthand. 

Re-reading Portnoy's Complaint was a revelation, and it felt surprisingly fresh, its scathing humor still plenty sharp and effective. What has changed, of course, is the coarsening of the culture around it (some might argue it led that transformation), so one challenge was trying to imagine its impact on readers in the late 60s, trying to grasp how transformative it must have been. (Aside: When I was around 12, I asked my mother if any books in the house were off-limits. She said only one: The Odessa File, a potboiler that, of course, I made a beeline for. Why she chose this one, I don't know – she was probably trying to spare me Frederick Forsyth. But the shelves were filled with Roth – Portnoy included – all of which were apparently fair game.)

In addition to the early titles, I've now read the Zuckerman books, and the Kepesh books and something that has struck me is how unapologetically Roth declares his literary ambitions. Giants are name-dropped unselfconsciously in a way that I suspect most contemporary novelists would avoid. And his books are often as much about writing and the writer's lot – the burdens of creativity, the strange duplicity of every moment in an artist's life (is this experience or is this material?) – as they are of anything, including the Jewish American experience. 

Additional impressions: It's mildly unnerving how accomplished his debut Goodbye, Columbus is, all the more so when compared against most of today's debuts. Similarly, it's weirdly reassuring when he drops a real clunker, like this one from The Anatomy Lesson: "... Milton Appel had unleashed an attack on Zuckerman's career that made Macduff's assault on Macbeth look almost lackadaisical." And for sustained awfulness, one can't ask for much more than Our Gang, his satirical misfire which follows the travails of "Trick E. Dixon" and his cabinet. 

Of particular interest to me is the question of "indignation" itself. The word appears in Portnoy, as he recalls a Chinese marching song learned in school:

And then my favorite line, commencing as it does with my favorite word in the English language: "In-dig-na-tion fills the hearts of all of our coun-try-men! A-rise!  A-rise!  A-RISE!"

Thinking about it, there's really a strain of indignation burning through so much of Roth's work; it seems to have transformed over time from the Indignation of the Outsider (the Jew among the Goyim) to the Indignation of One's Mortality (never handled better, I think, than in the magnificent Sabbath's Theater, which I am saving for the end). But there I go, seeking grand themes too early. I'm filing that one away, and the next step is to settle down with the new novel, before returning to the backlist. More to follow. Moving this Sunday.

(UPDATE: Since posting - and correcting, thanks to Richard Beck - this post, I've read enough of Indignation to find it refers to exactly the same song noted in Portnoy, in a nearly verbatim passage.)

Comments

[Richard Beck]

Speaking of the word "indignation," Portnoy says that it's his favorite word somewhere near the end of "Portnoy's Complaint." I also read Portnoy for the first time this summer, was struck by that little passage, and then was really struck when I saw the title of his new one.

[TEV]

Richard, you are absolutely right. I found my notes, and it's Portnoy, not Columbus. I've made the change and noted the passage above. Thanks!

[Sam]

I'd be curious where "indignation" is in GC, if you find your notes. I don't remember it and couldn't find it as flipped through just now.

GC is great summer reading. I like the fruit refrigerator.

[Niall]

"Giants are name-dropped unselfconsciously in a way that I suspect most contemporary novelists would avoid"

And yet he rarely, if ever, cites an English-language author or book, let alone American ones. For all that the early stories and novels are saturated in Henry James (their discreet interest in point-of-view; their obsession with the hidden overlaps between social niceties and moral imperatives), the writers he mentions are always from the European east - Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Freud, Babel; later, people like Aharon Appelfield and Milan Kundera.

Given all this, and given how foregrounded Roth's interest in these writers is, why so shy about people who write in the English language? Sabbath's Theater and some of what has come after allude heavily to Shakespeare (though, curiously, only to the tragedies), but modern English-language literature doesn't really exist in Roth. Why is this? Is it - as Martin Amis once suggested - that Roth wants to get at a book's meaning "without the obstruction of a responsive verbal surface"? Or is the fact of these writers only being accessible to Roth in translation a mere coincidence?

It's also notable the extent to which Roth is going back to his grad school reading in the later novels. I haven't read Exit Ghost or the new one, but I'd be very surprised if I didn't see Ivan Ilych shoehorned in there somewhere.

[Shane]

Hi guys.

Forgive me, I've never read any Roth. But this is the point of my post. I've been contemplating reading him for a few months now but have been unable to decide where to start.

Would a chronological read-through be best? Or can anyone suggest the novel to start for a complete Roth novice?

Thanks,

Shane

[TEV]

Too busy unpacking to find the link, Shane, but over at the NBCC blog, Wyatt Mason suggests The Ghost Writer, and I agree.

Niall, where is the Amis essay, do you know?

Back to boxes!

[Joel]

Ivan Ilych is alluded to in Everyman. However, Exit Ghost does refer to an English (in language rather than nationality) author: Conrad, specifically The Shadow-Line. The Anatomy Lesson begins with a funny allusion to George Herbert, and Letting Go begins with a very depressing reference to Portrait of a Lady. These are all off the top of my head, so if anyone else wants to help Niall, please pitch in.

[Niall]

Hi Mark,

The Amis essay is in The Moronic Inferno. It's presented as a single essay, but is in fact disparate reviews of Roth's late seventies/early eighties novels: The Professor of Desire and The Anatomy Lesson among them.

The point about Roth's obsession with non-English language authors doesn't really go much further than what I quoted above (and that a translated text can be referred to as "unresponsive" is something I disagree with). But I think it does suggest something about what Roth reads for: it's not for native lyricism, or for ambiguity on the level of pure language.

[Mitch Nisonoff]

Exit Ghost explicitly references Conrad's "The Shadow Line" a number of times. Interestingly enough, the word "indignation" also features prominently in the "Shadow Line" (as does the word "breast"(!)): When learning that the prior caption deliberately had made the bottles in the medicine chest so that appeared to contain quinine when, in actuality, they didn't, the protagonist recites: "The magnitude of my indignation was unbounded. ,,, The fittings were in order and medicine chest is an officially arranged affair. There was nothing really to arouse the slightest suspicion. The person who I could never forgive was myself. Nothing should be ever be taken for granted. The seed of everlasting remorse was sown in my breast." Conrad's influence on Roth can traced from early on in his writings: the clues are given together with the last two.