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PARTISAN REVIEW
Nathan's impotence, he is the cause of impotence in others, as
Falstaff's wit causes wit. Nathan 's fame as a writer makes his
brother incapable of writing even a letter, also of finding satisfaction
in his work, which in turn becomes the reason he needs other women
and finally the operation that ends him. What of Maria whom
Nathan wants to love? She isjust delighted that Nathan is impotent.
She has her husband to fourletter her, and she takes pleasure in
fourlettering Nathan mentally, as her sister, Sarah, points out. But
Lady Brett, in Hemingway's novel, wanted Jake to make love to
her. It never entered her mind to fourletter him mentally and have
Cohen or the matador, or both of them, fourletter her physically.
Compared to Nathan, Jake and Lady Brett were naive. They even
enter a church and wish they could pray, while Nathan derides
believing Jews and Christians alike. He tries to make the Israelis he
meets in Israel impotent Zionists, and Jews in general impotent in
their effort to find some meaning in Jewishness. The only time he
feels he is Jewish is when he is accusing Maria, along with her
mother and sister, of anti-Semitism, an ac;cusation Maria interprets
as aimed as taking from her all power to love. At the climax of their
quarrel, Nathan, who has come to think all Jews mad, is called a
"mad Jew" by Maria . So there is to be no more fourlettering of her
by him or of him by her, spiritually or physically.
I want to look back once more at Hannah Arendt ' s description
of social trends made in
The Human Condition
almost three decades
ago . The trends she pointed out in warning are much more advanc–
ed today than when she told us that the bureaucratic socialist state
on which we verge prevents any kind of independent action. In such
a society, the making of objects, scientific, commercial or artistic,
substitutes itself systematically for the doing of deeds . In such a con–
text, the maker of books, even of fictions, will have a great advan–
tage in any confrontation, for his opponent, without his prestige or
literary gift, will have as little ability to act, also as little access to
ideas requiring action. With all these advantages, what will the
writer, the maker have won?
If
there are no deeds to story, of what
shall the storyteller write?
If
life goes finally counter to life, will a
novel, even one like
The Counterlife,
still be possible?
LIONEL ABEL
