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PHILIP ROTH
ventionality ("You think I'm bad? You don't know how bad! You
think I'm a brute? Well, I'm a courtly gentleman! You think I'm a
gentleman? I'm a brute!" and so on ) as it were, deliberately
ex–
ceeding
the misunderstandings in an indefatigable act of public seIf–
realization; the second, Salingerism, by refusing to be contaminated
by misunderstanding in any way, even, if need be, by not being pub–
lished. I would think that serious American novelists with a sense
of an audience swing on a pendulum from Mailerism to Salingerism,
each coming to rest (at any given moment) at a point on the arc
that appears (and needless to say, a man can be wrong) to be con–
gruent with his temperament and nourishing to the work.
To get back to that defense I made of my own work in
Com–
mentary
in 1962 - in that essay I at one point evoked the name of
Flaubert and the example of Emma Bovary, a memorable character,
I said, because of the vividness and depth with which she was pre–
sented, and not because she was "representative" of the French mid–
dle- class ladies of her day; likewise, I went on,
my
characters were
not intended to provide a "representative" sampling of Jews, though
they were "well within the range of Jewish possibilities."
I wish now that instead of describing my intentions - or validat–
ing them - by a comparison to a revered artist out of the World
Literature Pantheon, I had evoked the name of Henny Youngman, a
Jewish nightclub and vaudeville comic, whose wisecracks, delivered in
an offhand whine while playing atrociously on the violin from the
stage of the Roxy, had impressed me beyond measure at the age of
ten. But because it was precisely my "seriousness," my sense of pro–
portion and consequence, that was under attack, I did not have the
nerve to appear "frivolous" in any way. So much the worse for me;
had I had it in me to admit, in just those circumstances, that it was
to the low-minded and their vulgarity that lowed no less allegiance
than I did to the high-minded with whom I truly did associate my
intentions, I might at least have provided
myself
with a fuller descrip–
tion and explanation of the work I was doing, if a more repugnant
one yet to those who disapproved of me.
Really, you think of yourself as a disciple of H enny Youngman?
I do now. Also of Jake the Snake H., a middle-aged master of
invective and insult, and repository of lascivious neighborhood gossip
(and, amazingly, the father of a friend of mine ), who owned the
