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PARTISAN REVIEW
is Zuckerman's not-so-secret identity and the psychic space he shares
with his creator.
As for those Roth characters on the long trail of tears toward "per–
sonalliberation," less need be said: each suffers from a version of Port–
noy's "complaint"-that is, they want to be "bad," to be sexual
outlaws, and still feel "good." This abiding wish, depending on one's
perspective, may be the stuff of heroic struggle or more evidence (as if
more were needed) that Roth's characters are often stuck in the narcis–
sism of early adolescence. But whatever the cause for these protracted
exercises in railing, they do not, taken together, add up to transgression.
The Golden Calf that the ancient Hebrews prayed to during their desert
wanderings from Egypt...now,
that
was transgression. In much the
same spirit, it is silly to talk about Roth as a heretical writer because he
simply doesn't know, or care, enough about Jewish theology to be an
authentic heretic. He, in short, is no Spinoza, despite the fact that many
Jewish-Americans would excommunicate him if they could. But what
Roth
does
want to do is give excess room in the polite discussions-and
strong expectations-of the tribe. On this score, Roth strikes me as
positively Blakean. So it is that his characters weep and wail, but in
ways that Roth keeps under firm artistic control. That, more than any–
thing else, is what gives many of Roth's most characteristic paragraphs
their distinctive sound and thumb-print. Indeed, in mid-career his voice
became more tempestuous-and testy-than even Lonoff could not
have predicted.
Unlike an earlier generation of Jewish-American writers who grew up
under the shadow of tenement buildings and grinding poverty, Roth
knew about a quite different world, one of postwar affluence and the
meretriciousness of certain Jewish-American suburbs. He began, in short,
as the chronicler of assimilation's mixed blessings, as seen through an
unflinching, often bitterly satiric eye. Given these cultural facts, it is not
surprising that he launched his meteoric career with
Goodbye, Colum–
bus and Other Stories
(I959),
a collection that made it clear he had as
much talent as he had a smart-alecky swagger. But these stories, despite
the dust that a tale like "Defender of the Faith" kicked up, were tame,
socio-realistic goods-at least when compared with nearly everything
from
Portnoy's Complaint
(I969)
onward. Many of those who first read
Roth's fiction in the pages of
The New Yorker
or
Commentary
were dis–
mayed to see so much dirty linen about quotidian Jewish-American life
hung out to dry on very public lines, but that, of course, is an old
story-the same one that greeted James Joyce's short stories about
Dublin or William Faulkner's novels about Oxford, Mississippi.
