SANFORD PINSKER
Art as Excess: The "Voices" of Charlie Parker
and Philip Roth
N
o one has explained the essential difference between style and
voice better than has E.
I.
Lonoff, the magisterial author in
Philip Roth's
The Ghost Writer
(1979) .
His fiction is a "cele–
brated blend of sympathy and pitilessness," and so is the life he leads in
its pursuit-especially the pitiless part. Lonoff chooses to be a recluse,
just as he chooses to be something of a crank. He does not suffer fools
gladly, nor is he easily impressed by other writers, young or old; but, to
his credit, Lonoff knows the genuine article when he hears it. Nathan
Zuckerman, he proclaims, after reading a few of his stories, has "the
most compelling voice I've encountered in years, certainly for somebody
starting out." An invitation to chat about writing quickly follows, and
because Zuckerman is in desperate need of encouragement, advice, and
most of all, fatherly approval/sponsorship, the fledgling author arrives
at Lonoff's hideaway in the Berkshires for what Mafia movies call a
"sitdown."
There, Lonoff elaborates on the impression that Zuckerman's stories
have created: "I don't mean 'style,'" Lonoff begins, using a raised finger
to illustrate the distinction, "I mean voice: something that begins
around the back of the knees and reaches well above the head." The def–
inition may strike some as too vague by half-rather like Dickinson's
test of genuine poetry as that wh ich makes the little hairs on the back
of her neck stand up-but if Lonoff's assessment of Zuckerman's stories
is short on specifics it has the singular virtue of driving straight to the
point.
Moreover, Lonoff knows that there are endless ways of finding a gen–
uine voice, just as there are dozens, even hundreds of ways of getting a
story wrong. Art requires patience, a willingness to, as he puts it, "turn
sentences around," and then to turn them around yet again. Lonoff also
knows that genuine writers can also be as different as are their tem–
peraments. Zuckerman, unlike the fastidious Lonoff, is a ranter, a tem–
pestuous fellow who lives fully (sometimes foolishly), and whose
