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PARTISAN REVIEW
believing males and his attraction to and respect for women? And by
a link I mean something more than a fact of this sort: he has heard
more Jewish men davening than Christian girls caroling. Now I do
think there is a connection between Roth's dislike of believers and
his liking for women. I find it to be the residue of a vague radicalism,
left over from positions more clearly held in the past. To act with
other men one has to hold a belief of some kind, and if no belief
unites you with others, you are quite free to deride them. But sex
can unite you on occasion with a woman you have chosen, or who
has chosen you, thus opening the way to the joys of fourlettering. Is
the slogan to be "Let's deride and fourletter"? But in saying that
one is no doubt repeating-in contemporary terms-the leftist
slogan of the sixties: "Let's make love, not war."
So much for whatever politics one can find in
The Counterlife.
I
would rather call attention to other, clearer, and more general no–
tions operative, if not stated, in the novel. Nathan Zuckerman
makes no distinction-Hannah Arendt thought this distinction of
the utmost importance-between the doing of a deed and the mak–
ing of an object. Nathan makes literary objects, books, and never
distinguishes these from deeds done. Thus it is that in his conflicts
with others the odds almost always favor him. When he pits himself
against his brother the dentist he thinks of the latter's acts of den–
tistry as cruder versions (than his) of an effort to communicate.
What does Henry's drill tell his patients? What consolation can a pa–
tient find in the shine of his forceps? And in dealing with the Israeli
fanatic Mordecai Lippman, he never considers that the man may be
involved in actions important to him and to other Israelis, maybe
even to Nathan. When he and Mordecai meet it is not in hand-to–
hand combat, as in days long past when deeds were respected. They
meet on the modern stage, which Nathan understands better than
his opponent. They go at one another not sword against sword, but
manuscript against manuscript, and Nathan's, those already
published and famed, and the ones he is preparing, already certain
to be praised, cannot but outmatch the cruder productions of Lipp–
man, who does not think of his bitter words as the first draft of a text
to be published. Nathan, less naive, knows that this is what Lipp–
man's words are.
In Nathan's draft for a novella to be entitled
Christendom,
found
in his apartment after his death, there is an account of his marriage
to Maria and of their separation. The novella assumes that Nathan
has been operated on successfully, and has become potent. He has
