Zuckerman's Liberation

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Zuckerman's Liberation (English original title: Zuckerman Unbound ) is a novel by the American writer Philip Roth , which was published in 1981 by the New York publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux . It is part of the Zuckerman trilogy about the Jewish-American writer Nathan Zuckerman, which opened in 1979 with The Ghost Writer (German: The Ghost Writer , 1980) and concluded in 1983 with The Anatomy Lesson (German: Die Anatomiestunde , 1986). The German translation by Gertrud Baruch was published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1982 .

content

With three books published in 1969, Nathan Zuckerman is an established writer. But only with his latest novel Carnovsky does he land a bestseller . The novel, spiced with explicit sexual descriptions, is on everyone's lips, the author and his permissive protagonist are put at one in public. Suddenly Zuckerman not only got rich (the sold film rights to his novel alone make him a millionaire), but also a person of public interest who is reported in gossip columns and who is recognized by everyone on the street. Even before his novel was published, Zuckerman left his wife Laura to break with his boring life. Now he not only longs for Laura, but also for that very life back again.

A brief affair with the actress Caesara O'Shea ends abruptly when she leaves him for Fidel Castro . On the other hand, Zuckerman is stubbornly persecuted by a fan named Alvin Pepler, who not only shares Zuckerman’s Jewish origins and the hometown of Newark , but also recognizes his own life in the figure of Carnovsky. Pepler, a great connoisseur of Amerikana , was involved in the American quiz show scandal and has not gotten a leg on the ground since then, which he exaggerates as a parable of the fate of the Jews in America . Even in anonymous calls in which a blackmailer in a disguised voice announces the kidnapping of Zuckerman's mother, the writer believes he recognizes his persecutor Pepler.

Zuckerman's mother is rustic towards journalists who want to write a homestory about “Carnovsky's mother”, but secretly she suffers from her son's novel, which her acquaintances can only understand as offensive and indecent. At least Zuckerman's father, who is in need of care after a stroke, seems immune to the shame his son brings on the family. But when he dies and his last word addressed to his son is understood by Zuckerman as a "bastard", Zuckerman's brother Henry, trapped in an unhappy marriage and therefore jealous of the supposed libertine , his brother , accuses his father through his novel having killed.

On his return from the funeral, Zuckerman makes a detour to his native Newark and sees with his own eyes that the once Jewish suburb has crumbled into a ghetto and only a ruin reminds of his parents' house. When a Black Zuckerman asks who he is, he replies "Nobody" and realizes that he has spoken a deep truth, that from now on he is a person without family and origins.

interpretation

Charles Van Doren (right) next to presenter Jack Barry on the quiz show Twenty-One

The fictional writer Nathan Zuckerman serves Philip Roth in the Zuckermann trilogy as an alter ego , with which he reflects his own stations as a writer. Zuckerman's liberation from the scandalous novel Carnovsky is a reminder of Roth's own situation after he published the novel Portnoy's Complaints in the spring of 1969 , which was misunderstood as the author's pornographic and autobiographical confession. Also Carnovsky is according to Thomas David to "a stimulus exhibitionist " declared the pornographers of his own life "public media" and its author. Zuckerman is helplessly exposed to the intrusion of the public into his private life, which he sees as an insult to his human dignity . This is taken to extremes in a scene in which three psychotherapists and a television presenter analyze his castration complex and question the author's sanity.

The figure Zuckerman is mirrored in his "pop alter ego blinded by the spotlight of show business" Alvin Pepler, who with his eidetic memory not only embodies Zuckerman's ideal novelist, but also with his review of Carnovsky , with which he himself The New York Times hopes to become the embodiment of the mindless and commercial literary criticism that drew Roth’s fierce criticism following the publication of Portnoy’s complaints . In addition, through his involvement in the Quishow scandal, which reminds of the events in the Quiz Twenty One in the 1950s (filmed as a quiz show by Robert Redford ) , Pepler becomes the " incarnation of an eloquent deception on the American population", which for Roth finally, in the person of American President Richard Nixon ends (see. to his satire Our Gang ( Our Gang )).

reception

John Lahr described Zuckerman Unbound in New York as a "fascinating" novel about a writer separated from life who no longer comes into contact with experience. RZ Sheppard praised Roth's "comic genius" in Time . Harold Bloom discovered in the New York Times Book Review a " Gogolian sense of ridicule" in the novel. The entire Zuckerman trilogy including the epilogue deserves “the highest aesthetic praise for tragicomedy ”. Martin Lüdke read "a strangely tricky game that Roth [...] stages with brilliance". By putting the objection to his book Zuckermans Blackmailer himself into the mouth (“Brilliance - yes, depth - no”), Roth undermines the reviewer's expectation of a “solid story”. Rather, the book is “one grandiose heap of rubble. The perfect fiction. Simply clever. "

expenditure

  • Philip Roth: Zuckerman Unbound . Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1981, ISBN 0-374-29945-5 .
  • Philip Roth: Zuckerman's Liberation . From the American by Gertrud Baruch. Hanser, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-446-13539-1 .
  • Philip Roth: Zuckerman's Liberation . From the American by Gertrud Baruch. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-548-20413-9 .
  • Philip Roth: Zuckerman's Liberation . From the American by Gertrud Baruch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2005, ISBN 3-499-23973-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas David: Philip Roth. Rowohlt's monographs . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-50578-2 , pp. 84–86, 112.
  2. ↑ Thomas David: Philip Roth. Rowohlt's monographs . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-50578-2 , p. 86.
  3. ↑ "fascinating". John Lahr: Let Us Not Praise Famous Men . In: New York of June 2, 1996.
  4. ↑ "comic genius". RZ Sheppard: A Million-Dollar Misunderstanding . In: Time of May 25, 1981.
  5. ↑ "Gogolian sense of the ridiculous", "the highest level of esthetic praise for tragicomedy". Harold Bloom: His Long Ordeal by Laughter . In: The New York Times, May 19, 1985.
  6. ↑ W. Martin Lüdke: Simply refined . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1982, pp. 198-201 ( online ).