Counter-life

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gegenleben (English original title: The Counterlife ) is a novel by the American writer Philip Roth , which was published in 1986 by the New York publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux . The protagonists are the Jewish-American writer Nathan Zuckerman, already known from Roth's previous novels, and his brother Henry, who emigrated to Israel in order to trace his Jewish identity. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987 and was a finalist in the National Book Award . The German translation by Jörg Trobitius was published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1988 .

content

I Basel

Since the publication of his scandalous novel Carnovsky , writer Nathan Zuckerman has been at odds with his younger brother Henry, a dentist. Nathan accuses Nathan of having made his family the subject of his literature for selfish reasons and of having distorted what drove both parents to their deaths. Henry only contacts Nathan again shortly before his death. A routine examination revealed a narrowing of the arteries . A beta blocker keeps the risk of a heart attack under control, but as a side effect of the drug, it has been impotent ever since .

When their relationship was still intact, Henry entrusted his apparently urbane and sexually experienced brother with the extramarital affair with a Swiss woman named Maria, who took him completely captive. At that time he did not dare to leave his wife Carol and their three children. Now he seems to mourn the missed opportunity and throws himself into an affair with his - in Nathan's eyes completely unattractive - dental assistant Wendy. Because he cannot bear to no longer be able to satisfy her physically, Henry decides to have a bypass operation , from which he dies , although he has no other symptoms .

Nathan, who, as a family libertine , has felt obliged to support his brother in his decision, asks himself at his coffin whether Henry had not rather expected that his older brother would dissuade him from the idiotic plan. On the eve of the funeral, the writer writes down a text about his brother's true motives that is completely unsuitable for being read out as a funeral oration the next day. Carol gives a mendacious funeral speech in which she reinterprets Henry's operation as an act of love for his wife.

II Judea

Henry survived the operation physically well, but the fact that he risked his life for an insignificant affair plunged him into a serious mental crisis. He, who has been a secularized , assimilated Jew all his life , suddenly discovers Zionism as his mission. The dentist gives up his practice, leaves family, loved ones and the United States and emigrates to Israel , where he calls himself "Hanoch", learns Hebrew and studies the Talmud . On behalf of Carol, Nathan travels to follow his brother.

The trip to Israel confronts Nathan Zuckerman with people who are completely committed to the idea of Judaism , from which he has always tried to distance and free himself, especially in his literature. As a Jew living in the diaspora , he is repeatedly attacked for representing the goyim cause and for not taking a sufficient position for Israel's right to exist . He finds Henry in a small settlement in the West Bank , where he is under the influence of the militant fanatic Mordechai Lippman. His young brother defends himself against his motives not being taken seriously and merely being psychopathologized as a good son who follows a father figure , as the writer does with everyone.

III In the air

Nathan has to leave without having achieved anything. On board the El Al plane to London , he writes letters to his brother and his liberal friend Shuki, who fears that Zuckerman could harm his compatriots with a distorted image of Israel. Suddenly he is drawn into a plane hijacking of a crazy American student and fan of his books named Jimmy, who smuggled a hand grenade into the plane. In a pamphlet he calls for the closure of all memorial sites for the Holocaust in order to free himself from the past. Jimmy is quickly overwhelmed by two brutal security guards, but Nathan is also undressed and interrogated by them. They assume he is the authorship of the pamphlet and confront him with the real reason for anti-Semitism : the fear of Jewish power. The plane turns around and takes Zuckerman back to Israel.

IV Gloucestershire

It is not Henry but Nathan who becomes impotent after drug treatment for his heart problems and cannot bear this condition because he is driven by a sudden desire to have children with his beloved, a married English woman named Maria. Against Maria's wishes, he decides to have a bypass operation, from which he dies. His brother Henry, with whom there was no more reconciliation, appears at his funeral. Even at the funeral of his older brother, Henry feels neglected and unable to take on his field, language. Nathan's lecturer gives the funeral oration in which he praises Carnovsky , of all things , the novel through which Henry sees his family's life stained and damaged.

After the funeral service, Henry gains entry to Nathan's apartment. He discovers the writer's last manuscript and is furious at the unencrypted and distorted representation of himself into which Nathan has translated his own problems. To protect his family, he takes parts I to III of the novel and throws them in the trash at a motorway service station. Later that evening, Maria wants to say goodbye to her lover in Nathan's apartment. She discovers the rest of the manuscript, which now only consists of Part V. Although she reveals her love story with Nathan and sees her family belittled, she decides to publish her lover's estate. The interviewer to whom she answers questions turns out to be the ghost of the late Nathan.

V Christianity

On the flight home from Israel without incident, Nathan Zuckerman lands in London, where he and the family of his pregnant wife Maria attend a pre-Christmas church service. Nowhere does he feel so much a Jew as in a Christian ceremony. Maria's mother, who comes from an impoverished country nobility , treats her American son-in-law with snobbery , Maria's malicious sister with literary anti-Semitism . With the remark that her mother would never accept an unbaptized grandson, she arouses an initial doubt in Zuckerman's idealistic hope of finding a new life at Maria's side. When an old English woman makes anti-Jewish remarks at Maria's birthday party, a marital dispute ensues. Zuckerman, whose works in America had always been criticized by Jews, experienced true anti-Semitism for the first time. He feels betrayed by his wife, who downplays the incidents and accuses him of being like Mordechai Lippman, that he is his brother.

In Chiswick , on the construction site of their planned house, the escaped Nathan comes to again. He realizes that he and Maria have only fought a proxy war for their parents' worldviews, because of which he does not want to jeopardize the future of their young marriage. He is afraid that when he returns to Maria he might only find her farewell letter. But as a writer he can't help but imagine this letter, a letter with which not only a woman leaves her husband, but a character from a novel leaves the novel. In this letter Maria declares that she no longer wants to be part of his story, in which, as a writer, he is always looking for conflict and dramatic escalation, while she just wants to find her peace of mind. Zuckerman also replies to her in a letter in which he denies that there is a self at all. Instead, they are all just the sum of their roles, it is just a theater. The book from which Mary is trying to escape is as close to life as life can ever come.

expenditure

  • Philip Roth: The Counterlife . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1986, ISBN 0-374-51899-4 .
  • Philip Roth: Counter life . From the American by Jörg Trobitius. Hanser, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-446-14948-1 .
  • Philip Roth: Counter life . From the American by Jörg Trobitius. Dtv, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-11500-9 .
  • Philip Roth: Counter life . From the American by Jörg Trobitius. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-499-23177-8 .

Reviews