| Title | : | Nemesis |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0547318359 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780547318356 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 280 |
| Publication | : | First published October 5, 2010 |
| Awards | : | Wellcome Book Prize Shortlist (2011) |
Nemesis Reviews
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With "Nemesis" Philip Roth presents another masterpiece in terms of linguistic brilliance, composition and the creation of a lasting effect on the reader. The story takes place in 1944. In Europe and the Pacific the world war raged.
In the summer of 1944, a polio epidemic broke out in Newark, New York. (Poliomyelitis) It was the strongest epidemic in eleven years.
Philip Roth has written a very exciting and tragic story. You can follow the story breathlessly as a reader and the reader witnesses the inner conflict that Bucky Cantor has with god. Philip Roth names his novel after the Greek goddess of revenge 'Nemesis'
A very haunting book that makes you thinks about destiny. For me an absolutely readable story, in very well-kept language! -
I have been thinking about what makes some books stay in my memory...
... even long after I returned them to a library in a town from which I moved away some ten years ago? And why others just fade away to the extent that I could possibly read them again without ever recognising that I have actually met the characters before? Or to the extent that I buy a new copy because I have forgotten I own one already?
Philip Roth's "Nemesis" is one of those books I remember with force after ten years, and I know why as well. The topic is heartbreaking, and very realistic: a polio epidemic in the 1940s, and how it affects the characters over the course of their lives. As such, it is nothing out of the ordinary, just well-written, good, vintage Philip Roth.
But when I come to the last page, the book closes the circle of the story with - yes! - a memory of the main character from before the the epidemic, and it evokes this picture in me of all the hopes, dreams, ideas we have when we are young, when our life is still a novel to be written by us, and we imagine it to be a heroic tale with a happy beginning, middle and end (although we don't think of the end, of course, and of the fact that the novel would be outrageously bad, from a literary standpoint!).
The main character's early memory, dating before the tragedy unfolds, is of powerful vitality, and it emphasises the impact of the main theme of the later plot, - both physical and mental loss. It is so incredibly sad to read about the young person the main character remembers, and to imagine what comes afterwards, - his failure to cope with the realities of life, his Nemesis, as the title of the novel indicates, referring to ancient Greek drama, where heroes were first put on stage to act out our ideal of a perfect life.
In fact, that very last sentence of the book has more than one reference to ancient Greek idealism, as it shows the Olympic, athletic act of throwing a javelin, carried out by a body not yet destroyed by polio. It demonstrates the treacherous belief in humankind's perfectibility that so often is followed by Nemesis' entrance on the stage:
"Running with the javelin aloft, stretching his throwing arm back behind his body, bringing the throwing arm through to release the javelin high over his shoulder — and releasing it then like an explosion — he seemed to us invincible."
The novel closes on that word: invincible... - a sad counterweight to the story of defeat.
Invincible, invincible, invincible - that is what made me remember this novel so clearly.
It is like the slave standing behind the almighty emperor whispering "Memento mori". And yet, the memory of that moment of invincibility is beautiful!
And it made the novel memorable as well. The power of words to conjure up dreams... -
The last of the eponymous tetralogy, Nemesis is the powerfully written tale of Bucky Cantor and the Newark polio crisis of 1944. Unable to go into the war like his friends primarily due to his poor eyesight, Bucky - a natural athlete- works as a gym teacher and playground director (do those even exist anymore?) when the epidemic hits Newark hard. As always Roth's prose is sublime, his humanity breathtaking, and his analysis sharp and precise. Roth said that this would be his last book ever and I must admit that it is a great way to walk off the stage with a short but wonderful book like Nemesis.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us. -
A further reading of a book that has stayed with me. I'd go as far as to say it's one of the five most memorable books I've read. A sympathetic and sometimes unsettling account set at a time of suspicion and suffering. The reflection on human nature - both good and bad - has the ring of complete truth about it. It's easy to believe that the conversations and events depicted here actually happened. It's both a sad tale and an uplifting one. It's a book that creates in the reader the need for reflection, to ponder on the the messages the story carries.
A good book? No, in my opinion it's a great book. One I'll return to again, for sure.
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Roth's books are usually dark, unsettling, argumentative, challenging, sexually explicit, political… well, you get the picture. So not quite what you'd necessarily reach for when you're spending your summer holiday lazing on a beach. But if you've had your fill of crime capers and mysteries and fancy something a little more serious then a ration of Roth might just do the trick.
This novel is set in Newark in the sweltering Summer of 1944, at the time of a polio epidemic. It follows a young man who is not fighting in the war due to his poor eyesight and has instead become a school playground director. His goal is to nurture and protect the young people in his charge and to show them the joys and benefits of sporting activity. What transpires is told beautifully by the author, as we witness the story unfolding through the eyes of one the youngsters who is to become a victim of the outbreak. It's a concise and spare tale but is none the worse for that.
It's a gripping story of compassion and dedication set against the backdrop of truly heartbreaking events. It's a departure, I feel, for Roth - gone is the anger and invective that permeates much of his work, replaced by subtlety and a deftness of touch I've not seen from him before. A wonderful read one not to be missed. -
if i pie-graphed all the (wasted) hours i've spent arguing on this site, a sizable portion would be wedged out to old man roth. he's one of those guys that really drives people batty (call it a flaw, but i really really love those people who drive other people up the wall): whether he's too ironic, too earnest, too jewish, too american, too classical, too postmodern, too stylized, not stylized enough, too white, too old, too liberal, too conservative, or that he's a misogynist, racist, sexist, self-loathing anti-semite, etc. lotsa people have serious problems with the old bastard. but like morrissey (about the only thing they have in common), those who dig him really dig him. and for those in this camp, i have 2 pieces of good news:
1. in the opening pages of nemesis, in which your typical roth book divvies up the author's work into categories, there appears a new one: SHORT NOVELS. under this heading are his last few: everyman, indignation, the humbling, nemesis. i'm hoping this signifies the end to one of the least interesting chapters in roth's oeuvre.
2. of the four titles under this heading, nemesis is the best. beyond its own merits, it's exciting as it shows roth climbing outta that old-as-fuck self-pitying mode which has dragged down the (pretty) good: everyman, the (truly) bad: exit ghost, and the ugly: the humbling. here's hoping that his next book is one of those big bad complex panoramic novels that roth does better than just about any other living writer.
skimming the nytimes review for nemesis, i came across this bit:
"His characters sometimes get caught up in a kind of Socratic Möbius strip, endlessly debating one another and themselves in a way that can verge on the tedious, but even then one cannot but marvel at his sheer energy, his unremitting investment in — what? Provocation. Interrogation. The feat of living. This is not a nihilist. This is a writer whose creative work lays bare the act of struggle."
yes. yes. yes.
(in vain, i hunted for a lost thread in which mike reynolds - another rothfan - waxed poetic on roth's energy and anger. anyone know where this is?)
oh. and here goes a totally irrelevant (but very fun) link to piss off monsieur watkins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a60D4M... -
„Uneori ai noroc, alteori nu. Orice biografie este o chestie de noroc şi, începînd chiar de la naştere, norocul – tirania contingentului – este totul. Any biography is chance, and, beginning at conception, chance – the tyranny of contingency – is everything” (p.258).
Termin Nemesis cu sentimente amestecate.
Drama lui Bucky Cantor, tînărul profesor de Sport învins de poliomielită și de modul său aspru și rigid de a gîndi, este mișcătoare. Frazele sînt la locul lor (citiți mai sus și mai jos cîteva extrase). Discuția din final dintre Bucky Cantor și Arnie Mesnikoff (fostul lui elev, naratorul acestei povești) ridică miza romanului (cei doi discută despre relația dintre necesitate și liber arbitru, printre altele), chiar dacă unii critici literari l-au catalogat drept „minor”. Și, totuși, simt că lipsește ceva.
Nici un alt roman al lui Philip Roth nu mi se pare atît de cuminte. Parcă a fost scris pentru juriul academiei suedeze. Lipsesc sfidarea, ironia, cinismul, „țicneala” eroilor din celelalte cărți. Bucky Cantor se închide în convingerea de neclintit că el a fost purtătorul maladiei în tabăra de la Indian Hill (dar și în grupul de copii din Newark) și că trebuie să-și asume o vinovăție - pe care, altminteri, nimeni nu i-o recunoaște.
Nici un argument (oricît de întemeiat) nu-l ajută să se privească altfel. Nici Marcia nu reușește să-l convingă de faptul că e un inocent (alături de toți ceilalți). Așadar, nici iubirea nu-l ajută să vadă mai limpede. De îndată ce se îmbolnăvește, Bucky Cantor decide că e vinovat și că trebuie să plătească. A răspîndit boala, a rămas infirm, cineva trebuie să răspundă pentru tot ceea ce s-a petrecut. Viața lui se oprește în acest punct și în acest loc. Urmează o lungă rutină, un timp gol, o repetiție monotonă a căinței.
Atletul admirat de toți (săritorul de la trambulină, aruncătorul de suliță), alege să nu mai dea nici o bătălie. Cel care-i fascina pe copiii de pe terenul de sport se retrage din viață. Și totul încremenește pentru el într-o vară toridă din 1944. Toți ceilalți știu de ce, numai el nu-i în stare să priceapă.
Iată ce-i spune Marcia în timpul disputei de la spitalul din Philadelphia:„Niciodată n-ai putut cîntări lucrurile la adevăratul lor preţ. Niciodată! Te consideri întotdeauna răspunzător atunci cînd de fapt nu eşti. Responsabil e întotdeauna fie înfiorătorul Dumnezeu, fie înfiorătorul Bucky Cantor, cînd de fapt responsabilitatea nu aparţine nici unuia” (pp.276-277).
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I read this in a day (it was Sunday). Started at 9 in the morning (weather unseasonably cool); finished on the stroke of midnight. I did stop to eat and breathe and watch a movie, but gulping down a short Roth was very invigorating. This novel has a powerful grip for one so short, like an 80 year old grandmother who just won’t let you go. It’s a tragic story of a polio epidemic in 1944 in Newark, New Jersey and I give it four big stars for its urgency, unusual subject and the fact that Philip Roth is NOT banging on about his old withered penis and its uncanny power over women one third his age. That is good news for a reader like me who thinks that Mr Roth is a great writer when he’s not boring us into a state of hyperaggravation about his shrivelled old member and its hypnotic properties. However I did contemplate docking one star for the unhappy lapse into symbolism and crude theological discussions at the end, which went something like
“God is a complete bastard.”
“O Bucky, don’t be so childish.”
“Hmph.”
But then I thought no, give Mr Roth back his fourth star. I like to like him, I’m sorry I don’t get the opportunity more often because of his hideous sexual problems.
And also, I appreciated, if that is the right word, which it isn’t, the unspoken irony which hangs over the whole story like a leaking zeppelin, which is that this is a sad and touching tale of a handful of deaths in a particular Jewish community and how devastating they are, whilst off-stage, over in Europe, under the cover of the war which is constantly referred to, entire Jewish millions were being slaughtered, entire communities, with no one left to be devastated, no one left at all. -
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on”—Robert Frost
“The meaning of life is that it stops”—Franz Kafka
In Nemesis, Eugene “Bucky” Cantor works as a recreation director at a park in Newark in 1944. Because he has bad vision he can’t serve in WWII fighting Hitler, but his battlefield (at the recreation center) becomes the largest Polio epidemic in the US since 1916, also affecting many Jews. Besides his eyesight, Bucky is otherwise fit and strong, at one point leaving his job for a similar one in the Poconos, becoming engaged, joining a family such as he has ever known (his mother died giving birth to him, his father was out of the picture). Everything seems perfect, until it isn’t, in the war in Europe (for millions, of course, but also including one of his best friends) or the war at home against polio, and in his own personal life.
Nemesis is Philip Roth’s last novel, published in 2010 at the age of 77, after which he took his retirement from writing novels. He died this year, 2018. Roth is largely a tough-minded writer, so I can say it is pretty rare that I get misty-eyed from his writing, but in the concluding image of the young Bucky Cantor throwing the javelin to the applause of the young boys who so admired him and his physical prowess, I’ll admit I was moved:
“Running with the javelin aloft, stretching his throwing arm behind his body, bringing the throwing arm through to release the javelin high over his shoulder—and releasing it then like an explosion—he seemed to us invincible.”
Of course Bucky is not invincible; he is not Superman, or a Greek god, but a mortal being like any of us, as all of his Nemeses books –Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and Nemesis—reveal, each main character enduring the truths of loss and regret. But they also face hard realities with stoicism. Suicide is a consideration in each of the four books, and sometimes minor or major characters choose that option in the face of the terrible. But usually there’s a kind of resolve, or pluck.
In Everyman: “Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”
Or The Humbling: “Play the moment, play whatever plays for you in that moment, and then go to the next moment. It doesn't matter where you're going. Don't worry about that. Just take it moment, moment, moment, moment.”
What else do you have in the face of inevitable decline? You hold on to craft, to good work, in the Nemeses books, something to hold up against any formidable nemesis: The father butcher in Indignation; in Everyman, the father jeweler (and a gravedigger who speaks of his work) and in The Humbling the craft of acting is the main character’s work. In Nemesis, the young sports director Bucky cares about sport—swimming, throwing the javelin with perfect form; then there is his future father-in-law who is a fine physician, very thoughtful and calm and knowledgeable in the face of the epidemic. In the craftsman in each of these books we see the very image of the writer Roth, crafting to the end.
Nemesis is a beautifully crafted and simple book, with a pretty narrow scope, involving a return to Newark, to his Jewish community there, and what was for everyone at the time an incurable disease that created panic and loss and desolation. Sometimes in the Nemeses books it’s bad choices that lead to loss, as in Indignation: “the incomprehensible way one's most banal, incidental, even comical choices archive the most disproportionate result.”
And sometimes it’s chance: Polio, the luck of the draw, one means to an inevitable end, a nemesis. In each of the four stories a nemesis or enemy defeats the main character, though death is the central enemy, the invincible conqueror for each of them.
In three of the books he evokes a central text in classic literature: in Everyman it is the classic medieval morality tale Everyman; in The Humbling it is Chekhov’s The Seagull, and in Nemesis it is the classical story from Greek Mythology. Nemesis was the goddess who enacted retribution against those who succumb to hubris. Nemesis is also called Adrasteia, or “the inescapable.” Or the inevitable, the invincible, as in death. The polio epidemic is a sad tale, sure, but in the hands of a good storyteller, it becomes a powerful one. I admire the way Bucky and Roth handle their nemeses, with grace and dignity.
1. Everyman (completed August 3, 2018)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
2. Indignation (completed July 30, 2018)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
3. The Humbling (completed August 9, 2018)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
4. Nemesis (completed August 22, 2018)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -
A nurse shares a smile with a child inside of an iron lung, City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States
"Today childhood summers are as sublimely worry-free as they should be. The significance of polio has disappeared completely. Nobody anymore is defenseless like we were."
Philip Roth's Nemesis is a terrifying book taking place in 1944, eleven years before the polio vaccine was available. It is set in a Jewish neighborhood in Newark, NJ where we are witness to the terror afflicting the citizens as more and more people, especially children, are afflicted with the virus.
Scientists knew polio was caused by a virus, but they didn't know how it spread and entered the body. When something is unknown, our brains do a remarkable job of coming up with answers.
The frightened citizens of Newark blamed the contagion on everything imaginable, from touching money to eating a hot dog, from Italians to Black people, even the summer heat itself.
It was interesting to watch as their fear made them suspicious and hateful of the people around them. Everyone was a potential carrier of the disease.
"I don’t know why it attacks who it attacks. I don’t believe that anyone does. That’s why everybody tries to find who or what is guilty. They try to figure out what’s responsible so they can eliminate it."
The book centers around Bucky, a young school teacher who is playground director for the summer. He watches, helpless, as more and more children come down with polio. He, like everyone else, seeks a cause of the virus. He is left questioning "God", how could an omnipotent being allow or even cause such things to happen.
It was thought-provoking to note, with the year being 1944 and several of the neighborhood's young men fighting in the war, that no mention is made of how the Jews were being exterminated in Europe, and how an all-good and all-powerful Supreme Being could allow or even be responsible for the Holocaust. Was the polio outbreak ravaging this Jewish community a metaphor?
Philip Roth was an incredible writer with a deep understanding of human nature and I was drawn in to this book almost immediately. Though it lags in a few places, it is an engrossing story.
I was horrified to learn how ghastly polio was, with the years of suffering it caused to even the survivors. The world is fortunate to have a vaccine. Anti-vaxxers need to take a look at recent history and see how science and vaccines have saved millions of lives and prevented untold misery.
The world is fortunate to have a vaccine. -
If you have never read a Philip Roth book before, then this is your perfect opportunity: you only need three hours. But keep in mind: though it does contain some of his classic ingredients (the Northeastern city of Newark as the place of action, the Jewish environment, the process of a 3rd storyteller who tells the life of someone else), this is not a typical Roth.
First of all "Nemesis" is much shorter than most of Roth’s other books, and it does not contain that complex composition, deeper stratification, and wonderfully spun out storytelling of
American Pastoral and
The Human Stain or the neurotic and excessively sexually obsession of
Portnoy's Complaint and
Sabbath's Theater. The 'Roth universe' indeed is much richer than what this booklet has to offer. It looks very much like Roth in his old age forced himself to go to the essence and to focus exclusively on how people deal with the blind tragedy of life (whether it is the war - because this is happening in 1944 - or the polio virus that paralyzes and kills innocent children) and how this makes or breaks their lives.
With "Nemesis" Philip Roth did what John Williams did with
Stoner and Ernest Hemingway with
The Old Man and the Sea: at the end of their lifes they wrote a perfect short novel, with a simple composition, in an incredibly ripe literary style and with a restrained passion that touches the reader emotionally to the core. All three of these novels revolve around the same theme: human destiny and its setbacks, and how to deal with it. And of course, the three authors each have their own emphasis, one more fatalistic than the other, but in the end with all three novels I had the same mix of emotions: a mixture of anger (yes anger, even rebellion) about the wasted life of the protagonists and yet also resignation and even acceptance.
I only have one advice to the reading addicts that we all are, here on this website: read this book by Roth, let yourself be touched, cry with it, get angry, put it away and then live, for heaven’s sake: LIVE! -
What a joy! After reading several debut or "promising" novels, it is a relief to be in the hands of a skilled professional. I see no diminution of Roth's power in his last novel. The story of a young man in 1944 Newark, in the midst of a polio epidemic, is brilliant and thought provoking.
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FRICKIN FANTASTIC---
If I could pick one author to study ---(read and discuss his books)---in a College University class---
it would be Philip Roth.
He gets to me 'Always'.....and "Nemesis" is a gem.
Rather than add anything else to the already wonderful 'other' 5 star reviews that several people also gave this book....
I'll just say--- I think Roth is one of our very best contemporary American writers we've got!
Love how this guys brain works!!! -
It wasn't great Roth, but I've got to say almost any Roth is going to be pretty damn good. This one focuses on a polio epidemic in 1944. It seems like late in Roth's writing career, after going on one of the greatest runs of 5 star literature ever, Roth spent a decade writing high little novellas that allowed him to explore delicate themes. These books seem to me, the equivalent of Frank Lloyd Wright spending his last years working just on chairs and desks. So, yes, pretty damn good, but in the end they just aren't the things that will be remembered about Roth. They are his funky chairs, just not his holy houses.
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Din pacate am ajuns sa traim niste vremuri in care multi dintre noi au avut trista ocazie de a-si pune urmatoarele intrebari cumplite: "Daca sunt purtator sanatos?", "Daca eu sunt bine dar cei din jurul meu se imbolnavesc?", "De ce eu am scapat, dar cei dragi nu?", "Cu ce am fost eu mai bun decat ei?", "Unde este dreptatea?"
Oricat de mult te-ai consuma pentru aceste intrebari, raspunsul nu vine si adesea ramai cu reminiscentele acestea de vinovatie, neputinta si amaraciune pe care nimic nu le poate alina.
Romanul debuteaza cu epidemia de poliomielita din Newark, America. Aceasta este o boala extrem de contagioasa care afecteaza in special copiii, tinerii si rareori adultii, facand ravagii grave in organism. Daca bolnavul supravietuieste paraliziei muschilor respiratorii, atunci il asteapta o perioada lunga de recuperare. Graitoare si dureroase sunt acele poze din aceea perioada in care vedem 'plamanii de fier', acei cilindri metalici la care erau conectati pacientii pentru a putea respira.
Bucky Cantor este profesor de sport si supraveghetorul terenului de joaca de la scoala din cartierul evreiesc Weequahic, unde pandemia era tinuta cat de cat sub control.
Intr-o zi un grup de italieni din cartierele afectate vine pe terenul de sport si scuipa spre copii cu intentia vadita de a transmite boala. Bucky reuseste sa-i alunge, dar a doua zi unii copii nu mai vin la joaca, fiind bolnavi. Unii dintre ei mor iar parintii il acuza pe Bucky ca ii lasa sa alerge de capul lor pe terenul de sport. Iubita lui, Marcia, incearca sa-l convinga sa plece in tabara la Indian Hill si sa paraseasca scoala. Pana la urma Bucky face intocmai, dar se tot framanta si se tot invinovateste ca nu a ramas langa copii. In momentul in care si in tabara din Indian Hill incep sa se imbolnaveasca elevii Bucky face o descoperire socanta care il va distruge.
Romanul ridica multe probleme grave si serioase la care un om cu constiinta si cu inteligenta s-ar gandi, cum ar fi acel cocktail fatal dintre neputinta si vinovatie care reuseste sa subjuge total omul si din care este foarte greu de iesit, chiar daca cei din jur (Marcia) incearca sa-l dezvinovateasca. Este un proces care trebuie parcurs intr-o cruda singuratate si care rareori duce la vindecare. Tot acest 'rage' impotriva lui Dumnezeu n-are nici el un rezultat, pentru ca toate aceste intrebari chinuitoare raman fara raspuns.
Pe de alta parte, ne putem gandi ca Bucky crede ca a esuat ca adult si profesor ce avea in grija acesti copii si care trebuia sa-i tina in siguranta. Este o povara extrem de grea pe umerii lui, deoarece nimeni nu doreste sa fie sursa si cauza raului, sa propage raul si boala si sa fie responsabil de decesul unor copii. Faptul ca ia asupra sa o asemenea povara este mult prea mult pentru el.
Titlul, Nemesis, ma gandesc ca nu face referire la zeita greaca Razbunarii, ci are o acceptiune Homeriana, in sensul de dreptate divina. Aici ne gandim la a da fiecaruia ce merita sau ce i se cuvine si ne trimite cu gandul la nedreptatea mortii si la lipsa de logica cu care survine aceasta, deopotriva la cei batrani cat si la cei mult prea tineri.
Mi-am adus de asemenea aminte de sintagma din engleza 'his nemesis' care face referire la dusmanul cel mai aprig al cuiva, practic antiteza lui. Daca Bucky putea fi initial privit ca un erou, atunci 'his nemesis' trebuie sa fie, mintea lui, constiinta sa, interiorul sau. Cel mai mare dusman al sau este asadar el insusi.
In concluzie, va recomand romanul pentru analiza acestor sentimente pe care, iata, in vremurile noastre le putem incerca si noi, dar fiind si un exemplu elocvent de a nu deveni proprii nostri calai, ingropandu-ne intr-o vina si neputinta care nu ajuta la rezolvarea situatiei ci ne aduc distrugerea. O carte dupa care merita sa te opresti, sa stai putin si sa te gandesti la situatiile ce te pot atinge si pe tine. Nu e doar povestea lui Bucky sau povestea vecinului sau a vreunui necunoscut de la televizor, ci poate sa fie, din pacate, povestea noastra. -
Nemesis: “the inescapable agent of someone's or something's downfall.”
“a long-standing rival; an archenemy.”
“a downfall caused by an inescapable agent.”
The Oxford Language Dictionary
Nemesis is the 8th book I have read by Philip Roth. I chose this book to read more or less by accident. Scanning my book shelves at home my eyes fell upon a bright yellow paperback written by Philip Roth. Roth has been under much discussion by friends on GR lately so I thought, “yes, let’s read some “Dick-Lit” (thank you, Robin for the category name)." Well, was I in for a surprise. This book is not Dick-Lit nor is it in any way recognizable to me as a book written by a Philip Roth known to me. It’s actually a heartbreaking novel of historical fiction about a polio epidemic that raged through Newark, New Jersey from 1944-1945 disabling and killing many children. At the same time, WWII is raging in Europe and many sons of Newark are fighting overseas. The story mostly focuses on the polio epidemic but the war overseas is in the background throughout, coming into the foreground as parents receive word of the death of a son. Nemesis is also a story with themes relevant today with the Covid pandemic still rampant around the world.
WWII is also in the mind of Bucky Cantor, our protagonist. Bucky is an athletic and strong 23 year old playground director who is devoted to the kids under his supervision and very disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his peers.
The story begins during the summer of 1944 and we learn that summer is the season for polio. Why? At that time, no one knew but “escaping the city’s heat entirely and being sent off to a summer camp in the mountains or the countryside was considered a child’s best protection against catching polio.” The children whose parents couldn’t afford to go away for the summer would congregate on the baking asphalt of the playgrounds in the scorching heat, playing inning after inning of softball, doing exactly what they weren’t supposed to do, overexerting themselves (a possible cause of polio) drinking from the forbidden water fountains, “crowding up against one another… unmindful of how (their) imprudence might be dooming any one of (them)..” And children start dying in record numbers.
"The numbers of the kids sick and dying from polio in Newark corresponded to the numbers of the dead, wounded, and missing in the real war (WWII)... because this was real war too....upon the children of Newark.”
On a deeper level this story asks the age-old question after tragedy strikes,“Why?” Why do certain children die from polio while others escape it’s grasp? Why do some of their older brothers die in the war in Europe? These are the questions which most human beings ask after tragedy strikes. Why him? Why my child? Why? In Newark, there were many things blamed: the heat, pests, the Jews, lack of cleanliness, certain fruits and vegetables or other foods which may have been consumed just before a child became sick. Bucky was to blame at one point for not protecting the kids. The list of things to blame and scapegoat goes on and on…..because parents were desperate to find the reason for polio and to shield their child from it.
As more and more children contract Polio Newark parents become more and more angry and scared about this horrible “nemesis.” Early on in the story a father, Mr. Michaels, asks why his son Alan had to die:” He “always did his schoolwork…always helped his mother. Not a selfish bone in his body. Was going to begin in September to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah. Polite. Neat. Wrote each of his brothers (fighting overseas) V-mail letters… Why did Alan get polio? Why did he have to get sick and die?”
With “Why, ” Who? or What? often follows. Someone or something must be responsible for tragedy. Blame must rest somewhere. Since the reason for polio was as yet unknown God is often mentioned in one way or another. As Bucky asks, after too many of the kids he knows and loves have died:
“And where does God figure in this? Why does He set one person down in Nazi-occupied Europe with a rifle in his hands and the other in the Indian Hills dining lodge in front of a plate of macaroni and cheese? Why does He place one Weequahic child in polio-ridden Newark for the summer and another in the splendid sanctuary of the Poconos?…."
Bucky, who tries so hard to take good care of the kids under his charge changes drastically over the course of the novel as does his view of God:
"Bucky's...conception of God was of an omnipotent being who was a union not of three persons in one Godhead, as in Christianity, but of two, a sick fuck and an evil genius.”
Roth understands the ever so human and often very Jewish proclivity towards both self-blame and the questioning of God by previously fervent believers.
"Bucky... had to convert tragedy into guilt. There is an epidemic and he has to find a reason for it. He has to ask why…..he looks desperately for a deep cause, this manic of the why, and finds the why either in God or in himself....or both”
This novel and it’s questions resonated on a very personal level for me. I can recall asking why? when someone close to me died way too young or was diabled in a cruel way. I also recognize the trait of self-blame. I am an atheist so do not recognize in myself the blaming of God for tragedy, at least not as an adult.
On a side note, in my reading of many Holocaust memoirs I recall that some religious Jews were unable to believe in God any longer, for if there were a God, how could he let the Holocaust happen? They became secular Jews. While some secular Jews came to think that if they had believed in God the Holocaust might not have happened or they and their families would not have been so tragically affected by it. They became religious Jews.
My understanding of all of this is that human beings feel helpless in a world run amok and do what they can to understand and control it, whether that takes the form of self-blame, blaming God or blaming others (rightfully or wrongly). This takes different forms in different people and circumstances but seems to be universal. -
How does an epidemic spread...and what is infected? Can a society become infected by the bias it has 'inoculated' within the norms/values it shares? My favorite book by Philip Roth.
-
Headline: Tremendous Writer Tackles... Playground Apocalypse!
This is perhaps the weakest in the Nemesis series of Roth's more modern more briefer novels--Everyman and The Humbling offering a wider array of human emotion with more surprises/anecdotal acrobatics than here, were the sole surprise is that the title refers not to a human adversary. -
Helle, meet Philip. Philip, meet Helle. Except of course, Philip Roth has not met me – but I have certainly met him. His is one those names that have been hovering on my horizon for years, but after abandoning Portnoy’s Complaint years ago (vowing that I’d get back to it when I was a more mature reader), I kept putting it off, suspecting he wasn’t really my kind of thing. I’m still not sure that he is, but I’m glad to have met him.
The novel is a portrait of polio and its ravaging effects in 1940s America, more specifically in a Jewish neighbourhood in Newark during the summer of 1944. As we know, polio was a nasty disease that attacked mainly children, sometimes paralyzing them, sometimes killing them. For years, nobody had any idea of how it spread, and fear became a constant side-effect. This is the background for the story, as the children around a sweltering Newark playground are trying to pass the summer while Bucky Cantor, their athletic mentor and friend, tries to ward off the epidemic and keep up everybody’s spirit. He begins to wonder what kind of god would do something like this to children and gradually ponders life choices that may or may not have cataclysmic results (hence the title).
Meanwhile, Bucky’s girlfriend is at a safe summer camp up in the cooler mountains, insisting that he join her. Their love is palpable, their happiness an almost too-happy antidote to the horror of the polio epidemic, not to mention the war in Europe, which Bucky couldn’t join because of poor eyesight. His best friends are there, and though he feels guilty for not being able to sign up, he tries to make a difference at home. But how does he choose between the children who are caught in the maelstrom of polio and his girlfriend who offers him the glimpse of a life he had previously only dreamed of?
The novel began quietly and seemed, at first, to be a general description of polio. I was mildly interested. Then Bucky entered the story, and things perked up. But Bucky doesn’t offer much in the way of interiority, and though it’s well written with sentences like:
The four o’clock sun was no less punishing than the twelve o’clock sledgehammer.
The lake was fed by natural springs. The words sounded like the name of an earthly wonder: natural springs – yet another way of saying “no polio”.
there is something flat or wooden about the storytelling. I was almost the only one in my reading group who liked the novel; everyone else felt more or less unmoved by it despite the topic. It partly has to do with Bucky’s somewhat insipid character, I believe, and his overly responsible, guilt-ridden take on life but also the aforementioned lack of true interiority. Mainly, though, it has to do with the narration. The first person narrator who begins the novel doesn’t show itself again until the end when the novel falls flat on its face to me because the voice simply tells us what happened. This framing device had the effect of sucking out the life of the rest of the story to me and left me deducting a star (which had tentatively been there for a while).
A pretty good and interesting book about a topic that I’d never read about before. It must be one of the only novels that take place between 1939 and 1945 which is not about World War II. That alone makes it an interesting portrait of a time. So thanks for the story, Philip. Not sure when we’ll meet again.
-
La Nemesi è la giustizia distribuitiva riparatrice dei torti ed è, secondo la mitologia classica, in mano agli dei o al fato. In entrambi i casi il concetto di nemesi implica un'idea di equilibrio fra il bene e il male, un raddrizzamento dei torti o una riparazione degli eccessi, per giungere ad una cosmica equità.
Ma non è questo il senso che appare qui, nel racconto lucido e implacabilmente nero di Roth.
L'interrogazione sulla qualità del dio che permette il male peggiore, avventandosi sull'innocente (l'epidemia di polio è una peste che colpisce e stronca i fanciulli nel fiore delle loro possibilità) è l'assillo del protagonista: il giovane, onesto, benevolente Bucky Cantor che non può opporre al male inspiegabile, subdolo e irreparabile, la robusta costituzione fisica e morale della propria rettitudine e della propria capacità di bene.
Sarà lui a farsi portatore di una sua personale particolarissima nemesi, lasciando tuttavia insoluta ogni domanda sul significato e sull'origine del male.
Magistrale partitura di Roth, ma dobbiamo essere consapevoli che qui "si va ne la città dolente" e dunque "lasciate ogni speranza o voi ch'entrate". -
Driiiiin!
Suona finalmente la campanella della terza ora, Lucrezia sprofondata in uno stato di narcolessi fin dalla sua entrata a scuola quella mattina, finalmente si riscuote e apre un po di più gli occhi. Sta per arrivare il momento della sua materia preferita ,dopo la letteratura italiana, letteratura greca. Sebbene detesti la professoressa con tutto il cuore a causa della sua tracotante ignoranza e della sua perfidia, e sebbene spieghi praticamente leggendo dal libro e senza aggiungere un concetto di suo ,che sia una solenne stupidaggine (come le conferma poi il libro quando ci va a studiare), Lucrezia ascolta interessata, anche se spiega lei, perchè la letteratura greca le piace "assai" fin da quando balzellava sulle ginocchia del padre a sette anni implorandolo di leggergli ancora una volta il mito di Perseo e Medusa (raggiungendo livelli di eccitazione palpabili quando si arrivava a parlare di Pegaso).
Cosi appena la prof apre il libro e comincia a legger...oppps spiegare, Lucrezia tende bene le orecchie, e si concentra.
"Allora ragazzi oggi parliamo di un concetto fondamentale nella letteratura greca la ὕβϱις (si legge Hýbris), cosa è la ὕβϱις? Nella trama della tragedia la ὕβϱις è un evento passato che influenza in modo negativo gli eventi del presente. È una "colpa" dovuta a un’azione che vìola leggi divine immutabili, ed è la causa per cui, anche a distanza di tempo, i personaggi o la loro discendenza sono portati a commettere crimini o subire azioni malvagie. Strettamente collegata con la νέμεσις (némesis) che le consegue direttamente. Cosa è la νέμεσις? Innanzitutto significa "vendetta degli dei", "ira", "sdegno" ,è ,quindi, la punizione giustamente inflitta dagli dei a chi si macchia di tracotanza. La νέμεσις fa nascere nell’individuo proprio quei sentimenti di pietà e di terrore che permettono all’animo di purificarsi da tali passioni negative che ogni uomo possiede. La catarsi finale, per Aristotele rappresenta la presa di coscienza dello spettatore, che pur comprendendo i personaggi, raggiunge questa finale consapevolezza distaccandosi dalle loro passioni per raggiungere un livello superiore di saggezza. Il vizio o la debolezza del personaggio portano necessariamente alla sua caduta in quanto predestinata (il concatenamento delle azioni sembra in qualche modo essere favorito dagli déi, che non agiscono direttamente, ma ex macchina). La caduta dell’eroe tragico è necessaria, perché da un lato possiamo ammirarne la grandezza (si tratta quasi sempre di persone illustri e potenti) e dall’altra possiamo noi stessi trarre profitto dalla storia. Insomma ragazzi la tragedia greca sembrerebbe proprio una mirabile telenovela, di quelle fatte bene"- "perchè ne esistono?" Pensa intanto fra sè e sè Lucrezia cercando di ricordarsene una- "solo che ha il preciso intendimento di mostrare al cittadino Greco il perfetto standard morale da seguire, che poi sembra dirgli: Sennò lo vedi che ti succede!"
Fine delle divagazioni.
Quando ho deciso di cominciare questo libro, sono rimasta lungamente a fissare il titolo ricordandomi appunto cosa succede in alcune "nemesi" ai miei vecchi amici Greci.
Mai nulla di piacevole, ve lo posso assicurare.
Ho quindi cominciato il libro carica di presagi, che infatti non tardano a manifestarsi:
"Il primo caso di polio quell'estate si verificò agli inizi di giugno, subito dopo il Memorial Day, in un quartiere italiano povero all'altro capo della città rispetto al nostro. Dall'angolo sudoccidentale di Newark, nella zona ebraica di Weequahic, noi non ne venimmo a conoscenza, e non venimmo a conoscenza nemmeno dei casi successivi, una decina, sparpagliati in quasi tutti i quartieri tranne il nostro. Solo il 4 luglio, quando in città si registravano già quaranta casi, sulla prima pagina del quotidiano della sera comparve un articolo dal titolo Autorità sanitaria allerta i genitori contro la polio, in cui si riportavano i consigli alla famiglia del dottor William Kittell, direttore del servizio sanitario locale: tenere sotto stretta osservazione i propri figli e contattare un medico se un bambino mostrava sintomi come mal di testa, mal di gola, nausea, torcicollo, dolori alle articolazioni o febbre..."
Ecco infatti l' allegro incipit e poi di seguito un affascinante dissertazione sulla polio che ho spesso avuto maniera di incontrare in altri romanzi ,ma quasi sempre, come la disgrazia degna di compassione di un personaggio secondario, da tutti nominato con pietà e trattato con condiscendenza.
Ma ecco che mi ritrovo ad averci a che fare come protagonista! Perché è proprio lei la Nemesi del titolo e la vera protagonista del romanzo, e che nemesi! Peccato che non ci avesse pensato uno dei tragediografi Greci! E dire che a quell' epoca la polio già esisteva...
Non incontriamo prima di quattro o cinque pagine dall' inizio il protagonista secondario del nostro romanzo e vale a dire Bucky Cantor.
Bucky Cantor è il tranquillo animatore di un campo giochi finché la Nemesi non decide di fare la sua conoscenza.
Perché proprio con lui? Come andrà a finire?
Le risposte a queste domande meritano di essere lette nel libro stesso, anche se poi alla fine non è detto che siano quelle definitive ne tantomeno quelle giuste.
Ma una cosa posso dirvela con certezza, il libro è bellissimo. -
Roth can tell you a lot about Newark, New Jersey. It was a perfect backdrop to his Plot Against America and it works here in a more nuanced plot. The story takes our protagonist from a summer job supervising kids at a playground during the war to the middle of a polio outbreak in his own neighborhood.
I feel on dangerous ground describing any more of the story. The details of day to day life in Jewish Newark sound authentic and Roth, having been raised there, needed only to mine his memories rather than do heavy research. One letter to the New York Times suggested that the encounter here with polio parallels the Jewish experiences with the holocaust in Europe. For me, that rings true as God's presence or absence is seen from many perspectives and haunts the final chapters.
My GR friend David Schaafsma's review can provides some very interesting context and points Roth fans might want to consider.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -
This is a short book, just over five hours or so in the audio version. I had gotten up to page 128 and sensed tragedy coming. Since I couldn't stand the suspense, I turned to the e-book from the National Emergency library. I started reading faster and faster, until I finally finished in the wee hours of the morning. (Actually the wee hours had begun getting bigger again). Oh, my goodness! Did I read so fast because I could just keep pushing the pages up and away? Maybe -- but the last book I read this fast was not an e-book; it was
Lincoln in the Bardo, and in that case, too, I couldn't tolerate being in limbo. (Is bardo ever used that way? Figuratively?)
Nemesis is about an epidemic. For that reason it reached out from my Audible queue and grabbed me when I went to see what to listen to next. It was the polio epidemic of 1944. But who knew there had been a polio epidemic of 1944?
The key correspondence to our pandemic today is the lack of knowledge about the disease at the time and the large amount of verbiage emanating from public officials and authority figures -- well-meant, intended to forestall panic and authoritatively uttered. And the many people making decisions based on what they were told.
I read that the author wanted to explore the impact of chance -- fortune, luck -- on people's lives and deaths, here, meaning some were in the path of the disease while others fortuitously escaped, depending on where fate had plunked them down.
In this book, mischievous misinformation isn't part of the mix.
An example of the effect of fortune in our times: Boris Johnson contracted COVID 19, after which the trajectory of Great Britain's pandemic response seemed to shift and diverge from that of the U.S. To the contrary, Donald Trump never had the virus (so far as we know.) A similar occurrence would be the diminution of homophobia in a conservative politician whose beloved child has come out to him.
In this book Roth is also dealing with theodicy and with a protagonist for whom (according to the Roth stand-in) Fortune = God.
"Theodicy" = "God" + "justice" ("dikē"), and is often referred to as "the problem of evil:" How do we resolve the existence of evil with the existence of a good and loving God?
The forces aligned a little too neatly against the protagonist in this book, though, and in that I saw not the hand of the Lord but the hand of Philip Roth. And a protagonist punishing himself according to a 1950s moral code. All of which made the book just a little bit less than perfect. 4 1/2 stars.
Everybody should read this. I emailed Audible.com to reinstate Nemesis in their ranks of available audiobooks and told my public library the same thing. Although the library doesn't have the downloadable audiobook, they do have the audio CDs, unfortunately unavailable currently.
Thanks once again to the
National Emergency Library for making the e-book available at no cost and with no queue.
I'm not the only one noticing Nemesis:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/co... -
Némesis es una novela que se desarrolla durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial y que sin duda no dejará indiferente a nadie. Sobre lo dura que fue la póleo durante los veranos de los años treinta y cuarenta mientras la guerra tenía lugar, es una novela con un ritmo trepidante, con un protagonista muy bien construido y con una historia que no dejará indiferente a nadie.
Estamos ante una novela que cuenta con un giro increíble al final, que deja con la boca abierta y que demuestra la virtud del autor a la hora de escribir mezclando dos tipos de narradores (algo que se descubre al final).
El personaje de Bucky me ha parecido sumamente fascinante, construido en torno a su tormento por la culpabilidad que siente tanto por no haber ido a la guerra como por las muertes de sus alumnxs por la póleo. Es un personaje redondo, fuerte, con una voz que se desmarca de lo que estamos acostumbradxs y que deja con ganas de más. Me ha encantado ver su evolución y observar la capacidad que tiene el autor de construirlo.
Sin duda Némesis ha sido una novela fascinante, que me ha dejado con ganas de leer más obras del autor y sumamente recomendable. Es de esas lecturas duras, reales, cercanas, pero que no se olvidan y que nos hacen recordar aquellos años 30 y 40 donde lxs niñxs morían por la póleo y los adultos por la guerra. -
The Petrifying Fear of Polio in 1944 Newark, NJ, USA
As war raged overseas in 1944, the U.S. was fighting against the polio epidemic, particularly in its largest cities, such as Newark and its large Jewish community. In this short novel, probably Philip Roth's last one, he explores the effects on a community when a lurking, unseen evil is the enemy: fear, panic, loss of faith in God. Polio is a virus, or infectious disease, that can cause severe weakness in muscles and paralysis. No vaccine for polio was available until 1955. Roth really captures a fear of pestilence from its infancy to its growth to its maturity in several heinous forms.
Bucky Cantor is Roth's 23-year-old virile, clean-cut playground director who is not serving in the war due to his bad eyesight. He falls in love with a home girl, who is working as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp, and gets engaged. The virus (infectious disease) hits his playground and his girlfriend insists he come stay at her camp away from the spread of polio which has not hit their camp.
Through Bucky, we see first hand just about all imaginable ravages of the creeping Polio antagonist, mentally, emotionally and physically.
It's a stirring tale of the pernicious paralysis caused by a spreading virus and the pressurized fear of the disease as it spreads through and consumes an entire community. -
Das war ziemlich enttäuschend. Bislang hatte ich noch nichts von Philip Roth gelesen, und daher war ich auf die oft gepriesene Erzählkunst des Dauergeheimtipps für den Nobelpreis gespannt. Ich konnte hier aber weder stilistisch, konzeptionell oder sprachlich etwas Besonderes erkennen. Die Geschichte der Polio-Epidemie im Jahr 1944 an der Ostküste der USA wird aus Sicht des 23-jährigen Sportlehrers Bucky Cantor erzählt, der in der ersten Hälfte des Buchs für die Betreuung der Gemeindesportplätze in den Sommerferien und im dritten Viertel für Summercamp-Betreuung in den Wäldern verantwortlich ist. Roth schreibt über ihn:
Bucky war weder hochintelligent […] noch im Entferntesten unbekümmert. Er war ein weitgehend humorloser Mann, der sich zwar ausdrücken konnte, aber nicht geistreich war, der nie etwas Satirisches oder Ironisches sagte und kaum je einen Witz machte oder im Scherz sprach.”
Dieser letzte Satz beschreibt nicht nur Bucky, sondern auch mein Eindruck vom Buch generell. Es ist in klassischer amerikanischer Art erzählt, auf einer Erzählebene, nett ausgedrückt, aber wenig reflektiert oder geistreich, chronologisch wie ein Katastrophenschutzbericht. Außerdem störte mich die Vielzahl an Wiederholungen und unnötigen Informationen zum Beschreiben eines Sachverhalts, wie in dem oben stehenden Satz (Satire, Ironie, Witz, Scherz! Alla hopp, ich hab’s kapiert, der Typ war ne Spaßbremse). Der erste Geschlechtsakt mit seiner Freundin geschah dann vor Jahren im Spätsommer “an einem Samstag um kurz vor Vier in dem Bett, mit den vier gedrechselten Pfosten und dem Baldachin mit Blumenmuster”. Das hört sich für mich mehr wie eine Bildbeschreibung aus einem IKEA-Katalog an.
Inhaltlich habe ich nicht verstanden, was Roth mit dieser Geschichte eigentlich sagen wollte. Bucky ist ein Anti-Hiob. Buckys Vorstellung von Gott war nicht die “von einem allmächtigen Wesen, das keine Dreifaltigkeit war im Christentum, sondern eine Zweifaltigkeit - die Vereinigung eines perversen Arschlochs mit einem bösartigen Genie”. Wirklich kein sehr geistreiche Ausdrucksweise. Reihenweise fallen die Kinder in diesem Sommer dem Poliovirus zum Opfer und der Pratogonist setzt am Ende alles dran, die Tragödie in seine Schuld umzuwandeln. Ein von mir geschätzter Kritiker lobte das Buch als tröstend. Ich habe selten so etwas trostloses gelesen, wenn es um die Frage geht, wie man als Mensch dem übermächtigen Elend in der Welt gegenüberstehen soll. Mir hat das Buch nicht gefallen. -
Roth’s last book and my first Roth’s book. As any of my school teachers could tell you – I have absolutely zero respect for authority, so I approached Philip Roth with exactly as much reverence as I would have for any first time writer in their 20s. Additionally, I find Roth’s rabid fanboys the most annoying demographic ever, so if you are one of them you might want to do yourself a favour and stop reading right here.
Alright, let’s see what this male Joyce Carol Oates has to offer. As a side note – isn’t it interesting how Oates is literally being accused of being over-prolific but no one says that about Roth?
This is a review of Nemesis but I’m also now reading American Pastoral and it’s hard not to comment on some obvious similarities. I hope the remaining 30 books of his are about something else. So what do we have here? An all-round American golden boy (even if Jewish) – athletic, honourable, burdened with a great sense of duty, decent and deprived of any sense of humour, whose life comes apart due to some perverse tragedy that God Roth sends his way. Roth, himself generously endowed in the irony department, deprives his golden boys of any sense of it, which in turn makes them so tragic. They cannot comprehend their own failure and the injustice of fate.
The above is true for both American Pastoral (or at least the first 120 pages of it I’ve read so far) and Nemesis. But let’s now focus on the latter one. Roth starts it with a plural first person narrator but, thank God, it’s just an opening gambit, quickly abandoned. I’m all for experimentation but a plural first person narrator is mind numbing.
It’s a summer in 1940s and the town of Newark is struck with an epidemic of polio. The first half of the book is gripping, emotional and authentic. It’s the sort of story that you have to keep reminding yourself is just a book of fiction so as not to cry for all the broken lives there. The only false note there was Bucky’s, the book’s hero, questioning and eventually rejecting God. It just seemed so out of character for him that for a moment he sounded like a mouthpiece for someone else.
The story is still told by a rather mysterious first person narrator, who is really just an insignificant observer (another similarity with American Pastoral) and we forget about him until the final part of this book where he suddenly makes his presence known and comes forward to literally explain the whole thing to us. Now, I can see that this sort of fourth wall breaking is very much part of Roth’s style but completely unprepared at the time I had a very ‘WTF’ reaction to it. Completely abandoning the golden rule of ‘show, not tell’, the narrator proceeds to explain to the reader what Bucky was all about and what it all meant, how his big sense of responsibility was the cause of his downfall, etc., just in case the reader missed the point. Frankly, I was irritated and felt I was being patronised by the freaking narrator who didn’t trust me to get the book without him beating me on the head with the explanation. It didn’t work for me, it took me out of the story and also I’m out of a job as a reviewer, because Roth’s already reviewed the book in its final chapters. Something similar happens in American Pastoral, where the narrator is at the same the author who writes the book but it’s done a lot better there. Clever, even.
All in all – great book, shame about the ending.
PS. My favourite quote - “So unschooled was he in extravagance that he took the presence in a house of more than one bathroom as the height of luxurious living.” This was true for me as well. I remember when I first visited a house with two bathrooms I was absolutely blown away and decided it was a benchmark of having made it in life.
PPS. In an interview posted on Paris review website Roth says: “But you know, I don’t believe that the biography of a writer has anything to do with his books.”
I mean, LOL, Roth, LOL. (In another interview from 2010 Roth says he would never stop writing because how could he). -
Il protagonista di questo ultimo romanzo di Philip Roth mi ricorda molto Markus Messner, il protagonista di Indignazione. Come lui Bucky Cantor è giovane, forte, di sani principi, adorato dai nonni che lo hanno cresciuto dopo che sua madre è morta di parto, un ragazzo di successo, è animatore di un campo giochi che si dedica con tutto sé stesso ai ragazzini che allena. Bucky è innamorato ricambiato di Marcia, una bella ragazza anch’essa piena di pregi, di ottima famiglia, i due hanno uno splendente futuro insieme.
Un evento imprevisto, una epidemia di poliomielite, si abbatte nell'estate del 1944 su Newark e comincia a falcidiare gli indifesi alunni di Bucky. Questo evento scatena emozioni profonde quali paura, panico, rabbia, confusione, sofferenza e dolore, quelle stesse che abbiamo vissuto in questi anni di pandemia. Ma a parte le riflessioni che rendono il romanzo di un’attualità e di una forza uniche -letto oggi-, il libro scava nel tormento che gli eventi scatenano in Bucky, ebreo osservante, che si ribella contro quel Dio carogna che permette tutto ciò, che semina la morte nelle vite esili di tanti bambini: quale Dio potrebbe permettere ciò? Il tormento interiore di Bucky è narrato con intensità, in modo come al solito sublime, ed è tanto forte che porta Bucky verso l’annientamento di tutto quello che è ed è stato, perché scervellarsi per trovare di chi sia la colpa di quanto accade porta a un risultato drammatico che distruggerà l’esistenza di Bucky e di tutti coloro che lo amano.
Si tratta dell’ultimo romanzo scritto da Philip Roth, che contiene ancora una volta quei temi che hanno fatto di lui lo scrittore incommensurabile che conosciamo: il senso di colpa che il dio degli ebrei inietta, come un liquido velenoso nel sangue, nell’animo umano e che ossessiona gli uomini per tutta la vita, riuscendo a lasciare soltanto crolli e macerie dietro di sé. E’ il peso schiacciante dell’ “ebreitudine”. -
کتابی دربارهی بیماری، مرگ، وظیفهی اخلاقی، عدالت خداوند، عشق و سرسختی.
بنظرم آثاری وجود دارند که واجب است دانشجویان پزشکی با آنها مواجه شوند؛ تا بیماری فقط بیماری نباشد برایشان، تا ابعاد تحتتاثیر قرار گرفتهی زندگیِ بیمار را درک کنند. مثل «ریش قرمز» کوروساوا؛ مثل همین کتاب، یا «یکی مثل همه»ی فیلیپ راث. -
The Polio epidemic during the summer of 1944, in Newark, N.J, that terrified a town and a nation; not knowing what it was, where it came from, and how it transferred from one person to another.
Gripping and relatable.
