A Million-Dollar Misunderstanding

By R.Z. Sheppard

ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND by Philip Roth Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 225 pages; $10.95

Philip Roth once described himself as part Henny Youngman and part Henry James. His severest critics, however, treated him as if he were part Lenny Bruce, part Meyer Lansky. The studious, law-abiding author of Portnoy's Complaint was regarded by some to have distorted his heritage for a few laughs and committed a profitable act of cultural gangsterism. Judging from his published responses, Roth was surprised that he had caused such a fuss. One does not, after all, have to be Alfred North Whitehead to understand that the characters in Portnoy are amusing words on paper. On the other hand, one did not have to be the smartest man in Elyria, Ohio, to recognize neighbors' traits in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

The fact remains that writers, like industrialists, exploit resources. And writers usually get more personal. Roth's heightened realism works because it is faithful to specific locales, customs, attitudes and speech patterns. His urban Jews would be out of place in Addis Ababa. Ironically, fame made Roth himself vulnerable to distortion and caricature by the heightened realists who turn successes into celebrities. To be regarded as the thinking man's Woody Allen is the sort of acclaim he can live without.

But what a clever idea for a novel. In Zuckerman Unbound, a sequel to The Ghost Writer, Newark-born Nathan Zuckerman has made a million dollars with Carnovsky, an ethnic and sexual extravaganza that resembles Portnoy's Complaint. Zuckerman's problem is not sex but a reluctance to indulge in the conventional rewards of his money and fame. Says Andre Schevitz, his agent: "First you lock yourself away in order to stir up your imagination, now you lock yourself away because you've stirred up theirs."

It is a no-win situation. Whenever Nathan goes out, he is reminded that "life has its own flippant ideas about how to handle serious fellows like Zuckerman." The statement is a blueprint for the novel, a string of introspections and encounters designed to mock Nathan's austerity and high artistic purpose.

In The Ghost Writer, the promising young Zuckerman fancied that a Harvard researcher was Anne Frank. He even imagined marrying this martyr who had somehow survived the death camps. Fifteen years later, the author of Higher Education, Mixed Emotions, Reversed Intentions and the controversial Carnovsky has broken up with his wife. Laura was not an imagined Jewish saint but a selfless political activist. It was a hopeless match that Zuckerman might have novelized under the title "Mixed Intentions." "Hers is the cause of righteousness," he moans. "Yours the art of depiction."

Nevertheless, everyone wants famous Nathan to do the right thing. A stranger on a bus is disappointed to see him on public transportation and suggests buying a helicopter to "fly straight over the dog-poop." He is urged to invest his money elsewhere than in his shoe, dress more expensively and circulate with other celebrities. The result is Zuckerman in nighttown with a glamorous Irish actress named Caesara O'Shea who reads Kierkegaard and disappears in the morning to continue her top-secret affair with Fidel Castro.

A less fortunate prisoner of the personality racket is Alvin Pepler, a Newarker known as the "Jewish Marine" when he starred briefly on a TV quiz show during the '50s. Pepler's problem: he was dumped from the show when he wouldn't take a dive. He now wants Zuckerman to help publish his book about the scandal. In addition to this pathetic pest, there is a blackmailer who grows indignant when Nathan refuses to pay $50,000 to prevent the kidnaping of his mother: "Don't get high and mighty with me," says the caller. "Because if it was my mother, let me tell you, there wouldn't be that much to debate about. I'd act, and fast. But then I would never have gotten her into this to begin with. I wouldn't have the talent for it."

Roth's stab at seriousness is less brilliant. As he dies, Zuckerman's father looks at his son and whispers, "Bastard." Is this the final misunderstanding, the last, most painful blurring of illusion and illusionist? The question is mooted by Zuckerman's response. He is relieved. With his father dead and his old Newark neighborhood unrecognizable, the author of Carnovsky is literally unbound.

Like the end of Portnoy's Complaint, the conclusion of Zuckerman Unbound suggests a new beginning. Nathan even shows his impatience when he says, "Being a poor misunderstood millionaire is not really a topic that intelligent people can discuss for very long." As a sturdy vehicle for Roth's comic genius, Zuckerman may show up again: Will he travel to Prague and discover Franz Kafka as an aged steam-bath attendant? Will he beget children who grow up to be literary critics? Will he win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and have to return it when everything in the book is discovered to be true? --By R.Z. Sheppard

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.