Constant Reader

[Dick]

Swede is stymied by his own tolerance and respect for other people. But that cannot be a flaw. Can it?

In Lou's world it's a flaw, for sure. And from Zuckerman's standpoint (could someone teach spell check we're not misspelling the guy's name?), if it's not a flaw it's at least a case of 'You buy the premise, you buy the joke.'

[Robert]

Some of the messages I get from American Pastoral: The late ‘60s social irony of the generational progression from poverty to affluence to rebellion. No matter how perfect you are, no matter how accepting, reasonable, gifted, hard-working, successful and giving you are, you are not immune to disaster. No one is. Chaos is an aspect of the natural order. Although living as a good person will not exempt you from terrible circumstances, it’s still a preferable way to approach life and gives you a better chance of pulling through in the end. Be careful what you wish for, the realization of your dreams is not without its down side. The heart wrenching possibility that someone in your family that you love may be beyond your reach and you have to let him or her go.

Robt

[[deleted user]]

Brrrrrr.

[[deleted user]]

From Zuckerman's standpoint, isn't Swede's embarrassed refusal to respond to her "I'm a lefty tart" pitch merely a display of impotence -- impotence without the excuse of the surgeon's knife? I thought I definitely caught a whiff of contempt for Swede's weakness in that scene.

Not weakness or impotence, discerning taste in my opinion. Rita was repellent to say the least of it, not a thing sexy or tempting about her. She was an ill-kept and dirty, both physically and morally, and Swede may have been irritating in his lack of discipline with Merry, but he was a moralist and wouldn't have slept with Rita if she was the last functioning female on the planet.
I thought it showed Swede's strength of character.

As far as a "touch" of schadenfreude, it seems to me Rita was pure malice aforethought.

I loved the sequences detailing glove making, I know absolutely nothing about the process and found it fascinating and a great insight into how Lou's mind worked.

[Dick]

There's an inter-generational element in there as well. Zuckerman/Swede are members of that demographic sliver falling between the Greatest Generation and my [originally I posted "our" -- clearly that's incorrect given the age span represented in this discussion. Hence the correction:] own Boomer tide. They got the full rush of post-World War II prosperity but without the unifying predicate of war (or the aftermath of post traumatic stress syndrome either). Premiere cru boomers like Steve and I remember those guys well: the older brother Korean War vets who drove hot rods and always seemed vaguely ill at ease no matter what group they tried to be in: too young for the VFW crowd, too old to smoke pot and march for peace with us.

I'm not prepared to argue (at least strenuously) that lots of easy sex, plentiful drugs and ear splitting rock 'n roll (oh, and Vietnam. Not to forget that) were quite the equivalent of having landed at Normandy but they did provide us with a certain sense of generational solidarity. I think the wildly alienated vision of Merry and Rita that so puzzles and torments Swede reflects something of that in-between status. Lou on the other hand probably has seen worse -- much worse. He's just too tough to let it get him down.

Man, do we ever live up to our fathers?

[Dick]

She was an ill-kept and dirty, both physically and morally

That would never have stopped Zuckerman.

[[deleted user]]

Russ, I didn't know what to make of that kiss, but I don't think it caused Merry to go down the path she chose.

If any individual blame can be placed there are two that I can think of right off the bat.
First when the self-immolation of the monk on the newscast. Her age was most impressionable and she was a sheltered sweet girl, and it hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks. I was older than she was at the time and remember the incidents of course, but beyond the initial horror they didn't reach my gut as they did hers.

Second thing was Lou's constant writing letters and generally raising Cain about LBJ...just his general ranting made a deep impression on her.
Somehow those two things affected her at such a deep level she had to act on them, she didn't have the maturity or savvy to act on them in an acceptable manner. She was still a child and fell into the wrong crowd on top of everything else.
There I do see how Swede's lack of discipline or maybe lack of meshing with her life contributed to what happened.

[[deleted user]]

That would never have stopped Zuckerman.
Well, this is the first Zuckerman influenced Roth I've read so I don't know him, but if that is the case Swede must be the polar opposite.

[[deleted user]]

too young for the VFW crowd, too old to smoke pot and march for peace with us.

I guess that's me. Just settling into life and a 30-year career ahead of me.

What a wonderful learning event this discussion is.

[Melissa]

Roth's characters surprise themselves, each other, and us the readers too.

One of my favorite passages in the book occurs during that lunch at Vincent's, when Skip is beginning to sense the unseen depths in the Swede he's never been aware of before. It's the paragraph that begins "You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations ...".

I don't agree completely with the bleakness of Roth's perspective, but the example of Skip and Seymour is a fine case study of its truth.

Rather than type out the whole paragraph here, I'll link to where I posted it long ago on the GoodReads "favorite quotes" feature:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/...

[[deleted user]]

Along with Jack Benny, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"

[Dick]

Swede must be the polar opposite

To a significant degree that's true. Swede most definitely was the anti-Zuckerman in high school and remains so in the narrative. The difference being that in 1948, Swede was an heroic anti-Zuckerman whereas in 1993 he's become a pathetic anti-Zuckerman. The question I keep asking myself throughout, therefore, is, "Why has Zuckerman imagined it this way?" Because the one thing we know for sure is that Zuckerman is imagining most of this beyond the high school memories.

If we assume the characters and plot development after Zuckerman drifts off into reverie while dancing with Joy Helpern is intended as a self-contained, internally consistent story line (which, I think, is necessary if we are discussing motivations of the characters within the context of the story itself), then I think we have to ask: what the heck is the point of the first 80-odd pages? Why Zuckerman at all? Why not just tell the story of Swede and the Lvovs?

The only answer I can come up with so far is that the characters, as creations of Zuckerman and based only dimly in reality, are motivated by his motives and his desires and are acting for his purposes much more than they are driven by internal or plot-derived elements.

But I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.

[[deleted user]]

what the heck is the point of the first 80-odd pages? Why Zuckerman at all? Why not just tell the story of Swede and the Lvovs?

Well, at the minimum, the dinner in the real world, many years later, at least tells us and Nathan where his fictional story has to end up and connect to. That's a mind-bending connection of meta-fiction to fiction, but it's there (still with the big gap of his remarriage).

[Ruth]

too young for the VFW crowd, too old to smoke pot and march for peace with us.

Me too. Just a few years younger than Swede himself.

In regard to Roth's tendency to digress and preach, I just came across this in the Letters of Flannery O'Connor. Seems the antithesis of Roth's approach.

...when you present a pathetic situation, you have to let it speak entirely for itself. ...you have to present it and leave it alone. You have to let things in the story do the talking. ...as author you can't force it."

I tend to agree with Flannery. I was put off by Roth's blizzard of words swirling in all directions, and his injecting of the authorial voice.

[Sherry]

The only time the digressions really bothered me was at the very end when we got a botany lesson on the imaginary walk home of Merry. I felt that there were four or five wizards behind the curtain there. I wanted to find out WHAT IS REAL and NOW. Lou might have died and Merry might have walked home and we're learning about wildflowers? It was maddening at the time. But I wonder what deeper purpose all the meanderings might have had. Could they have been a metaphor for what happens in life when we deny that we have to solve a major problem? It's easier to get all involved in bulls and cows and wildflowers and gloves than find out why your life is falling apart.

[Dick]

Not from me. I think you're hot on the trail. And I think Philip and Russ2's suggestions relating to the significance of the dinner at Vincents are very well taken. I reread that entire section prior to my Sunday afternoon walk and have decided it considerably informs what comes later -- more than I appreciated the first time through.

[[deleted user]]

Second thing was Lou's constant writing letters and generally raising Cain about LBJ...just his general ranting made a deep impression on her.

Pontalba I've been thinking over your Post #65 which included the above. In fact, dredging my memory, Lou goes on to give some free advice to Swede, more or less along the lines of, "Son, you ought to do something about that girl. She is taking this entirely too seriously at school." Darn right she was taking it seriously! Lou was stoking her fire with his letters, but it never occurred to him to let up. He could see what was happening, but was too blind to see what he saw. So yes, I would put Lou Levov down as possible Culprit #1 in why Merry went the way she did. And Swede, who just smiled and did nothing, as Culprit #2. The family was raising a politically activist kid, whether they knew it or not.

[Dick]

Jerry certainly painted Swede as an over indulgent 'modern' father and Zuckerman picked up that tidbit and ran with it. In my experience, people without children often believe themselves quite expert about their care and feeding and are usually willing to share their expertise with you at the drop of a hat. And, of course, the evils of Dr. Spock's permissively-reared generation of children was a cultural meme in the 1960's and '70's. So all of that goes together superficially well.

I do wonder about Jerry's own point of view. After all, a busy doctor from Miami would hardly know much about the internal life of a family in New Jersey it seems to me. And, while as a surgeon he would of course be automatically qualified to issue expert opinions on everything from nuclear physics to Thomisian eschatology, I still must ask, "are 4 marriages really a firm basis for forming a long distance opinion on someone else's family dynamics?"

[Mary Anne]

A beautiful piece of writing comes in the form of the speech Zuckerman didn't give at the reunion, which starts the 2nd chapter:

"Let's remember the energy. Americans were governing not only themselves but some two hundred million people in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Japan. The war-crimes trials were cleansing the earth of its devils once and for all. Atomic power was ours alone. Rationing was ending, price controls were being lifted; in an explosion of self-assertion, auto-workers--laborers by the millions demanded more and went on strike for it. And playing Sunday morning softball on the Chancellor Avenue field and pickup basketball on the asphalt courts behind the school were all the boays who had come back alive, neighbord, cousins, older brothers, their pockets full of separation pay, the GI Bill inviting them to break out in ways they could not have imagined possible before the war. Our class started high school six months after the unconditional surrender of the Japanese, during the greatest moment of collective inebriation in American history. And the upsurge of energy was contagious. Around us nothing was lifeless. Sacrifice and constraint were over. The Depression had disappeared. Everything was in motion. The lid was off. Americans were to start over again, en masse, everyone in it together.
If that wasn't sufficiently inspiring--the miraculous conclusion of this towering event, the clock of history reset and a whole people's aims limited no longer by the past--there was the neighborhood, the communal determination that we, the children, should escape peverty, ignorance, disease, social injury and intimidation--escape, above all, insignificance. You must not come to nothing! Make something of yourselves!

Zuckerman says he wrote this speech after the reunion, and it makes a tremendous backdrop for the story that is to follow. I have only quotes two paragraphs here, so I encourage you to go back a reread it in its entirity.

[[deleted user]]

Ooooooooooh, boy, Russ! I don't know about that. Merry became a terrorist bomber because of the malfeasance of Lou and the nonfeasance of Swede?

Within these pages, this one seems to have.

I know full well that there are an overwhelming number of politically engaged families and they certainly don't turn out terrorist bombers. I certainly know and have known my share of them, and have had my share of commenting on the news around our dinner table without my kids bombing anyone yet. However none of those, or me, are in the pages of this novel.

I'll be glad to see all other explanations that are plausible within the frame of the novel, or the frame of Zuckerman's imagination.

[Wilhelmina]

I just flat out didn't find Merry believable, either as a character or as a representative of the political activists of her (my? our?) generation. To go from angry teenager to mad bomber to religious crazy was just too much. I will admit that I knew people who took much more moderate versions of that path, but this was just too much. I didn't even believe that she killed more people. A human reaction to killing the kindly doctor would not be to casually kill more people. For whatever reason, Zuckerman/Roth decided to present the most extreme caricature of an activist he could imagine. Except, of course, for the delightful Ms. Cohen.

[Dick]

Well, regarding Ms. Cohen we also should recall that the motto of the day was "Make love, not war." I presume Zuckerman just had her living the dream.

[Al]

Wow, so many great comments here.

First, on the question of why have Zuckerman tell the Swede's story:

I think that device was the best way to establish Seymour's heroic youth - Zuckerman puts him high up on that pedestal so that he can fall long and hard.

I also think by establishing all the hard facts up front, the drama that ensued was heightened.

Second, on the issue of how Merry ended up a terrorist bomber, many here are placing too much emphasis on Seymour and Lou's role - having a mother who was a beauty queen was definitely a key factor in my mind. Also, Merry seems unusually impressionable - she was so affected by the monks, plus her visits to church with her grandmother and then her Audrey Hepburn phase.

[Al]

Ruth, I so appreciated your quote from Flannery O'Connor (as I am currently reading The Habit of Being as well). You are so right that they are on opposite sides here, although I have tremendous respect and admiration for both writers.

[Andy]

Great discussion. I like the interpretation that Rita is Zuckerman's invention. I hadn't thought of that.

Russ #16

Nathan asserts that the story that he has just written is as valid as anyone else's memory of Swede, even though Jerry might disagree about details. Which sounds quite a bit like Roth himself throwing down the gauntlet for any who would challenge his writer's craft.

I like this comment. I think Nathan’s assertion could also be interpreted to mean that Roth is throwing down the gauntlet for the reader, challenging the reader to continue reading even though the details are bound to be inaccurate.

Dick #41
It appears the Rita Cohen character is one of the story elements created out of whole cloth by Zuckerman (and of course at a one step remove, Roth. But to what purpose?

Is Rita a little flash of Zuckerman's schadenfreude over the painful and unhappy end to his boyhood idol's life?

I like this interpretation of Rita’s existence in the novel. One could answer the question this way:

Rita is Roth and the Swede is the Reader. Roth, by writing a novel, reveals himself to the Reader. He invites the reader in. Likewise, Rita reveals herself to the Swede. She invites him to know her. Both Rita and Roth are assumed to have knowledge that the Swede and the Reader want, respectively.

But, Rita’s revelation is unappealing, as evidenced by earlier comments in this forum, and it’s unappealing to the Swede. He knows he will be rewarded with information if he accepts, he will be reunited with Merry, his problems will be solved, but still he declines the invitation.

Roth makes his invitation to read unappealing to some, also, as evidenced by earlier comments in this forum. He makes the invitation unappealing by revealing early in the novel that the story itself is inaccurate conjecture. He makes it unappealing by asking too many questions and by extending descriptions to the point of tedium. And, even though he’s a Great American Writer, he decides against promising any answers. Even still, we plunged ahead and read the whole thing.

Russ #43
I think the shift in Swede's reaction to Rita -- from believing her, to writing her off as a nut case -- is there to mark a shift in Swede's mental state, from yearning for Merry to recognizing that she is effectively gone from his life...
I think that the episodes find themselves based in the actual, but unfortunate, reality that cranks and nuts and schemers do, in real life, appear at the doorsteps of people who find themselves in the news...

I think these are good insights. If I were to interpret these scenes differently, I would pretend for a while that all the characters are Zuckerman and Zuckerman is Roth. If I did that, I might conclude the novel is a demonstration of the fact that Roth himself is a crank and a nut and a schemer, not to mention a sexual deviant. Or I might conclude that Roth at least has the capacity to live these things in his imagination.

The shift in Swede's reaction to Rita comes after he knows all he needs to know from her. He metaphorically slept with her then never called back.

Robert #44
I can also understand feeling that Roth is hitting us over the head with his point, as someone alluded to, being crushed under giant incongruities.

I felt hit in the head with wave after wave of questions. This book contains more question marks per page than any other American novel. Is this what we paid money to read? I thought we paid writers to KNOW things. Don’t we want Roth to TELL us something? Are we now paying people to ask us questions? I thought we paid money for answers. Instead, Roth just gives us unknowing. Maybe he argued to his publisher that people are not really interested in answers. Maybe Roth thinks that as soon as he gives us his answers, we’ll lose interest in him.

Rita is no longer a concern to Swede after she tells him the answer to his question (where is Merry?). Heck, Swede is no longer interested in Merry when it turns out she’s just another screwed up person in the end. Oh sure, he still THINKS of her, but actions speak louder than words. Instead of taking her home and continuing to talk to her for real, he chooses to continue spinning his conception of her around in his mind. The Swede prefers unknowing. Roth was right to make that argument to the publishers.

But looking on the bright side, all those questions Roth asks us could be seen as a form of flattery. Like Rita asking the Swede all those questions about gloves.


Steve #47
Rita was a tremendously efficient tormentor, launching a devastating attack on everything that gave meaning or purpose to the Swede's life.

If somebody I knew wrote something like the scene where Rita exposes herself, I’d probably do some serious thinking about that person’s motivation for showing it to me (the piece of writing). Is this scene purely metaphorical, created in order to reveal something about the Swede? I think not, because I tend to agree with Russ and Dick and others that most of the Swede’s story is Zuckerman’s imagination. In that context, this scene (and while we’re at it, the kiss between Swede and Merry) should then be considered in terms of what they have to say about Zuckerman as an author. The schadenfreude argument in its simplest form may be that Zuckerman creates the scene in order to establish his own superiority over the Swede. But I suppose there are other ways of doing that, so why move to the psychosexual? Why bring sexuality into this novel at all?

I think the answer is simply because it’s there. If raw material is one of this novel's themes, sexuality is certainly fertile ground (punny, that). Or maybe Roth is a schadenfreude for himself, maybe he gets pleasure from exposing his own miserable need to write and procreate.


Wilhelmina #50
I found that the "story within a story" construct made it difficult for me to connect with the characters in the book or to care enough to speculate about their fates. For me, the outcome was whatever Zuckerman might decide to make it.

I felt the same way, and in fact, nearly quit the book during the interminable high-school reunion scene for the same reason. And Zuckerman even tells us he’s going to get it wrong (quote in Philip #68), so what’s the point of reading the story? I want my novels to be right, damn it.

And then, in the very next post, Dick with this nice one:

All stories are exercises in imagination. However, this story differs somewhat in that the author is at pains to tell us how the story has been imagined. Since Roth doesn't seem given to idle scribbling, I think the "why" and the "how" may be the paramount issues in understanding the novel.

I like this insight. It moves towards answering Steve’s later question of
What purpose of Roth's does Zuckerman serve in the telling of this story? (Steve #75)
I agree with Dick, and I really like the way he articulates this point. The novel seems to be a meditation on how a writer uses raw material to create a compelling story. I think the fact that so much of the discussion revolves around Swede and Merry shows that the story Z is telling is indeed compelling. And I think Roth is at least making a comment on his own process and his own imagination, if not attempting to reveal his process outright, straightforwardly metaphorically.

I think the “why” is basic enough. I think Roth wrote the novel in order to see what he could get away with. I think, like any writer, he wants to move people and get inside people and hold people’s attention. I feel a darker purpose, also. A little bit of mischief on Roth’s end. The same kind of mischief Rita is up to. But while it is clear that Rita delivers the info she has, I think it is less clear how Roth delivers the information he has.

[[deleted user]]

Andy, responding to Russ #43 you say:
If one were to allow oneself the thought exercise of pretending for a while that all the characters are Zuckerman and Zuckerman is Roth, one might see the novel as a demonstration that Roth himself is a crank and a nut and a schemer, not to mention a sexual deviant. Or one might see that Roth at least has the capacity to live these things in his imagination.

Andy, I'll dissociate myself politely from the imputations of your comment if I may. I do not confuse authors with their characters in their fictions, or even with their first person narrators.

[Robert]

What would have happened if Swede took Merry out of that hellhole in Newark? This is not a cooperative person. I can see her just opening the passenger-side door and sliding out while Swede drove her to Old Rimrock. Whether or not Swede took her home she would end up in prison, I think. And probably not survive for long. It’s a perfect conundrum. Damned if you do or don’t. Heartbreaking from every angle.

Andy, I’m not buying a novel to get answers as much as I’m interested in having an experience. There certainly were a zillion questions but the novel’s structure is essentially an inquiry and an exploration. How do you deal with a situation where there are no answers? I think it’s possible to not come up with an answer and yet gain awareness by asking.

Robt

[[deleted user]]

Just because an author writes something doesn't mean he is what he writes. Doesn't even mean he wants or desires to be or do what he writes about, it only showcases his imagination and ability to take true events and twist them to his imagination.

I thought Roth captured the time accurately, yes Merry was an extreme case, but as was pointed out above she was especially sensitive to the pain of others and to their influences.
Al, just found it, in your post #84 you mention she was unusually impressionable, yes, but you also speak of Dawn's influence on Merry...I think you are implying that Dawn's success made Merry even more self conscious of her own flaws. :?:
I can certainly agree with that, but that was something Dawn could not help, it was in the past, Lou's rants and Swede's passivity was right there in their present and could have been turned around. Roth made quite a point of Lou's rants and Merry's attention to them.

[[deleted user]]

Robert,
My first reaction was to think Swede should have physically forced her to leave with him, but that was only a gut reaction, you are right, she would have died in jail anyhow, or as you mention even jumped out of the moving car. She'd decided to die in retribution for her crimes at that point and would not accept that she could live.

I think I would have had to try anyhow. I'm just stubborn that way.

[Melissa]

I love this discussion, thanks everybody! A few points --

Jane (#17) has interesting things to say about the role of memories, and I like the comparison with Enright's The Gathering.

MAP (#80) - I agree about how beautifully written that reunion speech was, thanks for reminding us about it. I found the difference in tone (especially the pace) to be quite striking, signaling some sort of shift even before noticing the visual clue of smaller type.

Jim (#45) points out how differently Updike's star athlete relates to his own achievements and thus throws doubt on the reality of the Swede's prowess. Since I was never much of an athlete, I can't speak with any authority but this didn't bother me -- the Swede wears his athletic stardom more as a badge of honor and duty than as glory and personal pride - as when he joins the football team in a gesture of noblesse oblige despite not really liking the contact.

[Melissa]

One of the important topics this discussion has brought to the surface is the role that Rita Cohen plays in the story.

While rereading the book (after a period of years) I had the notion that Rita was in many ways a replacement daughter figure for the Swede. This is pretty obvious in the long interview sequence at the factory, where Rita behaves as politely, respectfully, and attentively as any father wishes his child would someday do.

But I think it works later on as well, especially in that infamous exposure scene, where the horror felt by the Swede and the reader is intensified by her role as Merry's stand-in, and in light of Seymour's anguish about the day at the beach and the kiss.

Rita is in a way the distillation of the extremes within Merry's character that her father cannot really accept -- so they are abstracted and then incarnated in a person that can be more easily vilified and rejected.

The problem I had with this interpretation while reading the book was how clearly Rita is distinguished from Merry in physical terms. But our discussion of other potential symbolism in her role emboldens me to claim that Rita does indeed serve as a replacement for Merry who can then take on most or all of the daughter's repulsive elements.

[[deleted user]]

Returning to a previous point, there are several other footprints for Merry's terrorism that lead to Lou's door, that Zuckerman or Roth plant in the sand, it seems to me. They might as well be tallied here, even if with no great enthusiasm on my part, and possibly for the last time, considering how cool this environment seems to considering his involvement.

I've already mentioned Lou's observation that she was taking what he said far too seriously, which did not fly very far here. He was of course the firebrand in the group.

There was the man at the reunion who claimed Lou was the most influential person in his life, leading to more than a few hundreds of well chosen words by Zuckerman(?) on how he never noticed the strength of the relationship, but nevertheless Lou's considerable influence was obviously there. Lou obviously had a certain charisma quite capable of influencing people;

Merry picked up the nickname Ho Chi at school, evidently because of her sympathies opposed to the same Government that Lou was opposed to;

Her attack was against a facility which appeared to be a Government facility, the same Government that Lou was attacking relentlessly;

Her response to the immolations was clearly heartfelt and in sympathy with those opposed to our Government's involvement.

Together they form a coherent whole with a single target and a clear central motivator, and I think Zuckerman sees it that way because of these footprints that he puts in his story. We may say the cause of Merry's terrorism might have been anything, but I don't see Zuckerman saying that.

So is Zuckerman set up by Roth as a benighted person typical of a certain kind of blindered witch-seeking individual of the period? Mox nix to me. But I think the traces are there to be seen in the text -- as part of Zuckerman's characterization, not necessarily Roth's, or mine or the readers here. I think we should read the text we see, not the text we wish might have been written.

[Melissa]

Another key topic that I have found fascinating in our discussion is our attempt to "explain" Merry and her behavior in a way that mimics the uncertainty and even the anguish of her family.

I think that this is among the book's most important messages. Robt's poignant summary (#60) gets right to the heart of the issue: The heart wrenching possibility that someone in your family that you love may be beyond your reach and you have to let him or her go.

We've been making a lot of attempts to lay the blame for Merry's outcome on her parents or society or the immolated monk or LBJ or Lou Levov's rants about the War and so on (Russ at ##58, 77, 81; Pontalba at #65; Dick at #79; Al at #84).

These suggestions are to some extent picking up on and thus crediting the self-doubts and recriminations of the characters in the story itself.

What I get out of the story instead is how hopeless and yet very human it is to try to handle horrible events by finding "the" cause or explanation, even when most of those reasons are beyond our ken or control. Basketball was never like this -- we can't reduce our lives to a scoreboard and a set of statistics.

[[deleted user]]

Philip, You missed #93.

[Dick]

This morning (at an insanely early hour) I started thinking through the idea that Roth is considering lives lived largely through pretense. In the case of Zuckerman his vocation (almost in the religious sense) is pretense exercised through the novelist's art. He has embraced a career of pretense in lieu of family and children and now, at the end of his life, neutered by cancer, a monkish devotion to pretense is about all he has left.

The imagined Swede on the other hand built a life based on pretenses: that conformance could bring happiness; that a large stone house in a fine neighborhood would be a firm foundation for a family; that a gentile beauty queen would make him a contented wife; that being a good, liberal, understanding father would keep the storms of the world away from his beloved daughter. And so on.

Of course, this is almost all seen through Zuckerman's creative eye so the varieties of pretense don't get an equal hearing. It is Swede's pretenses that are seen to be not only hollow but are collapsing so horribly around him at the end of the story. For the Swede, pretense ultimately became disaster, invalidating his entire life.

Zuckerman, on the other hand, is not nearly so hard on his own brand of pretense: the only sign he gives that pretense may have failed him as a singular value is a certain wistfulness about the path not taken: the family and children never experienced, a dead lack of comprehension or empathy as Swede shares the joy of his children's successes with him over dinner, a stiff distance from the old friends and sweethearts from high school at the reunion.

But it takes a wise man to know himself, and we've never seen much evidence that Zuckerman is very wise. Are the imagined Swede's doomed pretensions really consistent with the man Zuckerman actually knew? The real Swede who actually carried the ball, dated the pretty girls and joined the Marines? The real Swede who appeared over dinner as a man with happy memories of his family (despite the apparently tragic experience with his daughter), a man who, notwithstanding foreknowledge of his own impending death, appears content and at peace?

"No way," says Zuckerman. "Oh, I'll admit the theoretical possibility that the Swede is that illusive character, the happy person," says Zuckerman, "but I don't believe it. Let me show you what I believe -- perhaps, even, what I need to believe about the Swede."

And, we're off, into the realms of pretense where Zuckerman's isolation and loneliness and fear of death can be soothed by visions of an unhappy, failed Swede.

I'm afraid I'm back to the notion that this book is 'about' Zuckerman from start to finish and that the tale of the Lvov family is only the mirror through which we see, reflected, the novelist's unhappy and even diseased soul.Of course, that's just Roth's pretending there...so no telling what's really true.

I really need to get more sleep.

[[deleted user]]

Dick, fine commentary! My best ideas also come to me early in the morning and I think the layers you identify are very worth trying to dissect in terms of the given text. Swede at the dinner strikes me differently than you see him, but I also see his seeming happiness as disconnected with his despair at the end of the book and as a disjunction in the story-telling. So anything might have happened in between, and he might have any personality we wish -- even a burnt out shell of his former self, consistent with Zuckerman's first intuitions over dinner.

[Dick]

As far as I can tell, Zuckerman deals fairly with facts, i.e., things he hears people say, sees them do and the surrounding objective reality of events. I found no clue in the book that he fudges such reality for his narrative purposes (which is one of the reasons I think Roth makes the demarcation line between that which Zuckerman knows and that which he imagines so clear for us). The fiction begins where the reality ends....

So my thesis is based on the assumption that Zuckerman's factual version of high school and dinner are accurate. He relates what he saw and distinguishes between that and his internal views pretty carefully ("Swede talked endlessly about his wonderful sons. When he is he going to stop blithering, I wondered, and talk about something important?" I paraphrase of course.)

If the imagined Swede of the book's end is also the "real" Swede then, yes, we can suppose Zuckerman's internal commentary over dinner about the superficiality of the Swede's conversation (and by extension, his entire life) is an accurate assessment. But can we fairly draw the same conclusion ourselves based only on the things that we know to be true in the Swede's life and conversation? I would argue that's a stretch, particularly since we must rely so heavily on the totally fictitious vision of Swede created by Zuckerman to get us there.

[Dick]

Steve: pumping out amateur literary commentary in car load lots is easy if you are retired and at loose ends. However, the sun is more or less shining this morning so I'm going to get in some golf while the swinging is good. The field is yours. But you remind me that I have to revisit Brideshead. Loved it 35 years ago and it's time and past time for a renewed acquaintance.

And excellent point, I think, about the inverted role of narrator here. Just what I needed: something more to think about during my backswing. Thanks, pal.

[[deleted user]]

Steve, I find that notion hard to carry through in logical detail.
I think that Zuckerman is there precisely to not be Roth's alter ego, at least for example so that the narrator can be a fictional creation of Roth's who need not share Roth's attitudes, viewpoints or experiences at all. He might, but he needn't. In particular, I wouldn't expect that Roth got an actual letter from a fictional Seymour Levov, or even necessarily from the alter ego of a real Seymour Levov. It seems to me that fiction begins as soon as we enter the book, at least until Roth chooses to introduce aspects of reality, e.g. Weathermen. Or do I miss the point?

[Robert]

Russ, it comes down to how you define alter ego. For me, an alter ego can be a fictional character who does not necessarily share the author’s attitudes, viewpoints or experiences but is similar in identity. So, I see Nathan Zuckerman as Philip Roth’s alter ego and the reader doesn’t know when Zuckerman is in agreement with Roth or not. One of the purposes of having an alter ego narrator is to protect the author. “Nathan said that, I didn’t,” sort of thing. It may be a psychological devise to get an author to reveal even more intimacies than he or she might without the extra level of remove. Who knows.

Robt, who continues to include his abbreviated name at the end of each post 1) by force of habit & 2) to distinguish myself from another Robert who posts on Constant Reader.

[Robert]

I agree, Steve, it’s not the only use. But it’s a start. However, I don’t see a protective remove as cowardice but more as a pragmatic clarification that the narrator’s POV is fictional.

Robt

[[deleted user]]

Continuing, I think that Zuckerman is there to provide a first-person point of view for telling the story, rather than say third-person, in addition to providing the remove that has been discussed. Why first person? For the sensation of greater immediacy that it provides in having a person talking directly to us instead of our reading about a story written down somewhere else by someone else some other time. In effect, if he is a reliable narrator, he is vouching for the truth of what he tells us or thinks and is thereby providing credibility to the story. So we are there, at one remove.

[Rosana]

The weekend was chaotic around my place so I could not check on this discussion until today. I knew that I was probably missing a lot, but nothing prepared me for what I encountered when I finally made back here.

As it usually happens, the discussion is making me revise my view of the book. There were layers of insight here that revealed much deeper meaning in this book than I had perceived on my own. So thanks everyone.

Keep on going!

[[deleted user]]

Isn't "eunuch" a bit extreme, and possibly inaccurate?
Source please.

[[deleted user]]

I see the mention of removal (p51, Vintage). I do not see any mention of the roughly 50% side-effects that may or may not have resulted.
http://www.prostate-cancer.com/prosta...

[Wilhelmina]

On my p.28 (hardback), Zuckerman says:

"A couple of friends of mine .... didn't emerge from that surgery as they'd hoped to. .... One wound up impotent. ... The other's impotent and incontinent."

...The person I had referred to as "the other" was me.

I thought that his condition might be the source of the ugliness in the sexual encounter with Good Old Rita. I'm not a guy, but it seems to me that those "side effects" could make a fella a little grumpy.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks Wilhelmina, That's a source.

[Al]

Alright, i am convinced that the point is it is futile to try to guess at why Merry turned into a terrorist bomb maker. Swede, Lou and Dawn all had key roles (Dawn not just as a former beauty queen, but also her odd choice of working with the steers - doesn't that somehow tie into Zuckerman's impotence?) but ultimately we can never know why.

To quote Ray Davies "it's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook up world" - perhaps the message Zuckerman/roth wanted us to take away.

[[deleted user]]

Fine by me.

[[deleted user]]

I agree it is pretty futile to pin down any one cause of Merry's derailing, but evidently the seed was something there from practically the beginning. On page 226 of the Vintage version we are told that from the time she was 2 years old she claimed she was lonesome and her vocabulary was excellent. I'm still not sure when the stuttering began but it is mentioned about there.
Dawn told Merry "It isn't always easy being you, is it, Merry?", and her reply to her mother was a startling [to me at least:] "I think it's easier being me, Mom, than maybe it is being n-n-near me."
That's an awfully adult statement for a young child and speaks to the lack of a relationship with her mother.