Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – June 15, 2009 – Page 21
Roth’s suspense propels novel of big ideas Indignation By Philip Roth Houghton Mifflin Company 2008 Hardcover 233 pages If you are a character in prolific writer Philip Roth’s latest novel, his 29th, there is much to be indignant about. A middle-aged father loses his lifelong sense of decorum and rages helplessly; a son seeks independence and intellectual fulfilment only to be harassed by classmates; hundreds of female coeds are terrorized by a band of marauding male students who are bloodied and drunk; a poised and privileged upper-class daughter does not have enough privilege to stop her from seeking to end her life; sexual repression reigns freely; and, all the while, the brutal and protracted Korean War rages in the background. Once I hit university and graduated from my steady high school literary diet of John Wyndham and John Steinbeck, I became obsessed with the writings of Philip Roth. Perhaps it was because Roth represented a sort of symmetrical, yet overlapping, Other to me: Jewish (though sometimes uncomfortably so), yet (very) male, American and, perhaps most importantly, more than a generation my senior. This age gap meant that, for Roth, investigating Jewish themes as he does, the thematic tensions he often presents – between Jewish particularism and American acculturation; and about sexual politics – seemed, to me, to be rooted in a particular historical time and, thus, somehow exciting and even exotic. As a sort of real-life parallel, perhaps, one of my most cherished possessions is a hardcover copy of Portnoy’s Complaint – the yellow cover has now become iconic in Jewish American literature – with the name of the grandfather I never met – and for whom I was named – inscribed in ballpoint pen. I knew little of my grandfather’s artistic or intellectual inclinations, and, somehow, finding this book at my grandmother’s shiva represented a link to family and cultural generations past. Unlike most of Roth’s recent protagonists, Marcus Messner of Indignation is young. He is a high school graduate who has convinced his increasingly protective, kosher butcher father and supportive mother to allow him to leave the confines of Newark for Winesburg College, a small, fictional liberal arts school in Ohio. Those familiar with Roth’s character style might at first be surprised by Marcus’s seemingly ordinariness, and his apparent and utter lack of neurosis. Anticipating a quiet and unobtrusive atmosphere with which to pursue his interest in history and philosophy, Marcus splurges on $300-worth of brochure-looking university clothes to arrive ready to fit in – at least superficially – to his new life. While he is courted by the Jewish fraternity, and by its handsome and slick student representative who ultimately and unwittingly helps give way to tragedy, he seeks a solitary existence. Until, that is, he meets Olivia, the daughter of a well-heeled doctor. Olivia is a beautiful student who easily serves up sexual favours against a dark personal past. (The symbolic relationship between Marcus’s Jewish butcher father and Olivia’s WASP doctor father is rich for interpretation.) But, like most of Roth’s other protagonists, Marcus is also nearing his life’s end, a point that is made relatively early on in the book, and which works to cloak the plot with emotional tension. Like Alfred Hitchcock did in film, Roth uses suspense powerfully – we know that it’s coming, but we don’t know when. One is never totally comfortable in the narrative, with the proverbial dark clouds looming on the horizon. And, like Roth’s other writing, the prose is masterful, pro-
Book Review Mira Sucharov pelling the story through the use of language that manages to convey both parsimony and richness in the same passage. But this book is more than just plot or suspense. It is, ultimately, a book of big ideas: life, death, Jewish ritual law, murderous nationalism, institutional rules, marriage values, cultural assimilation, gender mores, sexual norms and aging. The overlapping symbols of meat slaughter, battlefield aggression, sexual (and gender) tensions and self-inflicted pain are what gives the story its structure. At first glance, this is not a book that leaves readers to create these metaphorical links themselves. But, on further reflection, it may be that, in presenting a more modern and open-minded take on interfaith dating – in particular from a mother who was born almost a century ago – Roth ultimately subverts this view by presenting the gentile object of his affections as fundamentally flawed, with visible scars to prove it. Indignation is not a happy book. But there are enough ‘what-ifs’ peppering the discrete themes, and characterizing the story’s climax, that it may ultimately be a hopeful book. ‘What-if’ realizations are ultimately what may allow us to change the future in light of the past?
How can you joke about that? I have a friend, Jack Newman, who is addicted to humour, mostly one-liners. He can’t resist giving me quick responses whenever I talk to him. He was even telling jokes at my parents’ shivas. I asked him once how he could just keep on going like that. “I took lessons from the Energizer bunny,” he said. “Listen, you can’t just go around making jokes all the time,” I responded. “I’m gonna go all Jewish on you and say, ‘why not?’” he shot back. “It’s unseemly. You were telling jokes at my father’s shiva.” “Yeah, but you laughed.” “Well, it was funny,” I admitted. “So, was it more unseemly to tell the joke, or more unseemly for you, the bereaved son, to have laughed?” “I couldn’t help myself. It was hilarious.” “What did I say?” he asked, trying to remember what was so funny that he made me laugh at my father’s shiva. “I don’t remember,” I told him. I never get the best of him in these discussions. I even tried telling him it was unacceptable to joke about some subjects. “Try me,” he challenged. “Disabilities. You can’t make a joke about people with disabilities.” “Did I tell you about my girlfriend who looked like Heidi Klum?” he asked. “She was beautiful, but she had a lazy eye. So we broke up. I kept on thinking she was seeing someone else.” “Drug addiction,” I said. “That’s a serious problem. How can you make light of it?” “My car stalled, so I took it to my dealer. He couldn’t find anything. Why I expected my drug dealer to fix my car I don’t know.” “That’s not that funny,” I was finally able to tell him. But he had another line ready.
Humour me, please Rubin Friedman “I’m addicted to placebos. I would quit, but it wouldn’t make a difference.” “Donating blood; that’s so boring and it saves lives. What could be more earnest and serious than that?” “I went to the blood donor clinic. When the nurse asked me what type I was, I said ‘I’m an outgoing cat lover.’” I was getting annoyed. “What about mental illness? It’s not fair to make jokes about people with such difficulties.” “Sometimes I’m afraid of big white bears and sometimes I’m not. I think I’m bipolar.” “The Holocaust. Let’s see you make a joke in good taste about the Holocaust!” “A friend from Berlin said that you can’t get a good bagel in Germany. Whose fault is that?” By then, I was completely exasperated. I thought long and hard and said, “I have a subject that will stump even you. It is impossible to tell a joke about Adolf Hitler.” He paused briefly and answered, “I saw a documentary on Hitler yesterday on PBS. They said that Hitler had bad breath. You know, the more I hear about him, the less I like him.” I laughed and scratched my head. “I don’t know, but somehow it feels like you broke the rules. What principles did you use?” “There were rules? Jokes always break the rules,” he argued. “That’s what makes them funny.” Then he quoted Groucho Marx: “These are my principles. And if you don’t like them, I have others.”