"I don't have to act like a Jew - I am one." Philip Roth, The Counterlife (pg. 279)
INTRODUCTION
The Counterlife is a complex story of Nathan Zuckerman's search for who he is as a Jew, a man, and a human being. The style is sometimes complex and confusing, with a fluid line between fantasy and reality. Roth asks challenging questions, and presents them in a challenging way. Yet the reader is rewarded with insights that are profound, provoking, and compelling.
The Counterlife is not for everyone. Because of its strong sexual content and controversial ethnic and religious discussions, the reader is cautioned to read at his/her own risk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Roth was born in 1933 in Newark, New Jersey, the setting of many of his novels. His writing career began in controversy with his first book, Goodbye Columbus (1959), a novelette and five short stories that depicted Jewish life candidly and which attracted the praise of critics and the shame and ire of many in the Jewish establishment. His novel Portnoy's Complaint (1969) was another bold -- and to many, embarrassing --look at Jewish life, this time focusing on a young man and his obsession with his mother and his sexuality.
Roth's recurrent protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman, is a novelist who, like Roth, was born in Newark in 1933 and whose career in many ways resembles that of his creator. Zuckerman's first book, Higher Education, created controversy in the Jewish community, just as Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint did for Roth. Once labeled "the bad boy of Jewish literature," Roth was prodded continue writing controversial books. In The Counterlife, Zuckerman is told, "you would probably never have written those books about Jews if Jews hadn't insisted on telling you not to" (p. 188).
The "Zuckerman Bound" series includes The Ghost Writer (1979), in which the young novelist visits his mentor, an elder Jewish novelist, and becomes obsessed with a young woman whom he believes is Ann Frank. In Zuckerman Bound (1981), the frustrated novelist leaves his wife, becomes estranged from his younger brother, and continues to obsess. In The Anatomy Lesson (1983), Zuckerman suffers a mysterious illness, finds solace in sex, and tries to become a doctor and a pornographer. Prague Orgy (1985) is a series of journal entries narrating Zuckerman's travels to Soviet occupied Prague in search of a lost manuscript by a famous Yiddish author.
The Counterlife (1986) continues the story of Nathan Zuckerman where the "Zuckerman Bound" series leaves off.
SUMMARY OF THE NOVEL (all page references taken from the 1996 Vintage Books reprint).
Each of the five chapters of The Counterlife is set in a different reality. Roth isn't writing this as science fiction, but as a road of various paths-counterlives, if you will-that Zuckerman may have taken. In chapter one, for instance, Zuckerman is attending the funeral of his younger brother, Henry. In chapter four, it is Henry attending the funeral of Nathan Zuckerman, after which he retreats to his late brother's apartment, where he discovers a manuscript of a novel-this very novel in which he is a character!
Basel (pages 3-49). Nathan Zuckerman's brother, Henry-having struggled with impotency resulting from cardiac medications-has died of complications from bypass surgery. Nathan is unable to give a eulogy, but writes pages about adulterous affairs, his and Henry's.
Judea (pages 50-140). Nathan travels to Israel to track down his brother, Henry, who has left his family to join a right-wing militant community in the West Bank.
Aloft (pages 141-181). Leaving Israel for his return to England, Zuckerman pens a letter to his brother and reviews his trip. While still aboard the plane, a bizarre sequence of events involving an unbalanced fan and an attempted hijacking turns this chapter into a thriller-adventure.
Gloucestershire (pages 182- 254). In counterpoint to chapter one, Nathan is the one suffering impotence because of heart medicine, and it is Nathan who dies as a result of surgery. This time, it is Henry who is unable to find the words to give a eulogy for his brother. Following the funeral, Henry visits his brother's apartment, where he discovers a manuscript of an untitled novel, which is actually The Counterlife.
Christendom (pages 255-324). Continuing from the point at which chapter two left off, Zuckerman has returned to England from Israel. Visiting Maria's very English family for the first time, Zuckerman encounters a form of anti-Semitism that forces him to acknowledge his differentness.
DISCUSSION TOPICS AND QUOTES
What does the title-"Counterlife"-mean? Does it refer to the dual lives of Nathan and Henry Zuckerman? Does it refer to Nathan's exploration of alternative lives? Is it something else?
The chapter entitled "Judea" opens with a description of Zuckerman's earlier writing career. ". . . Higher Education, my first book, had been deemed 'controversial"-garnering both a Jewish prize and the ire of a lot of rabbis. . ." (page 50). How does this description mirror elements in Roth's own career?
In a flashback of Zuckerman's earlier visit to Israel, Mr. Elchanan explains the difference between American Jews and Israeli Jews: "We are living in a Jewish theater and you are living in a Jewish museum" (pg. 52). What does he mean by this? In what ways is American Judaism a museum culture? How does Israeli culture represent Jewish theater?
Zuckerman refutes the argument that America boiled down to "Jew and Gentile, nor were anti-Semites the American Jew's biggest problem." (p. 54). What does he mean by this? What is the American Jew's biggest problem?
On page 74, we are told that Henry "left his wife, his kids, and his mistress to come to Israel to become an authentic Jew." What is an authentic Jew? What is Henry trying to achieve? To what extent is he deluding himself? To what extent is he making a genuine effort to live a more "authentic" life?
When Zuckerman contacts Henry by phone (pg. 82), he introduces himself: "It's me. . . Cain to your Abel, Esau to your Jacob, here in the Land of Canaan. I'm calling from the King David Hotel. I just arrived from London." Discuss the unusual juxtapositions of modern with ancient in this passage. In what ways do Henry and Nathan Zuckerman resemble Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, or any other biblical siblings?
Zuckerman is very reticent to being drawn into a minyan at the Wall (pages 89-91). How do you explain that reticence? Is that a natural response of secular Jews to religious Jews?
The fan whom Zuckerman meets at the Wall praises Zuckerman's descriptions of baseball. Then he asks (pg. 94): "How can there be Jews without baseball? . . . Not until there is baseball in Israel will the Messiah come!" Discuss how baseball-at least for Roth and Zuckerman-is integral to Jewish American identity.
Henry and Nathan each "escape" in different ways. Henry describes his brother's as "the original Jewish escape. . . Switzerland with the beloved shiksa." Is Henry being fair? What was Henry's escape? What is he escaping from? Escaping to?
On the airplane, when a Zionist on the seat beside him asks, "Why do Jews persist in living in the Diaspora?" Zuckerman responds, "Because they like it" (p.143). What does this mean? Is his response typical of answers given by Diaspora Jews? Why do Jews live in the Diaspora?
Henry comments about Nathan: "The poor bastard had Jew on the brain. Why can't Jews with their Jewish problems be human beings with their human problems? Why is it always Jews after shiksas, or Jewish sons with their Jewish fathers? Why can't it ever be sons and fathers, men and women?" (p. 228). Is Henry correct? Is Nathan wrong to focus so much on Jewish differences, or are those differences real?
When Maria's sister confronts Zuckerman for his moral experimentation and public "strutting," he responds: "I can only exhibit myself in disguise. All my audacity derives from masks." What does he mean by this? What sort of masks are worn in The Counterlife? How might this also apply to Roth the writer?
In chapter five ("Christendom") Zuckerman encounters a new form of anti-Semitism. Discuss the nature of the mannered British anti-Semitism exhibited in the writings of Buchan, Trollope, or Dickens. How is this different from the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany? Of contemporary America? What is Maria's response to this anti-Semitism? What is her response to Zuckerman's response to it?
Who is Maria? What is her role in the novel? Is there more than one version of Maria? Is she the archetypal shiksa? Is she Roth's projection of Claire Bloom (whom Roth had a long relationship with until the mid-1990s)? Is she no more than a character within a novel within a novel-a character imagined by Zuckerman imagined by Philip Roth?
Roth (Zuckerman) ends his narrative with a coda celebrating the circumcised penis as the ultimate icon of Jewish separateness. Explain and discuss what he means by this?
Critics praised The Counterlife as a work of "metafiction," referring to the way in which the novel turns on itself like M.C. Escher's lithograph, "Drawing Hands" (1948) in which a hand is drawing a hand which, in turn, is drawing the first hand. Discuss this approach to fiction. In what ways does Roth break the rules of fiction writing in this novel? How does Roth make the characters become real and how does he turn the reader into a character? How does the novel step out of the fictional realm and look at itself? Is The Counterlife more than metafiction? What are the core issues that Roth is addressing in this novel?
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