Zuckerman in pain—physical pain, psychic pain, existential pain—as Roth continues to follow his nakedly, overbearingly autobiographical alter-ego: what was high art in The Ghost Writer became a glossy, so-so hybrid in Zuckerman Unbound. . . and has now become something intermittently powerful or funny, strangely fascinating, yet grimly embarrassing, It's 1973. Zuckerman, 40, author of the notorious Carnovsky (read Portnoy's Complaint), is still haunted by his father's death-bed curse, his brother's hatred, and now his mother's death. He hasn't been able to write a decent page in months and months. He has "lost his subject." He's losing his hair. Above all, Zuckerman has lost his health, having become half-immobilized by chronic neck and back pain: he has tried a grisly litany of doctors, including an analyst; he spends much of the day on his back on a "playmat," numbed with vodka and Percodan, ministered to (sexually and otherwise) by a quartet of girlfriends. And his only zest comes in brooding furiously over an attack on him by one Milton Appel (clearly modeled on Irving Howe)—recalling Appel's favorable review of Zuckerman's first fiction (near-exact paraphrase of Howe's actual words about Goodbye, Columbus), stewing over this recent abuse, arguing with it, indulging in unspoken tirades of retaliatory invective. How, then, can Zuckerman escape the "selfness of pain," the selfness of his writing, all this dead-end writhing, this entrapment in the past? By becoming a doctor, he thinks. So eventually he takes off to visit an old doctor-chum in Chicago, looking for reed-school-admission help. But by now he is flying from his drug/booze saturation: he hires a limo, using the name Milton Appel, "kike-pornographer," supposed editor of Lickety Split; in this role, he subjects the woman chauffeur to ugly tour-de-force fantasy-arias about porn, Hugh Hefner, Jewishness, "Appel's" life; and he winds up running amok in a Jewish cemetery—nearly throttling a grieving old man ("the last of the fathers demanding to be pleased"), fracturing his own head on a footstone, landing in the hospital. . . yet still determined to be an M.D., to "unchain himself from a future as a man apart and escape the corpus that was his." Roth's talent for half-comic ghastliness flickers vigorously throughout this nightmare-novel; his bravura wordsmanship—fine-tuned, orchestrated colloquiallism—gets ample (if contrived) exposure. But, in terms of craft, this may be Roth's weakest fiction: repetitious, unshapely, registering as a belabored short story—with a more-of-the-same ending that doesn't seem like the close of a novel, let alone the close of a trilogy. And, more important, the autobiographical premise breaks down badly here—as Roth shifts constantly, uncomfortably, between self-pity and self-deprecation, repentance and defiance, occasionally lifting the proceedings onto a more resonant level (through an almost Kafkaesque treatment of pain-as-metaphor). . . but more often sinking down into the petulance, pettiness, and sentimentality of one writer's woes and feuds. Still, if some readers will be lured (or put off) by Roth's roman clef specifics, others will be drawn to the Chinese-box ironies (Zuckerman yearning to escape "self" in '73, Roth at the summit of "self" in '83)—and to the squirming spectacle of a writer trying to find a bearable approach for fictional self-examination, trying to defend himself and crucify himself at the same time.
Pub Date: Nov. 28, 1983
ISBN: 0679749020
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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