BOOKS
ROTH'S BEST NOVEL
THE COUNTERLIFE.
By
Philip Roth.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $18.95.
Our best writer, Philip Roth, thinks the least of us, that is
when he catches us in some believing posture, and it is in such
postures for the most part that he has chosen to catch us, in the often
antic prose of his new novel. It is the best prose we have had from
any novelist since Faulkner .
I was greatly taken with Roth's first book,
Goodbye Columbus;
then I went with him through the jokes in
Portnoy's Complaint
and the
Zuckerman sagas, but with considerably less admiration. Now, with
this new novel (also about Zuckerman), Roth emerges from my past
judgement of him as someone I especially want to write about. In
fact, had I read
The Counterlife
before it was sent me for review, I
would have volunteered to review it, which might well have been un–
wise. Editors are almost as a rule suspicious of a literary enthusiasm
they have not themselves suggested.
One reason for wanting to write about Roth's new novel is that
the critics, however they commended the book, did not know how to
discuss it. What was Roth up to? About this they were most unclear.
William Gass, in
The New York Times Book Review,
put forward the
notion that Roth is affirming, or at least relying on, an extreme form
of postmodernist idealism, possibly of Richard Rortyish prag–
matism. Now I don't find this notion helpful. And why should there
be any problem, for a critic in dealing with this humorous, always
interesting, and brilliantly constructed novel?
One difficulty-this is what bothered Mr. Lehmann-Haupt
(also of
The New York Times)-is
that even at the novel's conclusion
we are not at all sure what has happened in it . Did Nathan Zucker–
man's brother, Henry, a dentist, die ofa triple bypass operation, or
was it Nathan who was operated on and died? And which of the two
goes to the other's funeral, hoping, and not asked, to give the
eulogy?
That we cannot answer these questions in no way distracts us
while reading or hinders our pleasure, having read. There is of
course one pleasure we cannot have: the pleasure of being sure. But
it is possible to enjoy being left partly in the dark, which is how we
find ourselves at the end of
The Counterlife,
as after the fUm made
