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Zuckerman Bound #2
Zuckerman Unbound
A “masterful” novel ( The New York Times Book Review ) from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral tells the story of a bestselling writer whose life is falling apart—all because of his great good fortune.
Now in his mid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be recluse despite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent sixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?"), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers, advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettled Zuckerman to wonder if "target" may be more than a figure of speech.
In Zuckerman Unbound —the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound —the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother.
Now in his mid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be recluse despite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent sixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?"), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers, advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettled Zuckerman to wonder if "target" may be more than a figure of speech.
In Zuckerman Unbound —the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound —the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother.
225 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 1981
About the author
Philip Roth
280 books7,451 followersPhilip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
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January 23, 2022
“Él, que hizo fantasía de los demás, ahora es fantasía de los demás.”Nuevamente nos las vemos aquí con un Nathan Zuckerman envuelto en un juego metaliterario y autorreferencial en el que el autor sigue dándole vueltas, de forma muy divertida, eso sí, a la repercusión que tuvo en su vida la publicación de «El lamento de Portnoy» («Carnovsky» en la novela), sus problemas por la supuesta lealtad y responsabilidad debida al pueblo judío y las implicaciones de esta supuesta autorreferencia sobre las personas de su entorno, rápidamente identificados por críticos y público con personajes de la novela.
Lo curioso de ello, aunque era bastante previsible, es que la publicación de esta segunda entrega de la tetralogía desencadenada volvió a demostrar la imposibilidad de cerrar ciertas bocas que sienten una necesidad imperiosa de mantenerse abiertas, pues por mucha ironía y humor con el que el autor envolvió el absurdo de las acusaciones de las que fue objeto y por muy esperpéntico que fuera el despliegue de los problemas que le supuso la notoriedad tras su publicación, muchos vieron en este nuevo relato la confirmación del justo acoso al que fue sometido en su día, la aceptación por su parte de todas las acusaciones recibidas y la correspondiente solicitud de perdón en forma de autoflagelaciones varias.
“Deslumbrante, pero no profundo. Es algo que tenía usted que escribir, para volver a empezar de cero. Y, por consiguiente, es incompleto, le falta refinamiento, se queda en fuegos de artificio. Pero lo comprendo. Incluso lo admiro. Intentar hacer las cosas de otro modo es la única forma de ir mejorando.”El caso es que sí, Nathan Zuckerman se sentía desencadenado cuando escribió «Carnovsky», o pretendía estarlo, pero ahora se descubre añorando las cadenas. Es su sino, estar siempre entre dos polos, queriendo estar en uno inmediatamente después de llegar al otro.
Divorciado dos veces, Nathan acaba de romper con Laura, su última pareja, una heroína de las causas perdidas a la que él distanció de sí mismo con la publicación de su última novela y ahora echa una jartá de menos, y que eligió, según ella misma le reprocha, para alejarse del modelo de “mujeres dependientes y temblorosas que habías tenido antes”.
“Ni siquiera es la virtud de Laura lo que te aburre a morir: es tu propio rostro respetable, responsable, lóbregamente virtuoso. Y con razón…no te cuadra en absoluto la mafia de la virtud…Lo de Laura es la causa de la rectitud, lo tuyo es el arte de la descripción.”Así le echan en cara sus editores las ganas que tenía de cambiar su vida, de dejar de escribir esas novelas correctas y responsables mientras que ahora…
“…estás sintiendo más que nunca tu propia aniquilación. Lo que es más: ahora te saca de quicio que todos ignoren lo correcto, responsable y pavorosamente virtuoso que eres en realidad.”Vapuleado por el mundo judío, sin la mujer que ama y asfixiado por su fama (los momentos más divertidos son los que Nathan comparte con Alvin Pepler, protagonista de un escándalo de concursos televisivos amañados, sí, el Herb Stempel de la película Quiz Show que también funciona aquí como reflejo de lo ocurrido a Nathan, y supuesto admirador del autor que acaba acusándole de robarle para su novela todos sus traumas y chantajeándole por ello), Nathan se tiene que enfrentar a las trágicas repercusiones que su novela ha tenido en su familia.
Realmente es un tres estrellas y pico, pero me lo he pasado bastante bien con las patéticas peripecias del personaje, tanto como me ha conmovido su situación familiar, así que redondeo al alza.
October 1, 2025
Zuckerman Unbound (1981), the second in Roth’s Zuckerman Bound trilogy, is a sort of comic romp that turns gradually tragicomic, then certainly serious, in the end. Not Tolstoy, exactly, but maybe leaning to Chekhov, with some echoes of Kafka in there. The novel features the writer Zuckerman, 20 years after the events of The Ghost Writer, which had Zuckerman at 20, having published a few stories. At this point, Zuckerman is a famous writer, with several books published, and he doesn’t handle fame well. His family and the Jewish community upbraid him for “making fun” of Jewish folks through his most recent and celebrated novel, Carnovsky, a kind of sex romp (like Portnoy’s Complaint).
A central character in this book is Alvin Pepler, modeled on Herb Stempel, who was a central figure in the 1950’s Quiz Show scandals. A Zuckerman/Roth affair with a noted actress is featured, continuing a theme in Roth of the tortured relations between husband and wife, but the central focus of the book is the pain of the relations between children and parents, and the confused understanding many people have about the relationship between an author and his creations: How can you cause your mother and father so much pain writing about such a sex-crazed Jewish guy??! You’re bringing shame on our family and community and all Jews! In the end, facing criticism for what some people perceive as his “anti-Jewish” sentiments, Zuckerman breaks free from any sense of strict responsibility to his family and community and cultural tradition, choosing instead to be responsible to his art and the truth as he sees it, thus the title.
I liked this book quite a bit, but it isn’t in the same league as his best books, Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, nor even The Ghost Writer that I just read. Normally I would just rate a book of this caliber 4 stars, but compared to the others I’ve recently read from Roth, I’d have to say it is good, not great, for him, maybe 3.25. Not the place to start with him, for sure. Though Portnoy’s Complaint and this book would make a nice pairing.
A central character in this book is Alvin Pepler, modeled on Herb Stempel, who was a central figure in the 1950’s Quiz Show scandals. A Zuckerman/Roth affair with a noted actress is featured, continuing a theme in Roth of the tortured relations between husband and wife, but the central focus of the book is the pain of the relations between children and parents, and the confused understanding many people have about the relationship between an author and his creations: How can you cause your mother and father so much pain writing about such a sex-crazed Jewish guy??! You’re bringing shame on our family and community and all Jews! In the end, facing criticism for what some people perceive as his “anti-Jewish” sentiments, Zuckerman breaks free from any sense of strict responsibility to his family and community and cultural tradition, choosing instead to be responsible to his art and the truth as he sees it, thus the title.
I liked this book quite a bit, but it isn’t in the same league as his best books, Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral, The Plot Against America, nor even The Ghost Writer that I just read. Normally I would just rate a book of this caliber 4 stars, but compared to the others I’ve recently read from Roth, I’d have to say it is good, not great, for him, maybe 3.25. Not the place to start with him, for sure. Though Portnoy’s Complaint and this book would make a nice pairing.
May 25, 2018
While not as powerful as American Pastoral or as crazy as Portnoy's Complaint, the second installment in the Zuckerman Bound trilogy was a fun (and quick) read. Here Nathan Zuckerman has just published a very controversial novel (mirroring Roth's publication of the aforementioned Portnoy) and is dealing with the sudden benefits and drawbacks of fame: superficial affair with a starlet, psychotic stalkers, being told he is still living like a country bumpkin, his family's repression of their feelings of betrayal on how he portrayed them in the book...There is a lot packed into these quick-paced 220 pages. I enjoyed it very much especially the end. I am not sure I will finish this trilogy but rather hit the other masterpieces in the Roth oeuvre: Sabbath's Theatre, Plot Against America, Goodbye Columbus and Operation Shylock.
Note that when he refers to Carnovsky, he is referring to Portnoy's Complaint. Apparently, a movie was made from the book but I have not seen it yet.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
Note that when he refers to Carnovsky, he is referring to Portnoy's Complaint. Apparently, a movie was made from the book but I have not seen it yet.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
October 11, 2020
La storia di una lenta transizione del protagonista Zuckerman (eterno alter ego di roth stesso) dalla nevrosi indotta dal successo letterario (e dal conseguente, difficile rapporto con la celebrità) alla quiete del ritrovarsi semplice uomo, responsabile solo verso se stesso, allorché un evento doloroso e inatteso giunge a scuotere la sua coscienza e a concedere un nuovo, rasserenante equilibrio.
January 10, 2020
Caotico, eccessivo, disordinato: contiene i temi ricorrenti della scrittura di Philip Roth, esposti senza una trama precisa, in modo disordinato, frettoloso. Di sicuro non è il primo libro da cui partire per conoscere lo scrittore Philip Roth, e sono contenta di aver letto capolavori prima di questo libro.
February 7, 2017
So good. I will have to think more about this one. I loved parts and really liked other parts, but I also know later Roth is nearly perfect, so how do I give this one five stars? Ah, oh well, I'll cross that Carnovsky bridge tomorrow.
March 29, 2023
Mostly thoroughly enjoyed settling down with this, especially the scenes with Caesara O’Shea, a sort of Irish version of Brigitte Bardot or maybe Ava Gardner, who the author apparently once knew? A famous movie star who takes a fancy to Nathan and asks him to show her where all the writers hang out. To which Nathan responds The New York Public Library? (The loudest LOL in a book with plentiful silent amusement/smiles and maybe three audible laughs.) Alvin Pepler, with his photographic memory and former game show glory, who relieves himself on Nathan’s handkerchief, foreshadowing Sabbath on a grave a few books later, is an entertaining character. And the whole conceit of persecution anxiety/assassination fears works well, considering the era it describes post-RFK/MLK.
The last stretch corresponded with a breakout section to Miami for Nathan’s father’s death and funeral, which seemed grafted on or appeared as though events in Roth’s contemporary late-‘70s life compelled this turn in his fictional account of his life a dozen years earlier when Portnoy/Carnovsky took off. I see how the ending with his brother and the armed-guard limo ride through transformed Newark syncs and closes the book down but for what’s essentially a comedy it has the progression of tragedy (starts high, ends low). As in the end of The Facts, written around the same period, there’s a relentless quality to the self-analytical questioning, the hocking, this time from Nathan’s brother, although it doesn’t really feel like anyone other than the author animating the character to critique the alter-ego.
But overall seems to demonstrate exactly why Roth has the reputation he has — highly regarded for humor, energetic language, characterization, and cultural insight, albeit with reservations maybe thanks to a sort of automatic excessive relentless lack of restraint that makes it what it is but also detracts from it at the same time?
Generally enjoying, however, my recent immersion in the lesser -- or at least, for me, the previously unread -- Roth.
The last stretch corresponded with a breakout section to Miami for Nathan’s father’s death and funeral, which seemed grafted on or appeared as though events in Roth’s contemporary late-‘70s life compelled this turn in his fictional account of his life a dozen years earlier when Portnoy/Carnovsky took off. I see how the ending with his brother and the armed-guard limo ride through transformed Newark syncs and closes the book down but for what’s essentially a comedy it has the progression of tragedy (starts high, ends low). As in the end of The Facts, written around the same period, there’s a relentless quality to the self-analytical questioning, the hocking, this time from Nathan’s brother, although it doesn’t really feel like anyone other than the author animating the character to critique the alter-ego.
But overall seems to demonstrate exactly why Roth has the reputation he has — highly regarded for humor, energetic language, characterization, and cultural insight, albeit with reservations maybe thanks to a sort of automatic excessive relentless lack of restraint that makes it what it is but also detracts from it at the same time?
Generally enjoying, however, my recent immersion in the lesser -- or at least, for me, the previously unread -- Roth.
August 2, 2020
A Wake-up call for Writers Seeking Fame
Every writer aspiring for fame and fortune would be advised to read this book. It will certainly cool any wannabe’s ardour.
Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter ego, has just vaulted into the millionaire ranks with the success of his fourth novel Carnovsky, a proxy for Roth’s own Portnoy’s Complaint. The problem is that Nathan doesn’t know how to live like a millionaire: he still visits the neighbourhood sandwich shop, travels on the subway and is not very much into socializing. He has just left his third wife because he tires of self contained women and needs to find his freedom (conversely, his first two wives were needy women whom he needed to escape from too). The additional problem is that he is now considered a traitor by the Jews of Newark for having exposed all their quirks in his novel. He feels he is being followed, that the perpetrators mean him and his family bodily harm; how much of this is paranoia vs. reality is revealed as the book unfolds.
Central to his paranoia is a character called Al Peppler who accosts Nathan on the street and sticks with him like a leech. Peppler knows everything about Nathan, and is a two-time war vet who was making it big on a TV game show when he was cut down to size due to his Jewishness, he claims. Peppler is now courting a music producer to get his exposé novel on the state of America converted into a Broadway musical, and wants Nathan’s opinion and approval. When Nathan shies away, he gets threatening phone calls from people demanding ransom money for a kidnap yet to happen on his mother; Nathan wonders whether the voice is that of Peppler.
Nathan’s agent seems to know the answers to this condition, as he has managed many artists through their breakout phase with its attendant psychoses, and tries to get Nathan to scale up: date a Hollywood actress, be seen in society circles, buy a car, upgrade his wardrobe, get a bodyguard. Nathan tries to comply but he is stuck in who he really is, and with the guilt that perhaps he did let his people down with his breakout novel.
The novel suddenly dives into the family as Zuckerman Sr., Nathan’s father, a veteran sufferer of strokes, suffers a fatal coronary. Zuckerman Sr. was a career chiropodist who was also a great letter writer, writing copiously to presidents and vice presidents to express his views on Israel, the Vietnam war and other hot topics of the time. Family members gather around the dying man’s bed in Florida and the dysfunction within this ostensibly stolid family starts to emerge: Nathan’s inability to talk anything meaningful with his father other than the Big Bang theory; reticent dentist brother Harry who followed the family expectation of duty to family over his desire to become an actor and consequently is having multiple affairs with patients and staff while remaining dutifully married to his first and only wife; Nathan’s mother who is reeling from the shock of caring for an overbearing husband over a lifetime and now has to deal with this final mile. Nathan seems to be the only one who has soared free of the family yoke, but when his father’s last word to him is “Bastard,” he agonizes whether he has heard right. Any other word but the dreaded B word would be okay, for that word would reduce everything he has aspired to and achieved into nothing. When Harry finally bursts out and corroborates what the father had said, adding that Nathan is a “heartless and callous bastard” and a “destroyer of Jews” the grim returns of Carnovsky are clear.
It appears that Roth needed to write this book to show the aftermath of his success as a writer. And the launching of a bestseller, especially one that exposes weak points in a community, is not a walk to the bank but the exchange of one set of traumas for another. Nathan Zuckerman remained a good alternative for Roth during his career as a writer, a persona to be assumed after a major work in his ouevre was published so that he could rationalize its outcome not only from the monetary but from the emotional, psychological and spiritual levels. This is a good book for those who are familiar with Roth’s work, and in particular for those who have read Portnoy’s Complaint and other Zuckerman novels.
Every writer aspiring for fame and fortune would be advised to read this book. It will certainly cool any wannabe’s ardour.
Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter ego, has just vaulted into the millionaire ranks with the success of his fourth novel Carnovsky, a proxy for Roth’s own Portnoy’s Complaint. The problem is that Nathan doesn’t know how to live like a millionaire: he still visits the neighbourhood sandwich shop, travels on the subway and is not very much into socializing. He has just left his third wife because he tires of self contained women and needs to find his freedom (conversely, his first two wives were needy women whom he needed to escape from too). The additional problem is that he is now considered a traitor by the Jews of Newark for having exposed all their quirks in his novel. He feels he is being followed, that the perpetrators mean him and his family bodily harm; how much of this is paranoia vs. reality is revealed as the book unfolds.
Central to his paranoia is a character called Al Peppler who accosts Nathan on the street and sticks with him like a leech. Peppler knows everything about Nathan, and is a two-time war vet who was making it big on a TV game show when he was cut down to size due to his Jewishness, he claims. Peppler is now courting a music producer to get his exposé novel on the state of America converted into a Broadway musical, and wants Nathan’s opinion and approval. When Nathan shies away, he gets threatening phone calls from people demanding ransom money for a kidnap yet to happen on his mother; Nathan wonders whether the voice is that of Peppler.
Nathan’s agent seems to know the answers to this condition, as he has managed many artists through their breakout phase with its attendant psychoses, and tries to get Nathan to scale up: date a Hollywood actress, be seen in society circles, buy a car, upgrade his wardrobe, get a bodyguard. Nathan tries to comply but he is stuck in who he really is, and with the guilt that perhaps he did let his people down with his breakout novel.
The novel suddenly dives into the family as Zuckerman Sr., Nathan’s father, a veteran sufferer of strokes, suffers a fatal coronary. Zuckerman Sr. was a career chiropodist who was also a great letter writer, writing copiously to presidents and vice presidents to express his views on Israel, the Vietnam war and other hot topics of the time. Family members gather around the dying man’s bed in Florida and the dysfunction within this ostensibly stolid family starts to emerge: Nathan’s inability to talk anything meaningful with his father other than the Big Bang theory; reticent dentist brother Harry who followed the family expectation of duty to family over his desire to become an actor and consequently is having multiple affairs with patients and staff while remaining dutifully married to his first and only wife; Nathan’s mother who is reeling from the shock of caring for an overbearing husband over a lifetime and now has to deal with this final mile. Nathan seems to be the only one who has soared free of the family yoke, but when his father’s last word to him is “Bastard,” he agonizes whether he has heard right. Any other word but the dreaded B word would be okay, for that word would reduce everything he has aspired to and achieved into nothing. When Harry finally bursts out and corroborates what the father had said, adding that Nathan is a “heartless and callous bastard” and a “destroyer of Jews” the grim returns of Carnovsky are clear.
It appears that Roth needed to write this book to show the aftermath of his success as a writer. And the launching of a bestseller, especially one that exposes weak points in a community, is not a walk to the bank but the exchange of one set of traumas for another. Nathan Zuckerman remained a good alternative for Roth during his career as a writer, a persona to be assumed after a major work in his ouevre was published so that he could rationalize its outcome not only from the monetary but from the emotional, psychological and spiritual levels. This is a good book for those who are familiar with Roth’s work, and in particular for those who have read Portnoy’s Complaint and other Zuckerman novels.
June 2, 2018
È il primo libro di Roth che leggo dopo la sua morte e questa cosa un po' mi ha fatto effetto. Pubblicato nel 1981, è la continuazione delle vicende (iniziate nel romanzo "Lo scrittore fantasma") che coinvolgono lo scrittore Nathan Zuckerman che adesso, inaspettatamente, arriva al grande successo godendone e subendone conseguenze e contraccolpi (proprio come successe allo stesso Roth dopo la pubblicazione di "Lamento di Portnoy"). Il protagonista deve tenere a bada, durante tutto il romanzo, Alvin Pepler, un personaggio dispotico, folle, molesto, ansiogeno e maniacale che si trasforma da iniziale fan, per quanto invadente, a stalker pretenzioso e furioso. Le incursioni di Pepler nel racconto sono condotte da Roth con grande e viva ironia e quasi oscurano il povero Zuckerman, qui sottotono. Oltre a gestire media, giornalisti, fan e Pepler, Nathan deve fare i conti con un padre che biasima il suo lavoro: fattosi leggere il romanzo del figlio da un 'solerte' amico, ha un infarto. L'epilogo di questo evento, che coincide con il finale del libro e con la sua parte migliore, è molto duro e drammatico; i colpi definitivi, strazianti e più crudeli, Nathan li riceve proprio dalla sua famiglia, dal padre e dal fratello, e Roth trasforma in poche righe, con maestria una commedia in una tragedia esattamente come succede nella vita.
Nonostante i problemi causati dalle interpretazioni soggettive e negative di lettori e critica, la grande vittoria di Zuckerman è l'aver deciso di scrivere e pubblicare un'opera che avrebbe creato disappunto e sdegno, la sua conquista è la libertà.
Ho trovato interessante e stimolante il parallelismo tra le aspettative deluse, l'irrisione da parte della vita, il giudizio della gente (lettori da una parte e spettatori dall'altra) nella vicenda di Zuckerman e in quella di Caesara O'Shea, attrice amica del protagonista (qualcuno vede in lei la Kennedy con cui Roth ebbe una breve frequentazione) delusa dall'esito frivolo della sua fama, rassegnata, soccombente.
Roth si conferma maestro dei dialoghi, precisi, pungenti, ritmati e ci regala un romanzo acuto, ironico, fluido, vivacizzato da continui salti temporali e reso profondo dai temi della vita.
Zuckerman scatenato
Philip Roth
Traduzione: Vincenzo Mantovani
Editore: Einaudi
Pag: 182
Voto: 4/5
Nonostante i problemi causati dalle interpretazioni soggettive e negative di lettori e critica, la grande vittoria di Zuckerman è l'aver deciso di scrivere e pubblicare un'opera che avrebbe creato disappunto e sdegno, la sua conquista è la libertà.
Ho trovato interessante e stimolante il parallelismo tra le aspettative deluse, l'irrisione da parte della vita, il giudizio della gente (lettori da una parte e spettatori dall'altra) nella vicenda di Zuckerman e in quella di Caesara O'Shea, attrice amica del protagonista (qualcuno vede in lei la Kennedy con cui Roth ebbe una breve frequentazione) delusa dall'esito frivolo della sua fama, rassegnata, soccombente.
Roth si conferma maestro dei dialoghi, precisi, pungenti, ritmati e ci regala un romanzo acuto, ironico, fluido, vivacizzato da continui salti temporali e reso profondo dai temi della vita.
Zuckerman scatenato
Philip Roth
Traduzione: Vincenzo Mantovani
Editore: Einaudi
Pag: 182
Voto: 4/5
October 5, 2023
A nice stroll through the mind of the now famous Nathan Zuckerman. I read the first book in this series, The Ghost Writer, over two years ago. The voice of Roth as Zuckerman is so distinct that you barely need to reacquaint yourself with your surroundings. I’m also pretty sure that Roth himself would have experienced similar situations to what Zuckerman goes through here – being recognized in public when he doesn’t want to be, but he is not certain that he doesn’t want to be, so here he is, dealing with what is. Trying to navigate the sex life of a famous author in the middle of the 20th Century in America. Dealing with the paranoia of fame, but also thinking about the disappointment of his Jewish community in Newark. Not as good as the first book, but still decent.
February 7, 2019
Hilarious and still eminently readable after more than 35 years. ...
April 7, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
As regular readers know, for a long time I've carried a pretty big chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Postmodernist era of literature, which I'm defining here as the period between Kennedy's death in 1963 and September 11th; I suppose it's a natural reaction for any underground artist, in fact, to rebel against the conventional wisdom they were raised on, to yearn for something new and almost diametrically opposite in the arts than what has become the safe status quo. But now that I'm a critic instead of a creative, and especially now that I'm writing the CCLaP 100 essay series (which is as much about examining the grand tapestry of literary history as it is about the individual books themselves), I now find it important to try to understand Postmodernism in a more complex way, to acknowledge not just its limitations but also its strengths, and what led its precepts into becoming the basis for a major movement in the first place. And there's not much of a better way to do this, I thought, than to read the remarkable nine-book series that Philip Roth has written over the decades on this subject, all of them featuring his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman; because not only is Roth considered one of the greatest writers of the Postmodernist period, but his Zuckerman books are an autobiographical look at his life during the Postmodernist years, from his college days right at the start of the era to his elderly years of our current times, a rare opportunity to examine an entire period of history through the related three-act narrative stories of someone who lived through it all, and who wrote most of the tales in nearly real time to when they were actually happening.
Last year I got a chance to review the first Zuckerman book, 1979's The Ghost Writer, which I encourage you to read first if you haven't already; taking place exactly twenty years previously, it is like I said a look at Roth's early twenties, when he was first breaking into the east-coast literary scene (i.e. getting his first stories published in magazines like The New Yorker), told through the filter of a dinner one night with a Bernard-Malamud- or Saul-Bellow-type mentor, a fellow Jew but a little older and a lot more famous, and who has a complicated relationship with his public reputation as a groundbreaking author of contemporary Jewish literature. (And in fact, now that I've read Bellow's Pulitzer-winning Humboldt's Gift, published just four years before The Ghost Writer, I've come to understand just what an homage Roth's book is to his, both of them laid-back looks at American intellectualism in the post-war period, and what exact role Jews had in it.) Today's book, then, Zuckerman Unbound, although written only two years after The Ghost Writer, skips ahead an entire decade in its setting: it's now 1971, just a year or two since Zuckerman's novel Carnovsky has become a national sensation, a naughty but witty "smart person's sex romp" published at the exact right moment of the countercultural revolution, and which has thrust Zuckerman into the role of spokesman for an entire generation of young, with-it Jews.
And for those who don't know, this is indeed exactly what happened in Roth's real life too -- that after establishing himself at the tail-end of Modernism with a series of stories written in the formal style of such Realists as Henry James, his filthy but funny Portnoy's Complaint from 1969 became a true highlight of the entire countercultural movement, and helped re-define young urban Jews into nebbish yet undeniable sex symbols of a new age (and this in the same years that Woody Allen was doing the same thing in the movie industry). It's something I talk about in detail during my write-up of the first Zuckerman book, but bears repeating, of just how successful such '60s and '70s figures as Roth, Allen, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks and others were at "normalizing" the ins-and-outs of Jewish life in the eyes of their mostly Christian mainstream audiences, so much so that we often forget now just how controversial such a thing was back then. As Roth so expertly reminds us in these books, for a long time after World War Two, Jews were of profoundly different minds regarding just how they should present themselves to society in the first place; after all, before the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was a semi-accepted part of life nearly across the planet, with it only being the pure brutality of the concentration camps that finally snapped so many Westerners out of their own anti-Jewish attitudes. Many Jews during the Mid-Century Modernist period thought that they should take advantage of this newfound collective goodwill, that they should as much as possible simply not remind people that Jews even exist, and the few times they do to make sure it's some example of noble selflessness like Anne Frank, the dead diary-writing teen who single-handedly had more to do with defining Judaism in the '50s and '60s than any other individual on the planet.
It was Roth and other young hip Jews of the countercultural period who changed all this, who dared to commit the unspeakable sin of portraying their fellow Jews as actual complex human beings, flaws and tics and all, who dared to talk about such exclusively Jewish subjects in their work as seder and sitting shiva, demanding that mainstream America get caught up to them, instead of them constantly having to dumb down their lives to a lily-white Christian audience. And like I said, although these artists of the Postmodernist period did such a good job at this that we barely even question such a thing anymore, to the generation of Jews who survived the Holocaust this was seen as the ultimate in self-hating behavior, to air their community's dirty laundry to a group of misunderstanding Caucasians who just thirty years ago had been slaughtering their people by the millions, and in these older Jews' minds were just itching for an excuse to start doing so again.
Or to cite an excellent example from the book itself, look at the consternation that is caused by including a spindly loser Jew as a character (based believe it or not on tainted quiz-show fallen hero Herb Stempel, who for a time in the '50s was the most famous living Jew in the entire United States), personally repulsive to most and always with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory whenever something doesn't go his way...or in other words, Uncle Leo from Seinfeld. ("HELLLLOOO, Jerry!") It's remarkable, I think, that the mention of a character type that now elicits fond and knowing laughter was just forty years ago seen by most Jews as the height of race-sabotaging behavior; and that is the power of Postmodernism, that writers like Roth and others really were able to bring about a world where Seinfeld is now one of the most beloved television shows in history, a world where Yiddish terms now pepper the everyday vernacular of most Christians, and where nearly every suburban grocery store now has an entire aisle just for various ethnic speciality foods from around the world. And that like I said is the whole reason I'm reading the Zuckerman books in the first place, to understand all the remarkable things that the Postmodernists actually accomplished, instead of just always concentrating on the endless snotty irony and pop-culture worship that became unfortunate side-effects of the age.
Ultimately I can give this book no better of a compliment than to state the following, that reading this slyly funny, slow-moving character-based story made me understand what it must've been like to be a middle-aged intellectual in the early '80s -- you know, living in a rehabbed attic loft in Minneapolis or Denver, watching The Big Chill and thirtysomething, reading insightful novels about the human condition whose covers are rendered in big looping script typefaces, having debates at dinner parties over the continued relevance of Norman Mailer. Reading Zuckerman Unbound felt exactly like this, like getting literally transported back to this era, and it's easy to see why it's arguably the best and certainly one of the most popular of all the books in the entire Zuckerman series. It makes me glad that I took on this project in the first place, and I'm now looking highly forward to tackling the next book in the series, 1983's The Anatomy Lesson.
As regular readers know, for a long time I've carried a pretty big chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Postmodernist era of literature, which I'm defining here as the period between Kennedy's death in 1963 and September 11th; I suppose it's a natural reaction for any underground artist, in fact, to rebel against the conventional wisdom they were raised on, to yearn for something new and almost diametrically opposite in the arts than what has become the safe status quo. But now that I'm a critic instead of a creative, and especially now that I'm writing the CCLaP 100 essay series (which is as much about examining the grand tapestry of literary history as it is about the individual books themselves), I now find it important to try to understand Postmodernism in a more complex way, to acknowledge not just its limitations but also its strengths, and what led its precepts into becoming the basis for a major movement in the first place. And there's not much of a better way to do this, I thought, than to read the remarkable nine-book series that Philip Roth has written over the decades on this subject, all of them featuring his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman; because not only is Roth considered one of the greatest writers of the Postmodernist period, but his Zuckerman books are an autobiographical look at his life during the Postmodernist years, from his college days right at the start of the era to his elderly years of our current times, a rare opportunity to examine an entire period of history through the related three-act narrative stories of someone who lived through it all, and who wrote most of the tales in nearly real time to when they were actually happening.
Last year I got a chance to review the first Zuckerman book, 1979's The Ghost Writer, which I encourage you to read first if you haven't already; taking place exactly twenty years previously, it is like I said a look at Roth's early twenties, when he was first breaking into the east-coast literary scene (i.e. getting his first stories published in magazines like The New Yorker), told through the filter of a dinner one night with a Bernard-Malamud- or Saul-Bellow-type mentor, a fellow Jew but a little older and a lot more famous, and who has a complicated relationship with his public reputation as a groundbreaking author of contemporary Jewish literature. (And in fact, now that I've read Bellow's Pulitzer-winning Humboldt's Gift, published just four years before The Ghost Writer, I've come to understand just what an homage Roth's book is to his, both of them laid-back looks at American intellectualism in the post-war period, and what exact role Jews had in it.) Today's book, then, Zuckerman Unbound, although written only two years after The Ghost Writer, skips ahead an entire decade in its setting: it's now 1971, just a year or two since Zuckerman's novel Carnovsky has become a national sensation, a naughty but witty "smart person's sex romp" published at the exact right moment of the countercultural revolution, and which has thrust Zuckerman into the role of spokesman for an entire generation of young, with-it Jews.
And for those who don't know, this is indeed exactly what happened in Roth's real life too -- that after establishing himself at the tail-end of Modernism with a series of stories written in the formal style of such Realists as Henry James, his filthy but funny Portnoy's Complaint from 1969 became a true highlight of the entire countercultural movement, and helped re-define young urban Jews into nebbish yet undeniable sex symbols of a new age (and this in the same years that Woody Allen was doing the same thing in the movie industry). It's something I talk about in detail during my write-up of the first Zuckerman book, but bears repeating, of just how successful such '60s and '70s figures as Roth, Allen, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks and others were at "normalizing" the ins-and-outs of Jewish life in the eyes of their mostly Christian mainstream audiences, so much so that we often forget now just how controversial such a thing was back then. As Roth so expertly reminds us in these books, for a long time after World War Two, Jews were of profoundly different minds regarding just how they should present themselves to society in the first place; after all, before the Holocaust, anti-Semitism was a semi-accepted part of life nearly across the planet, with it only being the pure brutality of the concentration camps that finally snapped so many Westerners out of their own anti-Jewish attitudes. Many Jews during the Mid-Century Modernist period thought that they should take advantage of this newfound collective goodwill, that they should as much as possible simply not remind people that Jews even exist, and the few times they do to make sure it's some example of noble selflessness like Anne Frank, the dead diary-writing teen who single-handedly had more to do with defining Judaism in the '50s and '60s than any other individual on the planet.
It was Roth and other young hip Jews of the countercultural period who changed all this, who dared to commit the unspeakable sin of portraying their fellow Jews as actual complex human beings, flaws and tics and all, who dared to talk about such exclusively Jewish subjects in their work as seder and sitting shiva, demanding that mainstream America get caught up to them, instead of them constantly having to dumb down their lives to a lily-white Christian audience. And like I said, although these artists of the Postmodernist period did such a good job at this that we barely even question such a thing anymore, to the generation of Jews who survived the Holocaust this was seen as the ultimate in self-hating behavior, to air their community's dirty laundry to a group of misunderstanding Caucasians who just thirty years ago had been slaughtering their people by the millions, and in these older Jews' minds were just itching for an excuse to start doing so again.
Or to cite an excellent example from the book itself, look at the consternation that is caused by including a spindly loser Jew as a character (based believe it or not on tainted quiz-show fallen hero Herb Stempel, who for a time in the '50s was the most famous living Jew in the entire United States), personally repulsive to most and always with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory whenever something doesn't go his way...or in other words, Uncle Leo from Seinfeld. ("HELLLLOOO, Jerry!") It's remarkable, I think, that the mention of a character type that now elicits fond and knowing laughter was just forty years ago seen by most Jews as the height of race-sabotaging behavior; and that is the power of Postmodernism, that writers like Roth and others really were able to bring about a world where Seinfeld is now one of the most beloved television shows in history, a world where Yiddish terms now pepper the everyday vernacular of most Christians, and where nearly every suburban grocery store now has an entire aisle just for various ethnic speciality foods from around the world. And that like I said is the whole reason I'm reading the Zuckerman books in the first place, to understand all the remarkable things that the Postmodernists actually accomplished, instead of just always concentrating on the endless snotty irony and pop-culture worship that became unfortunate side-effects of the age.
Ultimately I can give this book no better of a compliment than to state the following, that reading this slyly funny, slow-moving character-based story made me understand what it must've been like to be a middle-aged intellectual in the early '80s -- you know, living in a rehabbed attic loft in Minneapolis or Denver, watching The Big Chill and thirtysomething, reading insightful novels about the human condition whose covers are rendered in big looping script typefaces, having debates at dinner parties over the continued relevance of Norman Mailer. Reading Zuckerman Unbound felt exactly like this, like getting literally transported back to this era, and it's easy to see why it's arguably the best and certainly one of the most popular of all the books in the entire Zuckerman series. It makes me glad that I took on this project in the first place, and I'm now looking highly forward to tackling the next book in the series, 1983's The Anatomy Lesson.
June 10, 2018
“Sai cosa disse Cechov, da grande, della sua giovinezza? Disse che aveva dovuto spremersi il servo dall’anima, goccia dopo goccia. Forse quello che tu dovresti cominciare a spremerti dall’anima è il figlio obbediente”.
Il secondo libro con Zuckerman protagonista vede Nathan al culmine della fama. Ha scritto un libro scandaloso, “Carnovsky”e dalla gente viene unanimemente identificato col suo protagonista. Visto mentre prova un letto per valutarne l’acquisto, viene immaginato acrobata erotico da osservatori sconosciuti. Un ex vincitore di quiz di Newark, in cerca di riscatto, lo aggancia per strada e pretende da lui attenzione illimitata e impossibile risarcimento.
Il prezzo della fama è alto (Lonoff, nel primo libro, lo aveva avvertito); significa anche essere preda di fanatici e mitomani, perseguitato dai detrattori, adulato dagli adulatori, guardato con sospetto dai familiari.
Il tema collaterale è proprio questo: il sacrificio degli affetti più cari è il prezzo dello scatenarsi, ovvero del liberarsi dalle catene del perbenismo, dell’educazione, dell’obbedienza ai valori trasmessi dalla tradizione (l’ebraismo, con tutte le connotazioni drammatiche che conosciamo), e via dicendo. Ciò equivale a praticare un rispetto più profondo e più alto, quello della propria vocazione. Il prezzo però non è mai trattabile.
A Zuckerman costa la rabbia del padre sul letto di morte (e come non ricordare lo schiaffo a Zeno Cosini...), la tacita sofferenza della madre, il ripudio esplicito del fratello minore (bravo ragazzo che sopporta le pene del disamore per amore del sacro vincolo coniugale).
Il ritorno nei luoghi dove Nathan aveva trascorso la sua infanzia felice è un altro incontro con la distruzione: il quartiere è radicalmente trasformato, intorno a quella che era stata la sua casa crescono le erbacce. Un nero che abita da quelle parti gli chiede chi è.
Esemplare la risposta: “-Nessuno,-rispose Zuckerman, e la cosa finì lì. Non sei più il figlio di tuo padre, non sei più il marito di una brava donna, non sei più il fratello di tuo fratello, e non vieni più da nessun posto.”
Il secondo libro con Zuckerman protagonista vede Nathan al culmine della fama. Ha scritto un libro scandaloso, “Carnovsky”e dalla gente viene unanimemente identificato col suo protagonista. Visto mentre prova un letto per valutarne l’acquisto, viene immaginato acrobata erotico da osservatori sconosciuti. Un ex vincitore di quiz di Newark, in cerca di riscatto, lo aggancia per strada e pretende da lui attenzione illimitata e impossibile risarcimento.
Il prezzo della fama è alto (Lonoff, nel primo libro, lo aveva avvertito); significa anche essere preda di fanatici e mitomani, perseguitato dai detrattori, adulato dagli adulatori, guardato con sospetto dai familiari.
Il tema collaterale è proprio questo: il sacrificio degli affetti più cari è il prezzo dello scatenarsi, ovvero del liberarsi dalle catene del perbenismo, dell’educazione, dell’obbedienza ai valori trasmessi dalla tradizione (l’ebraismo, con tutte le connotazioni drammatiche che conosciamo), e via dicendo. Ciò equivale a praticare un rispetto più profondo e più alto, quello della propria vocazione. Il prezzo però non è mai trattabile.
A Zuckerman costa la rabbia del padre sul letto di morte (e come non ricordare lo schiaffo a Zeno Cosini...), la tacita sofferenza della madre, il ripudio esplicito del fratello minore (bravo ragazzo che sopporta le pene del disamore per amore del sacro vincolo coniugale).
Il ritorno nei luoghi dove Nathan aveva trascorso la sua infanzia felice è un altro incontro con la distruzione: il quartiere è radicalmente trasformato, intorno a quella che era stata la sua casa crescono le erbacce. Un nero che abita da quelle parti gli chiede chi è.
Esemplare la risposta: “-Nessuno,-rispose Zuckerman, e la cosa finì lì. Non sei più il figlio di tuo padre, non sei più il marito di una brava donna, non sei più il fratello di tuo fratello, e non vieni più da nessun posto.”
March 14, 2026
Nu la fel de “consistent” ca alte romane de-ale lui Roth. Pe alocuri, ar putea să-ți pară o schiță de piesă de teatru în câteva acte. Și nu-i din cauza transpunerii în românește - de data asta.
Dar tot rămâne să notez aici vigilența comică a autorului meu favorit, hiperatenția la detalii ce îi folosesc să-și nimicească cu sarcasm personajele, stilul său frust și tăios, duioșia greu mascată sub o avalanșă de criticism față de familie, nostalgia inhibată sub bățoșenie față de locurile și întâmplările copilăriei.
PS: uit să menționez traducerea = nu mi-a plăcut. Nu pot uita cum doamna cu tradusul mi-a ruinat lectura la Teatrul lui Sabbath.
Dar tot rămâne să notez aici vigilența comică a autorului meu favorit, hiperatenția la detalii ce îi folosesc să-și nimicească cu sarcasm personajele, stilul său frust și tăios, duioșia greu mascată sub o avalanșă de criticism față de familie, nostalgia inhibată sub bățoșenie față de locurile și întâmplările copilăriei.
PS: uit să menționez traducerea = nu mi-a plăcut. Nu pot uita cum doamna cu tradusul mi-a ruinat lectura la Teatrul lui Sabbath.
May 27, 2026
Siempre he desconfiado un poco de la fantasía del escritor famoso. Suena bien desde lejos: entrevistas, lectores, una mesa reservada en algún restaurante con servilletas de tela. Luego llega Roth y te recuerda que la fama también puede parecerse a una citación judicial con club de fans.
Hay escritores que sueñan con ella como quien sueña con una casa junto al mar. Philip Roth, que era bastante menos ingenuo y bastante más peligroso, la imaginó como lo que probablemente es para un novelista: una casa junto al mar, sí, pero con el teléfono sonando a las tres de la mañana, un desconocido en la acera, tu familia leyéndote como si fueras una denuncia penal y medio país convencido de que sabe quién eres porque ha confundido tu libro con tu ficha médica. Roth entiende enseguida la broma: quizá el peor castigo por escribir un libro escandaloso no sea que lo prohíban, sino que lo lea todo el mundo y luego te pida explicaciones.
La liberación de Zuckerman empieza ahí, en ese momento venenoso en que Nathan Zuckerman ha conseguido lo que tantos escritores ambicionan hasta que les ocurre: un éxito descomunal. Su novela Carnovsky lo ha convertido en una celebridad literaria, en un escándalo doméstico, en un símbolo obsceno para unos y en una especie de profeta del descaro para otros. Lo que viene después tiene algo más divertido y más cruel que una simple caída: la comprobación de que el éxito no te libera de ti mismo, te entrega más bien a una fama pegajosa, ridícula y un poco sórdida, de esas que convierten cada lector en un fiscal aficionado. Solo te da más público para presenciar el desastre.
Roth está aquí en uno de sus territorios más fértiles: el escritor devorado por su propia criatura. Zuckerman ha escrito un libro, pero el libro ha empezado a escribirle la vida. Lo perverso es que Carnovsky no suplanta a Zuckerman: lo simplifica. Lo convierte en una versión más manejable, más obscena y más rentable de sí mismo. Los lectores lo acosan, los periodistas lo reducen a titular, los admiradores lo malinterpretan con entusiasmo, los ofendidos lo tratan como si hubiera cometido un delito de sangre y la familia, que en Roth siempre parece venir con una factura moral grapada al pecho, no distingue entre ficción, traición y ajuste de cuentas. Uno lee la novela y piensa: claro, esto va sobre la celebridad literaria. Luego sigue leyendo y se da cuenta de que Roth, como de costumbre, ha metido varias bombas en el mismo paquete. La fama asoma primero, claro. Debajo vienen la culpa, la identidad judía, la obscenidad como forma de sinceridad, la imposibilidad de escribir sobre los tuyos sin hacerles daño y esa pregunta tan cabrona: ¿cuánto derecho tiene un escritor a convertir la vida en material?
Roth trabaja aquí a pleno volumen —literal—. La novela está llena de voces que empujan, reclaman, insultan, seducen, exageran, deforman. Es teatro con metrónomo roto. Todo el mundo quiere apropiarse de Zuckerman. Su familia quiere recordarle de dónde viene. Los lectores quieren usarlo como espejo, como enemigo o como juguete sexual con ISBN.
Y ahí es donde aparece Alvin Pepler, ese personaje grotesco y tristísimo, una de esas criaturas secundarias que en Roth entran haciendo ruido y acaban dejando una mancha más profunda de lo previsto. En manos de otro escritor habría quedado como una caricatura del resentido, del tipo que cree que el mundo le debe una reparación y que ha encontrado en el escritor famoso un recipiente perfecto para verter su desgracia. Roth, que podía ser despiadado sin necesidad de ponerse solemne, lo lleva hacia algo más perturbador: un hombre ridículo, sí, pero ridículo de una manera demasiado humana. Trae consigo el eco de esos viejos escándalos televisivos americanos en los que el fracaso también quería sus quince minutos de audiencia. Ese es el veneno. Nos reímos de él hasta que empezamos a reconocer, en miniatura, esa necesidad tan nuestra de culpar a alguien con nombre y apellidos de que la vida no haya salido como prometía el folleto.
Zuckerman, por su parte, trae de fábrica muy poca madera de mártir literario. Y menos mal. Roth lo deja a la intemperie, sin esa pátina noble del artista incomprendido. Nathan es brillante, narcisista, lúcido, cobarde cuando toca, feroz cuando conviene y a ratos insoportable con bastante mérito propio. Tiene esa mezcla rothiana de inteligencia y autoboicot que hace que uno quiera darle la razón y zarandearlo en el mismo párrafo. En el ring verbal de Roth, Zuckerman suele parecer el boxeador que se tropieza con las cuerdas antes de lanzar un golpe decente. Su problema no es que lo entiendan mal; es que a veces lo entienden demasiado bien, aunque por los motivos equivocados. Ha abierto una puerta con su novela y ahora se escandaliza un poco al descubrir que por ahí entra gente. Gente con heridas, deseos, facturas familiares, fantasías sucias y ganas de convertir al autor en personaje público, en confesionario ambulante o en saco de boxeo.
La prosa de Roth en esta novela tiene esa velocidad de tren sin frenos que parece improvisada hasta que uno mira bien y ve la arquitectura. Todo se mueve con una energía nerviosa, casi cómica, pero la comicidad viene siempre con algo de lastre. Roth tiene esa habilidad para hacer que una escena parezca una comedia de costumbres judía, con teléfonos, reproches y frases que entran por la ventana, y de pronto dejarte con una sensación de daño real en la boca. El humor aquí no suaviza la culpa: la hace más punzante. Porque cuando Roth es gracioso de verdad, y aquí lo es muchas veces, no está poniendo un cojín debajo de la caída. Está haciendo que la caída suene mejor.
También hay algo muy inteligente en la manera en que la novela se pega a la propia figura de Roth y juega con el equívoco autobiográfico. Claro que Zuckerman se parece a Roth —vamos, que se le ve el carné de identidad desde la otra acera—, claro que Carnovsky remite de manera transparente al terremoto de El lamento de Portnoy, claro que el lector puede entretenerse trazando correspondencias entre autor y personaje. Pero quedarse ahí sería leer a Roth con unas gafas mal graduadas. Esa manía de descubrir qué parte “pasó de verdad” pertenece a una obsesión de portera metafísica que tanto daño ha hecho a la lectura de ficción. Porque aquí Roth hace algo bastante más jugoso: convierte esa confusión en materia narrativa. Prefiere meternos dentro de esa distancia entre autor y personaje y dejarnos oír cómo cruje.
Y cruje mucho, sobre todo cuando aparece la familia. En Roth, la familia tiene más de central eléctrica con cables pelados que de refugio. La relación de Zuckerman con sus padres y con su hermano contiene algunas de las páginas más dolorosas del libro porque ahí la fama pierde cualquier glamour y se vuelve algo casi doméstico, casi cutre: una discusión, una vergüenza, una acusación que no se puede retirar del todo, esa última palabra del padre que deja la habitación sin aire.
La madre, por ejemplo, me dolió precisamente porque no monta una escena. Su manera de protegerlo —ocultarle rumores, amortiguar el escándalo, seguir tratándolo como hijo antes que como escritor— pesa más que muchos reproches. El escritor puede triunfar en Nueva York, puede salir en la prensa, puede convertirse en una figura discutida; pero basta una voz familiar para devolverlo a una habitación antigua donde todavía se le exige que explique qué ha hecho con los suyos. Roth entiende muy bien esa violencia íntima: nadie te lee con tanta ferocidad como quien cree reconocerse en lo que has escrito.
Esa maquinaria también alcanza a las mujeres de la novela, siempre territorio delicado en Roth, porque ahí conviene leer con los ojos abiertos y sin absoluciones automáticas. Zuckerman desea, fantasea, se enreda, convierte casi cualquier contacto en material narrativo antes de haber entendido lo que está pasando. Las mujeres, a menudo tentación, espejo o premio sexual en el universo de Roth, miran aquí con más lucidez que el propio Nathan: muchas veces detectan antes que él la comedia patética que su vanidad insiste en llamar destino literario. Roth puede ser feroz, torpe, brillante y problemático en el mismo movimiento; la novela nos deja esa mezcla encima de la mesa, sin servilleta bonita para taparla.
Dentro del ciclo de Zuckerman, La liberación de Zuckerman funciona casi como una pieza de aceleración. Después de La visita al maestro, donde Nathan todavía miraba la literatura como una mezcla de vocación, linaje y ceremonia de entrada, aquí ya estamos en el día después del banquete, cuando quedan las copas sucias y alguien pregunta quién va a pagar los platos rotos. Leída desde el Roth posterior de La contravida, Pastoral americana o La mancha humana, se nota que aquí está afinando una de sus grandes obsesiones: la identidad como relato inestable, como algo que los demás escriben sobre ti incluso cuando tú creías haber cogido el bolígrafo primero.
No sé si esta es una novela “agradable”. De hecho, sospecho que Roth habría mirado con bastante desconfianza esa palabra, como si alguien hubiera intentado envolverle un cartucho de dinamita en papel de regalo. Es una novela rápida, feroz, áspera cuando se mete en los pliegues de la culpa y algo más irregular cuando se complace demasiado en el circo de la celebridad. Incluso sus excesos tienen vida. Y en Roth eso suele importar más que la limpieza. Hay libros impecables que parecen escritos con guantes. Este, en cambio, tiene dedos marcados, sudor, mala leche y alguna risa demasiado alta en el momento menos oportuno.
Al final, la liberación del título suena casi como una broma privada. Zuckerman se ha liberado, sí: de la invisibilidad, de la obediencia familiar, de la prudencia, quizá incluso de cierta idea respetable del escritor. La jaula se abre, de acuerdo, pero nadie le ha prometido que fuera haya suelo.
Porque la libertad, en Roth, nunca viene sola. Entra acompañada de culpa, deseo, ruido, demandas judiciales imaginarias, llamadas telefónicas y familiares heridos. Nathan Zuckerman quería ser escritor y consiguió algo peor: ser leído.
Y Philip Roth, que sabía perfectamente dónde dolía, convirtió esa condena en literatura.
Hay escritores que sueñan con ella como quien sueña con una casa junto al mar. Philip Roth, que era bastante menos ingenuo y bastante más peligroso, la imaginó como lo que probablemente es para un novelista: una casa junto al mar, sí, pero con el teléfono sonando a las tres de la mañana, un desconocido en la acera, tu familia leyéndote como si fueras una denuncia penal y medio país convencido de que sabe quién eres porque ha confundido tu libro con tu ficha médica. Roth entiende enseguida la broma: quizá el peor castigo por escribir un libro escandaloso no sea que lo prohíban, sino que lo lea todo el mundo y luego te pida explicaciones.
La liberación de Zuckerman empieza ahí, en ese momento venenoso en que Nathan Zuckerman ha conseguido lo que tantos escritores ambicionan hasta que les ocurre: un éxito descomunal. Su novela Carnovsky lo ha convertido en una celebridad literaria, en un escándalo doméstico, en un símbolo obsceno para unos y en una especie de profeta del descaro para otros. Lo que viene después tiene algo más divertido y más cruel que una simple caída: la comprobación de que el éxito no te libera de ti mismo, te entrega más bien a una fama pegajosa, ridícula y un poco sórdida, de esas que convierten cada lector en un fiscal aficionado. Solo te da más público para presenciar el desastre.
Roth está aquí en uno de sus territorios más fértiles: el escritor devorado por su propia criatura. Zuckerman ha escrito un libro, pero el libro ha empezado a escribirle la vida. Lo perverso es que Carnovsky no suplanta a Zuckerman: lo simplifica. Lo convierte en una versión más manejable, más obscena y más rentable de sí mismo. Los lectores lo acosan, los periodistas lo reducen a titular, los admiradores lo malinterpretan con entusiasmo, los ofendidos lo tratan como si hubiera cometido un delito de sangre y la familia, que en Roth siempre parece venir con una factura moral grapada al pecho, no distingue entre ficción, traición y ajuste de cuentas. Uno lee la novela y piensa: claro, esto va sobre la celebridad literaria. Luego sigue leyendo y se da cuenta de que Roth, como de costumbre, ha metido varias bombas en el mismo paquete. La fama asoma primero, claro. Debajo vienen la culpa, la identidad judía, la obscenidad como forma de sinceridad, la imposibilidad de escribir sobre los tuyos sin hacerles daño y esa pregunta tan cabrona: ¿cuánto derecho tiene un escritor a convertir la vida en material?
Roth trabaja aquí a pleno volumen —literal—. La novela está llena de voces que empujan, reclaman, insultan, seducen, exageran, deforman. Es teatro con metrónomo roto. Todo el mundo quiere apropiarse de Zuckerman. Su familia quiere recordarle de dónde viene. Los lectores quieren usarlo como espejo, como enemigo o como juguete sexual con ISBN.
Y ahí es donde aparece Alvin Pepler, ese personaje grotesco y tristísimo, una de esas criaturas secundarias que en Roth entran haciendo ruido y acaban dejando una mancha más profunda de lo previsto. En manos de otro escritor habría quedado como una caricatura del resentido, del tipo que cree que el mundo le debe una reparación y que ha encontrado en el escritor famoso un recipiente perfecto para verter su desgracia. Roth, que podía ser despiadado sin necesidad de ponerse solemne, lo lleva hacia algo más perturbador: un hombre ridículo, sí, pero ridículo de una manera demasiado humana. Trae consigo el eco de esos viejos escándalos televisivos americanos en los que el fracaso también quería sus quince minutos de audiencia. Ese es el veneno. Nos reímos de él hasta que empezamos a reconocer, en miniatura, esa necesidad tan nuestra de culpar a alguien con nombre y apellidos de que la vida no haya salido como prometía el folleto.
Zuckerman, por su parte, trae de fábrica muy poca madera de mártir literario. Y menos mal. Roth lo deja a la intemperie, sin esa pátina noble del artista incomprendido. Nathan es brillante, narcisista, lúcido, cobarde cuando toca, feroz cuando conviene y a ratos insoportable con bastante mérito propio. Tiene esa mezcla rothiana de inteligencia y autoboicot que hace que uno quiera darle la razón y zarandearlo en el mismo párrafo. En el ring verbal de Roth, Zuckerman suele parecer el boxeador que se tropieza con las cuerdas antes de lanzar un golpe decente. Su problema no es que lo entiendan mal; es que a veces lo entienden demasiado bien, aunque por los motivos equivocados. Ha abierto una puerta con su novela y ahora se escandaliza un poco al descubrir que por ahí entra gente. Gente con heridas, deseos, facturas familiares, fantasías sucias y ganas de convertir al autor en personaje público, en confesionario ambulante o en saco de boxeo.
La prosa de Roth en esta novela tiene esa velocidad de tren sin frenos que parece improvisada hasta que uno mira bien y ve la arquitectura. Todo se mueve con una energía nerviosa, casi cómica, pero la comicidad viene siempre con algo de lastre. Roth tiene esa habilidad para hacer que una escena parezca una comedia de costumbres judía, con teléfonos, reproches y frases que entran por la ventana, y de pronto dejarte con una sensación de daño real en la boca. El humor aquí no suaviza la culpa: la hace más punzante. Porque cuando Roth es gracioso de verdad, y aquí lo es muchas veces, no está poniendo un cojín debajo de la caída. Está haciendo que la caída suene mejor.
También hay algo muy inteligente en la manera en que la novela se pega a la propia figura de Roth y juega con el equívoco autobiográfico. Claro que Zuckerman se parece a Roth —vamos, que se le ve el carné de identidad desde la otra acera—, claro que Carnovsky remite de manera transparente al terremoto de El lamento de Portnoy, claro que el lector puede entretenerse trazando correspondencias entre autor y personaje. Pero quedarse ahí sería leer a Roth con unas gafas mal graduadas. Esa manía de descubrir qué parte “pasó de verdad” pertenece a una obsesión de portera metafísica que tanto daño ha hecho a la lectura de ficción. Porque aquí Roth hace algo bastante más jugoso: convierte esa confusión en materia narrativa. Prefiere meternos dentro de esa distancia entre autor y personaje y dejarnos oír cómo cruje.
Y cruje mucho, sobre todo cuando aparece la familia. En Roth, la familia tiene más de central eléctrica con cables pelados que de refugio. La relación de Zuckerman con sus padres y con su hermano contiene algunas de las páginas más dolorosas del libro porque ahí la fama pierde cualquier glamour y se vuelve algo casi doméstico, casi cutre: una discusión, una vergüenza, una acusación que no se puede retirar del todo, esa última palabra del padre que deja la habitación sin aire.
La madre, por ejemplo, me dolió precisamente porque no monta una escena. Su manera de protegerlo —ocultarle rumores, amortiguar el escándalo, seguir tratándolo como hijo antes que como escritor— pesa más que muchos reproches. El escritor puede triunfar en Nueva York, puede salir en la prensa, puede convertirse en una figura discutida; pero basta una voz familiar para devolverlo a una habitación antigua donde todavía se le exige que explique qué ha hecho con los suyos. Roth entiende muy bien esa violencia íntima: nadie te lee con tanta ferocidad como quien cree reconocerse en lo que has escrito.
Esa maquinaria también alcanza a las mujeres de la novela, siempre territorio delicado en Roth, porque ahí conviene leer con los ojos abiertos y sin absoluciones automáticas. Zuckerman desea, fantasea, se enreda, convierte casi cualquier contacto en material narrativo antes de haber entendido lo que está pasando. Las mujeres, a menudo tentación, espejo o premio sexual en el universo de Roth, miran aquí con más lucidez que el propio Nathan: muchas veces detectan antes que él la comedia patética que su vanidad insiste en llamar destino literario. Roth puede ser feroz, torpe, brillante y problemático en el mismo movimiento; la novela nos deja esa mezcla encima de la mesa, sin servilleta bonita para taparla.
Dentro del ciclo de Zuckerman, La liberación de Zuckerman funciona casi como una pieza de aceleración. Después de La visita al maestro, donde Nathan todavía miraba la literatura como una mezcla de vocación, linaje y ceremonia de entrada, aquí ya estamos en el día después del banquete, cuando quedan las copas sucias y alguien pregunta quién va a pagar los platos rotos. Leída desde el Roth posterior de La contravida, Pastoral americana o La mancha humana, se nota que aquí está afinando una de sus grandes obsesiones: la identidad como relato inestable, como algo que los demás escriben sobre ti incluso cuando tú creías haber cogido el bolígrafo primero.
No sé si esta es una novela “agradable”. De hecho, sospecho que Roth habría mirado con bastante desconfianza esa palabra, como si alguien hubiera intentado envolverle un cartucho de dinamita en papel de regalo. Es una novela rápida, feroz, áspera cuando se mete en los pliegues de la culpa y algo más irregular cuando se complace demasiado en el circo de la celebridad. Incluso sus excesos tienen vida. Y en Roth eso suele importar más que la limpieza. Hay libros impecables que parecen escritos con guantes. Este, en cambio, tiene dedos marcados, sudor, mala leche y alguna risa demasiado alta en el momento menos oportuno.
Al final, la liberación del título suena casi como una broma privada. Zuckerman se ha liberado, sí: de la invisibilidad, de la obediencia familiar, de la prudencia, quizá incluso de cierta idea respetable del escritor. La jaula se abre, de acuerdo, pero nadie le ha prometido que fuera haya suelo.
Porque la libertad, en Roth, nunca viene sola. Entra acompañada de culpa, deseo, ruido, demandas judiciales imaginarias, llamadas telefónicas y familiares heridos. Nathan Zuckerman quería ser escritor y consiguió algo peor: ser leído.
Y Philip Roth, que sabía perfectamente dónde dolía, convirtió esa condena en literatura.
June 13, 2014
Roth è un genio. L'ho sempre pensato, l'ho sempre detto e questo romanzo ne è l'ennesima conferma.
Chi conosce Roth, saprà certamente chi è Nathan Zuckerman. Nel caso non lo sapeste, no problem. Ci sono qui io pronta a spiegarvelo.
Nathan Zuckerman è l'alter ego di Philip Roth,. Nathan Zuckerman è uno scrittore che, dopo aver conosciuto la fama che il suo libro "Carnovksy" gli ha regalato deve affrontare tutto ciò che la fama e il successo comporta e porta con sé. Un successo che porta la firma di uno scrittore stanco di essere fermato dai fan, dalle persone, stanco di essere quello che è.
Forse non è il romanzo migliore di Roth, ma in esso vi sono molti dei temi che confluiranno nelle opere successive: dalle donne al sesso ai rapporti con la famiglia sino alla scrittura. Una scrittura che mi ha permesso di amare e conoscere questo grande scrittore.
Chi conosce Roth, saprà certamente chi è Nathan Zuckerman. Nel caso non lo sapeste, no problem. Ci sono qui io pronta a spiegarvelo.
Nathan Zuckerman è l'alter ego di Philip Roth,. Nathan Zuckerman è uno scrittore che, dopo aver conosciuto la fama che il suo libro "Carnovksy" gli ha regalato deve affrontare tutto ciò che la fama e il successo comporta e porta con sé. Un successo che porta la firma di uno scrittore stanco di essere fermato dai fan, dalle persone, stanco di essere quello che è.
Forse non è il romanzo migliore di Roth, ma in esso vi sono molti dei temi che confluiranno nelle opere successive: dalle donne al sesso ai rapporti con la famiglia sino alla scrittura. Una scrittura che mi ha permesso di amare e conoscere questo grande scrittore.
October 9, 2021
After Carnovsky
Philip Roth's novel "Zuckerman Bound" tells the story of novelist Nathan Zuckerman in the immediate aftermath of Zuckerman's great popular success with his novel, "Carnovsky". Roth's novel is the second of three novels and an epilogue dealing with the life of Zuckerman which Roth would group together as "Zuckerman Bound". The novels each have strongly autobiographical components, but it would be a mistake to consider Zuckerman as a simple stand-in or alter ego for Roth.
Told in the third person narrative voice, "Zuckerman Bound" is set largely in New York City in 1969 during the early part of the Nixon presidency. The violence and protests of the Vietnam era form an important backdrop to the book. Zuckerman's book sounds much like Roth's own novel "Portnoy's Complaint" which brought him notoriety, wealth, and fame. In discussing the writer's life and the writer's relationship to his characters, the book uses a mirroring effect. There is first Philip Roth, his relationship to his novel, "Portnoy's Complaint" and his relationship to the character he created, Zuckerman. Then, there is the character, Zuckerman, and his relationship to his fictitious novel "Carnovsky". At one point in the book Zuckerman reads a draft review of "Carnovsky" for a character who, among other things, is a wanna be writer and reviewer; and critiques it for the benefit of both character and reader.
This book is entertaining and relatively straightforward to read. There are long ranting speeches and scenes and much detail about persons and places. Yet the book is also highly serious. Roth explores the nature of the writer's life and the isolation it requires and enforces. The book also is a story of background and family, of the difficulty in any life in setting out on one's own. In the novel, Zuckerman tries to understand his search for independence through reflections on "Carnovsky" on his family, on his hometown of Newark, New Jersey,on his three failed marriages, and on his Jewishness.
"Carnovsky" became famous because of its blunt exploration of male sexuality and sexual frustration, rare in a novel of the time. While higly popular, the novel drew criticism for its portrayal of American Jewish life and for its portrayal of what were thought to be intimate details of the lives of Carnovsky's family. These factors reach back, of course, to Roth and to "Portnoy's Complaint." Zuckerman in the novel must fight off both adoring fans and threatening critics.
The first part of the book develops Zuckerman's relationship with a fan, Alvin Pepler, who appears out of the blue. Pepler is based upon a historical character who appeared on the corrupt television quiz shows of the 1950s. He bothers Zuckerman about his own writing, including the draft review mentioned earlier. He is a comic character. Zuckerman also has a short affair with a famous actress and shows regret over the collapse of his third marriage.
The focus of the book pivots to Zuckerman's aged parents who have retired to Florida. His hardworking father has been in a nursing home for four years and in his last breath curses his wayward son for his attitude towards Judaism and towards family. The book develops Zuckerman's relationship with his younger brother, Henry, who acted responsibly in his parents' eyes by becoming a dentist and by marrying a college sweetheart, and with his mother. Zuckermann comes to both a greater degree of understanding of his own family with the death of his father and, if possible, to a greater degree of distancing.
Besides being the story of a novel and of a novelist writing about a novelist, Zuckerman's story is developed through a wealth of literary allusions. They include Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Freud, James Joyce, Mary Mapes Dodge (author of "Hans Brinkner and the Silver Skates"), and Thomas Wolfe, among others. Franz Kafka, in his tormented life and writing, plays a large role. Zuckerman quotes Kafka at a critical moment: "I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not arouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?" So too, with the provocations and anguish of Zuckerman's "Carnovsky" and Roth's "Portnoy".
With all its humor and irreverence, "Zuckerman' Unbound" is a coming of age story for adults.
Robin Friedman
Philip Roth's novel "Zuckerman Bound" tells the story of novelist Nathan Zuckerman in the immediate aftermath of Zuckerman's great popular success with his novel, "Carnovsky". Roth's novel is the second of three novels and an epilogue dealing with the life of Zuckerman which Roth would group together as "Zuckerman Bound". The novels each have strongly autobiographical components, but it would be a mistake to consider Zuckerman as a simple stand-in or alter ego for Roth.
Told in the third person narrative voice, "Zuckerman Bound" is set largely in New York City in 1969 during the early part of the Nixon presidency. The violence and protests of the Vietnam era form an important backdrop to the book. Zuckerman's book sounds much like Roth's own novel "Portnoy's Complaint" which brought him notoriety, wealth, and fame. In discussing the writer's life and the writer's relationship to his characters, the book uses a mirroring effect. There is first Philip Roth, his relationship to his novel, "Portnoy's Complaint" and his relationship to the character he created, Zuckerman. Then, there is the character, Zuckerman, and his relationship to his fictitious novel "Carnovsky". At one point in the book Zuckerman reads a draft review of "Carnovsky" for a character who, among other things, is a wanna be writer and reviewer; and critiques it for the benefit of both character and reader.
This book is entertaining and relatively straightforward to read. There are long ranting speeches and scenes and much detail about persons and places. Yet the book is also highly serious. Roth explores the nature of the writer's life and the isolation it requires and enforces. The book also is a story of background and family, of the difficulty in any life in setting out on one's own. In the novel, Zuckerman tries to understand his search for independence through reflections on "Carnovsky" on his family, on his hometown of Newark, New Jersey,on his three failed marriages, and on his Jewishness.
"Carnovsky" became famous because of its blunt exploration of male sexuality and sexual frustration, rare in a novel of the time. While higly popular, the novel drew criticism for its portrayal of American Jewish life and for its portrayal of what were thought to be intimate details of the lives of Carnovsky's family. These factors reach back, of course, to Roth and to "Portnoy's Complaint." Zuckerman in the novel must fight off both adoring fans and threatening critics.
The first part of the book develops Zuckerman's relationship with a fan, Alvin Pepler, who appears out of the blue. Pepler is based upon a historical character who appeared on the corrupt television quiz shows of the 1950s. He bothers Zuckerman about his own writing, including the draft review mentioned earlier. He is a comic character. Zuckerman also has a short affair with a famous actress and shows regret over the collapse of his third marriage.
The focus of the book pivots to Zuckerman's aged parents who have retired to Florida. His hardworking father has been in a nursing home for four years and in his last breath curses his wayward son for his attitude towards Judaism and towards family. The book develops Zuckerman's relationship with his younger brother, Henry, who acted responsibly in his parents' eyes by becoming a dentist and by marrying a college sweetheart, and with his mother. Zuckermann comes to both a greater degree of understanding of his own family with the death of his father and, if possible, to a greater degree of distancing.
Besides being the story of a novel and of a novelist writing about a novelist, Zuckerman's story is developed through a wealth of literary allusions. They include Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Freud, James Joyce, Mary Mapes Dodge (author of "Hans Brinkner and the Silver Skates"), and Thomas Wolfe, among others. Franz Kafka, in his tormented life and writing, plays a large role. Zuckerman quotes Kafka at a critical moment: "I believe that we should read only those books that bite and sting us. If a book we are reading does not arouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it?" So too, with the provocations and anguish of Zuckerman's "Carnovsky" and Roth's "Portnoy".
With all its humor and irreverence, "Zuckerman' Unbound" is a coming of age story for adults.
Robin Friedman
August 10, 2020
Il secondo capitolo della trilogia che vede nascere il personaggio di Nathan Zuckerman, lo vede alle prese con il successo, ed è un' occasione per Philip Roth per consegnare ai lettori la sua visione degli aspetti più impegnativi della notorietà.
Tema quanto mai diffuso ed attuale (un cantante come Luciano Ligabue arriverà a dedicargli una canzone "tra palco e realtà", che mi è venuta spesso in mente leggendo questo libro), reso come al solito alla perfezione.
Secondo il grande scrittore di Newark, la notorietà toglie alcune fatiche (il peso dell'indifferenza altrui, la fatica di sbarcare il lunario) per sostituirle con altre. Soprattutto lo schiacciante peso con cui gli anonimi ammiratori giudicano il famoso ("ognuno sceglie la tua verità", canta Liga), ma ancora di più lo schiacciante peso con cui le persone cercano di strapparti un pezzo di te stesso per vivere al tuo posto.
Dal momento del successo non c'è gesto, parola o azione di Nathan Zuckerman che non sia soggetto a giudizio. E non c'è momento che non sia minacciato da più parti da parte di persone alla ricerca di rivalsa, di notorietà, di denaro, comunque alla ricerca di un riscatto che magari la notorietà del VIP di turno può concedere. E' un romanzo breve profondamente umoristico, secondo me. Perchè il tema è di quelli drammatici o comunque profondamente tristi (personaggi vuoti che ruotano intorno al grande scrittore alla ricerca di un po' di carta o di brillantini per riempire le loro vite), descritti però su pagine scoppiettanti di Humour. Ed in questo, lo sappiamo, Philip Roth è un maestro.
Perchè allora "scatenato"? La traduzione da Unbound è un po' fuorviante, sempre secondo il mio parere. Perchè scatenato fa pensare ad un toro, a qualcosa di violento, istintivo, fuori controllo. Invece questo capitolo della storia di Zuckerman parla di una transizione dolorosa, traumatica, ma graduale e consapevole. Si dovrebbe parlare di "slegato". Da cosa? dai suoi legami umani, affettivi, sentimentali. Il ruolo dello scrittore di successo non tollera la conservazione di legami di questo tipo, perchè inevitabilmente lo scrittore di successo usa le persone che gli sono più vicine come strumenti letterari, mettendo in piazza ciò che di più hanno da nascondere.
Che poi lo faccia davvero non ha importanza. Perchè "ognuno sceglie la tua verità", e nelle pagine di uno scrittore da milioni di copie, chi gli sta vicino cercherà sempre la falsa intenzione, il subdolo riferimento, comunque se stesso. Perchè, lo sappiamo da sempre, l' unica cosa peggiore di essere insultato è essere ignorato.
Non sono sicuro se questo sia vero, conosciamo scrittori famosi con una solidissima situazione faamiliare. Però è un aspetto della fama su cui è valsa la pena riflettere, magari ascoltando la canzone di Liga e sfogliando le pagine di questo libro piccolo, ben scritto ed a tratti piuttosto divertente.
Tema quanto mai diffuso ed attuale (un cantante come Luciano Ligabue arriverà a dedicargli una canzone "tra palco e realtà", che mi è venuta spesso in mente leggendo questo libro), reso come al solito alla perfezione.
Secondo il grande scrittore di Newark, la notorietà toglie alcune fatiche (il peso dell'indifferenza altrui, la fatica di sbarcare il lunario) per sostituirle con altre. Soprattutto lo schiacciante peso con cui gli anonimi ammiratori giudicano il famoso ("ognuno sceglie la tua verità", canta Liga), ma ancora di più lo schiacciante peso con cui le persone cercano di strapparti un pezzo di te stesso per vivere al tuo posto.
Dal momento del successo non c'è gesto, parola o azione di Nathan Zuckerman che non sia soggetto a giudizio. E non c'è momento che non sia minacciato da più parti da parte di persone alla ricerca di rivalsa, di notorietà, di denaro, comunque alla ricerca di un riscatto che magari la notorietà del VIP di turno può concedere. E' un romanzo breve profondamente umoristico, secondo me. Perchè il tema è di quelli drammatici o comunque profondamente tristi (personaggi vuoti che ruotano intorno al grande scrittore alla ricerca di un po' di carta o di brillantini per riempire le loro vite), descritti però su pagine scoppiettanti di Humour. Ed in questo, lo sappiamo, Philip Roth è un maestro.
Perchè allora "scatenato"? La traduzione da Unbound è un po' fuorviante, sempre secondo il mio parere. Perchè scatenato fa pensare ad un toro, a qualcosa di violento, istintivo, fuori controllo. Invece questo capitolo della storia di Zuckerman parla di una transizione dolorosa, traumatica, ma graduale e consapevole. Si dovrebbe parlare di "slegato". Da cosa? dai suoi legami umani, affettivi, sentimentali. Il ruolo dello scrittore di successo non tollera la conservazione di legami di questo tipo, perchè inevitabilmente lo scrittore di successo usa le persone che gli sono più vicine come strumenti letterari, mettendo in piazza ciò che di più hanno da nascondere.
Che poi lo faccia davvero non ha importanza. Perchè "ognuno sceglie la tua verità", e nelle pagine di uno scrittore da milioni di copie, chi gli sta vicino cercherà sempre la falsa intenzione, il subdolo riferimento, comunque se stesso. Perchè, lo sappiamo da sempre, l' unica cosa peggiore di essere insultato è essere ignorato.
Non sono sicuro se questo sia vero, conosciamo scrittori famosi con una solidissima situazione faamiliare. Però è un aspetto della fama su cui è valsa la pena riflettere, magari ascoltando la canzone di Liga e sfogliando le pagine di questo libro piccolo, ben scritto ed a tratti piuttosto divertente.
September 13, 2017
The second outing for Roth's alter ego Zuckerman sees him achieving remarkable success.
His novel Carnovsky is a sensation - turning him into a celebrity. But with fame also comes notoriety. The sexual nature of the novel leaves Zuckerman facing enmity as well as adulation.
The parallels with Roth are plain. For Carnovsky, you can substitute Roth's second novel Portnoy's Complaint with its onanistic obsession.
Zuckerman Unbound is perhaps a kind of apologia for Portnoy's Complaint (although that's a book I love), but it is also very funny.
Roth creates a great nemesis for Zuckerman in the shape of quiz contestant Alvin Pepler, who seems to be stalking Zucker, and may have malevolent intentions. There are echoes of Pupkin in Scorsese's King of Comedy in Pepler.
And even 35 years after its publication (and 50 years after its set), Zuckerman Unbound feels very contemporary in its depiction of celebrity. There may be no social media, but Pepler feels like a classic troll. And the same celebrity feeding frenzy with its half truths and downright lies is present and correct. It's hard to read whether Pepler is a harmless eccentric, or a murderous stalker.
But the novel takes a different direction in its final pages, becoming more poignant and sad as we spend time at the death bed of Zuckerman's father, lending it a surprising depth, and making it more than mere comic confection.
Zuckerman Unbound may not be up there with Roth's later state-of-the-nation novels, or indeed be as compelling as Zuckerman's first outing in The Ghost Writer, but it still has lots to offer, not least the ever-present quality of Roth's prose.
His novel Carnovsky is a sensation - turning him into a celebrity. But with fame also comes notoriety. The sexual nature of the novel leaves Zuckerman facing enmity as well as adulation.
The parallels with Roth are plain. For Carnovsky, you can substitute Roth's second novel Portnoy's Complaint with its onanistic obsession.
Zuckerman Unbound is perhaps a kind of apologia for Portnoy's Complaint (although that's a book I love), but it is also very funny.
Roth creates a great nemesis for Zuckerman in the shape of quiz contestant Alvin Pepler, who seems to be stalking Zucker, and may have malevolent intentions. There are echoes of Pupkin in Scorsese's King of Comedy in Pepler.
And even 35 years after its publication (and 50 years after its set), Zuckerman Unbound feels very contemporary in its depiction of celebrity. There may be no social media, but Pepler feels like a classic troll. And the same celebrity feeding frenzy with its half truths and downright lies is present and correct. It's hard to read whether Pepler is a harmless eccentric, or a murderous stalker.
But the novel takes a different direction in its final pages, becoming more poignant and sad as we spend time at the death bed of Zuckerman's father, lending it a surprising depth, and making it more than mere comic confection.
Zuckerman Unbound may not be up there with Roth's later state-of-the-nation novels, or indeed be as compelling as Zuckerman's first outing in The Ghost Writer, but it still has lots to offer, not least the ever-present quality of Roth's prose.
February 16, 2016
Philip Roth è un grandissimo scrittore. Ne sono sicuro. Uno il cui nome inizia con Phil è sicuramente un mito.
Ho iniziato con un'ironia banale, non molto riuscita, per descrivere la sensazione che mi ha lasciato questo libro. Roth può fare meglio.
Volevo conoscere Philip Roth ed ho pensato di farlo da questo libro quasi senza trama. La mia amica Martina sostiene che "leggere libri senza trama equivale a vedere la vera anima di una persona senza essere condizionati dal suo aspetto". Ispirandomi a Martina ho scelto questo libro, il secondo della serie sullo scrittore Zuckerman, per approcciare lo stile e le tematiche di Philip Roth.
La trama è infatti debole. Il libro è costituito da una sequenza di belle scene che ruotano attorno a Zuckerman.
Lo stile è senza dubbio scorrevole ed ironico, ma l'ironia avrebbe potuto essere migliore. Non mi sembra al livello di un Böll ( Opinioni di un clown) o di un Simenon ( L'uomo che guardava passare i treni).
I dialoghi, molto intensi e ben strutturati, sono invece il punto di forza del libro.
Come esempio d'ironia riporto una corrispondenza letteraria tra una certa Julia e Zuckerman. Divertente il riferimento alla ricchezza, ma avevo aspettative troppo elevate.
《 Saresti disposto, così, d'impulso, a fare un viaggio con me in Europa, durante le vacanze? Sono pratica della Svizzera (ho un conto segreto, numerato, presso la maggiore banca elvetica) e mi piacerebbe iniziarti ad alcune fra le più surreali e commoventi esperienze che si possono fare in quel paese [...] Potremmo visitare assieme le famose fabbriche di cioccolata, i solidissimi istituti bancari, la cascata presso la quale Sherlock Holmes incontro' il suo destino... Occorre che seguiti?
Julia, la Non-Tanto-Pazza
c/c numerati 776043
Cara Giulia, neanch'io sono tanto pazzo e rispondo di no quindi al tuo invito. Vorrei essere più cordiale, poiché tu mi usi tanta cortesia e sei tanto affettuosa, per non parlare del tuo spirito e della tua ricchezza. Ma temo che dovrai visitare le fabbriche di cioccolata senza di me. Tuo, Nathan Zuckerman
Bankers Trust 4863589 》
Anche le tematiche sono appena accennate. Il rapporto con le donne, la fedeltà, l'attrazione verso le star, il rapporto letteratura vs. realtà. Quest'ultima è probabilmente l'unica tematica che unisce l'intero romanzo.
«Prima vanno a letto con la tua immagine e, dopo, vanno a letto con la tua truccatrice. Non appena si rendono conto che il tuo "te" non è il "te" del mondo, ci restano delusi.»
Questa frase mi sembra d'averla già sentita nel film "Notting Hill", quando Anna Scott cita Rita Hayworth "Gli uomini vanno a letto con Gilda e si risvegliano con me" (Gilda e' la protagonista di un film della Hayworth del 1946).
Oltre a queste temi piu leggeri, sono presenti tematiche più serie, di vario genere. Dalle ossessioni interiori (le nostre paure) a quelle esteriori (lo stalking verso le star); dall'ebraismo alla cultura di massa, dove le persone continuano a vedere in tv quiz taroccati (queste due tematiche nella parte iniziale); dai rapporti con i familiari alla morte (queste nella parte finale).
Ho precisato in quale parte del libro i temi vengono trattati (incasinando la frase con troppe parentesi) per evidenziare che le tematiche sono solamente accennate e non sono comuni a tutto il libro. Probabilmente saranno sviluppate nei libri più importanti di Philip Roth.
Questo suo libro mi ha in parte deluso, però mi ha dato un assaggio del suo stile e delle sue tematiche. Entrambi notevoli, nonostante mi aspettassi meglio.
Personaggi 5
Stile 4+ (speravo 5)
Tematiche 4+ (speravo 5)
Trama 2
Coinvolgimento 2
Voto medio 17,5/5 = 3,5
Avevo aspettative molto alte, per questo motivo la recensione manca un po' d'entusiasmo.
Alla prossima, Philip!!
-----------------------
Edit: Grazie Natalia per avermi involontariamente ricordato che tre mesi fa avrei dovuto correggere i 200 errori
Nuovo voto (profilo): 6 su 10.
Ho iniziato con un'ironia banale, non molto riuscita, per descrivere la sensazione che mi ha lasciato questo libro. Roth può fare meglio.
Volevo conoscere Philip Roth ed ho pensato di farlo da questo libro quasi senza trama. La mia amica Martina sostiene che "leggere libri senza trama equivale a vedere la vera anima di una persona senza essere condizionati dal suo aspetto". Ispirandomi a Martina ho scelto questo libro, il secondo della serie sullo scrittore Zuckerman, per approcciare lo stile e le tematiche di Philip Roth.
La trama è infatti debole. Il libro è costituito da una sequenza di belle scene che ruotano attorno a Zuckerman.
Lo stile è senza dubbio scorrevole ed ironico, ma l'ironia avrebbe potuto essere migliore. Non mi sembra al livello di un Böll ( Opinioni di un clown) o di un Simenon ( L'uomo che guardava passare i treni).
I dialoghi, molto intensi e ben strutturati, sono invece il punto di forza del libro.
Come esempio d'ironia riporto una corrispondenza letteraria tra una certa Julia e Zuckerman. Divertente il riferimento alla ricchezza, ma avevo aspettative troppo elevate.
《 Saresti disposto, così, d'impulso, a fare un viaggio con me in Europa, durante le vacanze? Sono pratica della Svizzera (ho un conto segreto, numerato, presso la maggiore banca elvetica) e mi piacerebbe iniziarti ad alcune fra le più surreali e commoventi esperienze che si possono fare in quel paese [...] Potremmo visitare assieme le famose fabbriche di cioccolata, i solidissimi istituti bancari, la cascata presso la quale Sherlock Holmes incontro' il suo destino... Occorre che seguiti?
Julia, la Non-Tanto-Pazza
c/c numerati 776043
Cara Giulia, neanch'io sono tanto pazzo e rispondo di no quindi al tuo invito. Vorrei essere più cordiale, poiché tu mi usi tanta cortesia e sei tanto affettuosa, per non parlare del tuo spirito e della tua ricchezza. Ma temo che dovrai visitare le fabbriche di cioccolata senza di me. Tuo, Nathan Zuckerman
Bankers Trust 4863589 》
Anche le tematiche sono appena accennate. Il rapporto con le donne, la fedeltà, l'attrazione verso le star, il rapporto letteratura vs. realtà. Quest'ultima è probabilmente l'unica tematica che unisce l'intero romanzo.
«Prima vanno a letto con la tua immagine e, dopo, vanno a letto con la tua truccatrice. Non appena si rendono conto che il tuo "te" non è il "te" del mondo, ci restano delusi.»
Questa frase mi sembra d'averla già sentita nel film "Notting Hill", quando Anna Scott cita Rita Hayworth "Gli uomini vanno a letto con Gilda e si risvegliano con me" (Gilda e' la protagonista di un film della Hayworth del 1946).
Oltre a queste temi piu leggeri, sono presenti tematiche più serie, di vario genere. Dalle ossessioni interiori (le nostre paure) a quelle esteriori (lo stalking verso le star); dall'ebraismo alla cultura di massa, dove le persone continuano a vedere in tv quiz taroccati (queste due tematiche nella parte iniziale); dai rapporti con i familiari alla morte (queste nella parte finale).
Ho precisato in quale parte del libro i temi vengono trattati (incasinando la frase con troppe parentesi) per evidenziare che le tematiche sono solamente accennate e non sono comuni a tutto il libro. Probabilmente saranno sviluppate nei libri più importanti di Philip Roth.
Questo suo libro mi ha in parte deluso, però mi ha dato un assaggio del suo stile e delle sue tematiche. Entrambi notevoli, nonostante mi aspettassi meglio.
Personaggi 5
Stile 4+ (speravo 5)
Tematiche 4+ (speravo 5)
Trama 2
Coinvolgimento 2
Voto medio 17,5/5 = 3,5
Avevo aspettative molto alte, per questo motivo la recensione manca un po' d'entusiasmo.
Alla prossima, Philip!!
-----------------------
Edit: Grazie Natalia per avermi involontariamente ricordato che tre mesi fa avrei dovuto correggere i 200 errori
Nuovo voto (profilo): 6 su 10.
August 31, 2025
3.5
Un Zuckerman mai degrabă dezlegat decât dezlănțuit. "Dezlănțuit" te face să te gândești la sensul metaforic, la furtunos, impulsiv, furios, de neoprit. Dar volumul ăsta e, de fapt, despre ruperea lanțurilor familiale, relațiilor care l-ar fi putut frâna pe scriitor (poate și pe bărbat).
E destul de limpede scris în final (s-ar putea ca finalurile să fie partea cea mai reușită din cărțile lui Roth, ceea ce nu le iese prea des majorității scriitorilor, dar am impresia că lui îi iese de fiecare dată): "Nu mai ești fiul niciunui bărbat, nu mai ești soțul niciunei femei bune la inimă, nu mai ești fratele fratelui tău și nici nu mai vii de nicăieri".
Un Zuckerman mai degrabă dezlegat decât dezlănțuit. "Dezlănțuit" te face să te gândești la sensul metaforic, la furtunos, impulsiv, furios, de neoprit. Dar volumul ăsta e, de fapt, despre ruperea lanțurilor familiale, relațiilor care l-ar fi putut frâna pe scriitor (poate și pe bărbat).
E destul de limpede scris în final (s-ar putea ca finalurile să fie partea cea mai reușită din cărțile lui Roth, ceea ce nu le iese prea des majorității scriitorilor, dar am impresia că lui îi iese de fiecare dată): "Nu mai ești fiul niciunui bărbat, nu mai ești soțul niciunei femei bune la inimă, nu mai ești fratele fratelui tău și nici nu mai vii de nicăieri".
September 12, 2016
Un po’ sconslusionato.
Nathan Zuckerman a cui accadono cose.
In un certo senso manca la gestione delle parti, manca l’arrangiamento.
A tratti sembra di leggere dei siparietti tragicomici.
E questo penalizza la visione d’insieme.
Per il resto si legge facile e qualche momento godibile c’è, che la classe felpata di Roth non scompare d’un tratto in cantina.
Ma un po’ pochino per farmi sobbalzare.
Riservato ai fedeli. [65/100]
Nathan Zuckerman a cui accadono cose.
In un certo senso manca la gestione delle parti, manca l’arrangiamento.
A tratti sembra di leggere dei siparietti tragicomici.
E questo penalizza la visione d’insieme.
Per il resto si legge facile e qualche momento godibile c’è, che la classe felpata di Roth non scompare d’un tratto in cantina.
Ma un po’ pochino per farmi sobbalzare.
Riservato ai fedeli. [65/100]
January 7, 2024
Witty and wonderful. Roth never disappoints.
July 27, 2025
'... You have to have a plot, like in Hamlet or anything else first-class....Does Hamlet get up from the stage and say I don't want to die at the end of the play? No, his part is over and he lies there. That is the difference, in point of fact, between schlock and art. Schlock goes every which way and couldn't care less about anything but the buck, and art is controlled, art is managed, art is always rigged. That is how it takes hold of the human heart.'
It occurs to me now that this is the first Philip Roth novel I have finished, and the fourth I own. It is as quirky and charming an introduction to the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman as I could ever hope for, though I might have encountered him in my last attempt at Roth, in American Pastoral. I didn't go far enough into it and I don't remember it that well, but I don't think I have such worries with this book, which is memorable, and, if forgotten, small enough to read again in an afternoon and a night, to again see Zuckerman set free—unbound—by his old man's death. By the end, he may be damned, cursed, fucked, but he is free, no longer any man's son, [...] no longer some good woman's husband, [...]no longer [his] brother's brother, and [he] doesn't come from anywhere anymore, either. He is Zuckerman truly unbound.
March 12, 2023
Zuckerman, now at roughly the same moment in his life and career as Roth was following the publication and runaway success of Portnoy's Complaint (plus a couple of extra crises for good measure, including having his father in a nursing home following a debilitating stroke), is a man being pulled in a number of different directions at once and feeling increasingly untethered to anything in his life on which he could formerly rely: he's broken up with his third wife, he's reacting badly to his newly minted celebrity status, he's receiving unwanted phone calls constantly (including from someone threatening to kidnap his mother if Zuckerman doesn't fork over $50,000) and this despite having an unlisted number and an answering service, he's grappling with feelings of guilt over having exposed his family to the attention of the press and public because of what he wrote in his Portnoy-esque lurid bestseller Carnovsky, and by the end of the book he will have been called a "bastard" with the last breath of a dying loved one. The second of Roth's acclaimed "Zuckerman Bound" trilogy (plus epilogue novella), Zuckerman Unbound trades the surgical precision and thematic perfection of The Ghost Writer for something a bit looser in its construction; whereas that book was structured like a brilliant piece of chamber music, with corresponding contrapuntal sections and recurring, nested motifs, Zuckerman Unbound is basically a series of scenes/set pieces that just denonstrate, one after the other, how utterly at sea Roth's protagonist (and stand-in) is, culminating in a devastating trip to his boyhood home, to which the place in its present state bears little resemblance. It's a very good book, full of well-drawn details and first-rate dialogue (not to mention tidbits that, having just read the big Blake Bailey bio of Roth a little while back, were familiar to me as having been drawn from his real experiences), including Roth's signature blend of skin-crawling, cringe-inducing awkwardness and drama with side-splitting humor (the image of Zuckerman casually walking away from his spot outside an ice cream parlor in which "quiz show king" Alvin Pepler is buying him an ice cream only to break into a sprint seconds later had me cackling wildly), but I can't help feeling that much of this ground (i.e. the family drama of being a writer who holds nothing back on the page) was covered better not only in The Ghost Writer but in My Life as a Man and, more or less, in The Professor of Desire (though Kepesh isn't a writer of fiction there); I also didn't feel the same level of complete mastery was on display at some points, as a few of the scenes (the initial encounter with Pepler for one) began to wear out their welcome before they'd ended. Nonetheless, a very good book from an always engaging writer, and I'm eager to move on to The Anatomy Lesson to see what's next for Zuckerman.
May 25, 2018
The day before Philip Roth died, this book appeared on my office's giveaway shelf and I snagged it. I don't think this coincidence has any cosmic significance, but it sure was convenient.
I think Roth has fallen out of favor a bit among my peers -- even in his NYT obituary he was linked so emphatically to Updike and Bellow, and it's true that the sex-crazed male novelists of the middle of the last century now seem perverse only in their ridiculousness. Certainly the sexual attitudes that once seemed daringly offensive now come off as offensive only because they're dated and out of touch. (See, for example, John Updike not understanding the very great mystery of how women pee).
But I've always thought Roth stood out from this pack. He wrote some ridiculous sex stuff, sure, but always with a level of self-awareness and humor. And his work was about so many things, as --coincidentally, conveniently -- this novel perfectly illustrates. In it, Nathan Zuckerman has just struck it rich with his version of Portnoy, and the darkly comedic cost of fame is rippling through his life, starting with strangers ogling him on the bus and escalating to kidnapping threats against his mother. But really the book is about how Zuckerman's choices, in work and in love, have affected his relationships with his ex-wife, his parents, his brother; not for nothing is the final chapter called "Look Homeward, Angel." Like Thomas Wolfe, Zuckerman can never go home again; none of us can go back and do it again, or ever recapture the past.
But Roth, now to my great sadness wholly confined to that past, is still worth reading and remembering and rediscovering. And I think, unlike those contemporaries of his, he will stand the test of time.
I think Roth has fallen out of favor a bit among my peers -- even in his NYT obituary he was linked so emphatically to Updike and Bellow, and it's true that the sex-crazed male novelists of the middle of the last century now seem perverse only in their ridiculousness. Certainly the sexual attitudes that once seemed daringly offensive now come off as offensive only because they're dated and out of touch. (See, for example, John Updike not understanding the very great mystery of how women pee).
But I've always thought Roth stood out from this pack. He wrote some ridiculous sex stuff, sure, but always with a level of self-awareness and humor. And his work was about so many things, as --coincidentally, conveniently -- this novel perfectly illustrates. In it, Nathan Zuckerman has just struck it rich with his version of Portnoy, and the darkly comedic cost of fame is rippling through his life, starting with strangers ogling him on the bus and escalating to kidnapping threats against his mother. But really the book is about how Zuckerman's choices, in work and in love, have affected his relationships with his ex-wife, his parents, his brother; not for nothing is the final chapter called "Look Homeward, Angel." Like Thomas Wolfe, Zuckerman can never go home again; none of us can go back and do it again, or ever recapture the past.
But Roth, now to my great sadness wholly confined to that past, is still worth reading and remembering and rediscovering. And I think, unlike those contemporaries of his, he will stand the test of time.
November 3, 2008
What I feel is the most important question on this book, was asked in the first one (ghost writer)... Does the artist have no responsibility towards his loved ones, his family? His father dies (with the word "bastard" on his lips), and once his brother is pushed a bit, you see how much he despises what zuckerman has made of himself (and his family), with his writing. "Do you really think conscience is a jewish invention from which you are immune?.."... The fame factor is also a pretty funny part, the way other people act with him, and how they seem to own him, most of the time thinking he is the character in his book. Very funny, and sad at the same time.
October 3, 2017
Even slightly better than The Ghost Writer.. amazing characters, beautiful prose.. 4*
August 30, 2017
📖 #پیشنهادکتاب
🎞 #فیلهسین
به این نتیجه رسیدهام که اساسا خواندن رمان سخت است، توجه به جزییبینیهای نویسندهی رمان تمرکز بالایی میخواهد. شاید به همین خاطر است که اخیرا بیشتر مطالعاتم رمان نبودهاند.
زوکرمن، با کتابش مشهور شده است و این کتاب شرح چند روز زندگی او پس از فروش یک میلیون نسخهی کتابش است.
سبک فیلیپ راث - حالا بعد از خواندن سومین رمان از او با اطمینان بیشتری میگویم - این است که پیرنگ اصلی سادهای را برمیگزیند، و به فراخور موقعیت، غرق گذشتهای که آن موقعیت را به وجود آورده میشود. یک آن داستان دربارهی یک شخصیت فرعی میشود.
الکس راس پری در ۲۰۱۳ فیلم «بشنو فیلیپ» را بر اساس آثار اولیهی فیلیپ راث میسازد. فیلم پری یک شاهکار است و بارها آن را دیدهام. اما چیزی که این «اقتباس» را خاص و یکتا میکند، این است که فیلم، «فرم» نویسندگی فیلیپ راث را اقتباس میکند، و نه لزوما اتفاقات داستان را. در فیلم پری، پیرنگ با صدای راوی زندگی فیلیپ فریدمن شروع میشود. بعد از دقایقی زندگی دوستدختر فیلیپ روایت میشود و بعدتر حتا روابط آیک و ملانی و مادری که هیچوقت نمیبینیمش هم آشکار میشود. در کتابهای راث هم راوی تبدیل میشود به افکار شخصیت داستان و بعد میشود یک دانای کل و به تعبیر من جایگاه یک «فرا-راوی» را برای خود میسازد.
این تاثیر پذیری از ادبیات و مسخش به سینما کار نابی است، کاری که فقط از الکس راس پری جوان برآمده و فیلمش - و فیلمهایش - را شاهکار تمام عیار کرده است.
دربارهی گانهی اول این مجموعه (این کتاب گانهی دوم است) در گودریدز نوشته بودم. ترجمهی سمی در این کتاب بسیار بهتر است از آن کتاب اول.
۳/۵
🎞 #فیلهسین
به این نتیجه رسیدهام که اساسا خواندن رمان سخت است، توجه به جزییبینیهای نویسندهی رمان تمرکز بالایی میخواهد. شاید به همین خاطر است که اخیرا بیشتر مطالعاتم رمان نبودهاند.
زوکرمن، با کتابش مشهور شده است و این کتاب شرح چند روز زندگی او پس از فروش یک میلیون نسخهی کتابش است.
سبک فیلیپ راث - حالا بعد از خواندن سومین رمان از او با اطمینان بیشتری میگویم - این است که پیرنگ اصلی سادهای را برمیگزیند، و به فراخور موقعیت، غرق گذشتهای که آن موقعیت را به وجود آورده میشود. یک آن داستان دربارهی یک شخصیت فرعی میشود.
الکس راس پری در ۲۰۱۳ فیلم «بشنو فیلیپ» را بر اساس آثار اولیهی فیلیپ راث میسازد. فیلم پری یک شاهکار است و بارها آن را دیدهام. اما چیزی که این «اقتباس» را خاص و یکتا میکند، این است که فیلم، «فرم» نویسندگی فیلیپ راث را اقتباس میکند، و نه لزوما اتفاقات داستان را. در فیلم پری، پیرنگ با صدای راوی زندگی فیلیپ فریدمن شروع میشود. بعد از دقایقی زندگی دوستدختر فیلیپ روایت میشود و بعدتر حتا روابط آیک و ملانی و مادری که هیچوقت نمیبینیمش هم آشکار میشود. در کتابهای راث هم راوی تبدیل میشود به افکار شخصیت داستان و بعد میشود یک دانای کل و به تعبیر من جایگاه یک «فرا-راوی» را برای خود میسازد.
این تاثیر پذیری از ادبیات و مسخش به سینما کار نابی است، کاری که فقط از الکس راس پری جوان برآمده و فیلمش - و فیلمهایش - را شاهکار تمام عیار کرده است.
دربارهی گانهی اول این مجموعه (این کتاب گانهی دوم است) در گودریدز نوشته بودم. ترجمهی سمی در این کتاب بسیار بهتر است از آن کتاب اول.
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May 9, 2020
Che c’entravano, comunque, quei libri con suo padre? Se per suo padre avessero mai significato ciò che la loro scoperta, a scuola, aveva significato per lui, tutto sarebbe stato diverso, la sua famiglia, la sua infanzia, la sua vita. Così, invece di pensare i pensieri dei grandi pensatori sul tema della morte, Zuckerman pensò i suoi.
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