The Counterlife

Author - Philip Roth ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Vintage was reviewed on 24-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:0679749047 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Counterlife Reference Book. Classifications : General AAS Literature Humanities New & Used Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books General AAS New & Used Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books General AAS Qualifying Textbooks Custo . Click the following link to view the cover of The Counterlife.

Related topics: General AAS. Literature. Humanities. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. General AAS. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books.

1) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. The Countertife, by Philip Roth (Page numbers refer to 1988 Penguin Books edition)

Nathan Zuckerman, Jewish writer, husband of several gentile wives, a guy who believes that thinking about things matters, this literary invention of Philip Roth, works out his own death and life on paper. Zuckerman pieces together his fate and then takes it apart in varied settings: New York, Israel, and England; at the Wailing Wall, airborne, at a carol service in London´s West End - "it was as though they were symbolically feasting upon, communally devouring, a massive spiritual baked potato" (p. 295).

For Philip Roth identity issues takes shape in very personal terms. Zuckerman the Jew is ambivalent about ritual circumcision. He insists it be performed on his son, yet he sees circumcision as proof that "the heavy hand of human values falls upon you right at the start. . ." (P. 370). He is revolted by both the intensities of Israeli Semitism and the subtleties of London´s anti-Semitism: "the land of the shootout" and "the land of the carol service" (P. 336). He lives not in Israel but in the Diaspora because he likes it.

An awareness of Jewish history, Jewish pain, is ever present, the pain of those who "couldn´t go on being themselves without inciting to violence ominous forces against which they hadn´t the slightest means of defense" (p. 59).

Disharmony and discord is everywhere in this book. Yet there is acceptance. The Israeli zealot on the kibbutz, the cynical Jerusalem journalist, the detached wordsmith from New Jersey concede nothing yet arrive at a tense accommodation to each other´s Jewishness.

Everyone has sharp human edges here. A mistress or wife is more than an occasion for fantasizing or a foil for rebellion against domesticity. These women challenge the premises and the behavior of the Zuckerman brothers, the semi-famous novelist Nathan, over committed to the idea of meaning-through-observation, and the thoroughly professional and depressed dentist Henry, over committed to the idea of fulfillment-through-liberation/resignation.

Roth drives home his points with lucidity and assertiveness. Of course there are contradictions: "What matters isn´t what made you do it but what you do" (p. 158). "Anybody can run away and survive; the trick was to stay and survive" (p. 268). "Life is the adventure of losing your way" (p. 147). Philip Roth´s work exemplifies the integrity of serious imaginative writing that puzzles out life´s incapacities and joys.

This review has been published in a collection of reviews and articles, That´s What I´m Talking About (Nativa 2008). THAT´S WHAT I´M TALKING ABOUT

¤

2) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. No es fácil poner estrellas a Philip Roth porque suele estar (hasta donde lo he leído), para mi gusto, entre las cuatro y las cinco. ¿Cuál es entonces la diferencia entre poner cuatro o cinco estrellas a uno de sus libros? Creo que en el plano literario en que Roth se maneja ello puede zanjarse con asuntos del tipo "esperé mucho del final y me defraudó." O bien "los personajes resultaron forzados por una trama poderosa que, finalmente, prevaleció por encima de la flojedad de aquéllos." Pero aun así, sus obras marcan cuatro o cinco cuando menos, porque Roth pertenece a esa especie de los grandes creadores, escritores que dejan testimonio del paso del hombre por el Planeta. Es un constructor de pirámides. De esfinges.
En "La Contravida," nos ofrece una especie de poliedro cuyas caras van rotando a medida que avanza la novela. El tema es simple: El hermano de Nathan Zuckerman, Henry, sufre de una afección cardíaca cuya medicación le impide tener erecciones. La frustración lo lleva a optar por una intervención quirúrgica que le devuelva sus perdidas erecciones, pero que, al cabo, le costará la vida. Punto. Eso es. Allí se acaba.
Pero a Roth, este argumento, algo chejoviano quizá, le sirve para reinventar esa misma historia en otro de sus personajes, esta vez en su alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. Entonces, la historia va desplazando su centro de un personaje al otro, del hermano menor al hermano mayor, lo que naturalmente adultera las vidas del entorno pero sin caer en excesos del tipo "Efecto Mariposa." Philip Roth es lo justo, nunca se pasa de la raya. Y entonces nos encontramos con que la fabulación fabula sobre sí misma y, de este modo, el autor verdadero desaparece y aparece según la cara del poliedro que estemos mirando.
Es una lección, esta Contravida, sobre la fragilidad de nuestras propias existencias, expuestas siempre al fingimiento y la elusividad. El verdadero yo no es una sola mole de concreto sino un sustrato de muchas capas que se transmiten unas a otras sus identidades. Roth las hace hablar a todas y al hacerlo nos deja con la sensación de que la lectura se parece a la vida, porque cuando descubrimos el engaño, no sabemos reconocer dónde se escondía la verdad.
En este juego de claroscuros, Roth se lleva la antorcha. Rabo y oreja para él.¤

3) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. I encountered Philip Roth´s genius of intellect and understanding of social behavior via "The Counterlife", actually the unique of his titles I have read so far. Moreover, I admit, the finest publication I have ever obtained.
Roth enchants with utterly well endowed vocabulary and prose. In addition, the author simultaneously conveys completely dissimilar philosophical perceptions, religious attachments, and life experiences. Line by line he describes Jewish people, in particular, The American Diaspora´s idiosyncrasy. It seems to me as if Roth´s desire is to put into words ideas about Jewish Secularism: American Jews in particular. He attains this by positioning side by side the extremes: Diaspora´s Secularism against Zionism, meaning of real Jewish beliefs to American´s or European´s Anti-Semitism, self contempt against ethnicity, among others. Actually he tricks the reader. He leads one to think this novel has solely a Jewish title.
He is a universal writer. Everything told applies to the so well known universal compulsion into trying to stereotype people into one or another psychological category. This is universal. It relates to whites, Afro-Americans, Catholics, Hispanics, etc. It is a world´s tendency. Even to me, native of a country were prejudice or racism does not go further that the semantics, since we are all creatures of a cocktail of different races and religions.
The more one tries to conceal what one is, the higher is the propensity of falling into the stereotyped world. Using a Jewish example found in The Counterlife, the more secular Nathan says he is-one of his main protagonists-, the more he says not to be an observant, the more it bothers him to have a son uncircumcised. The Brit Mila has to be perfect. Moreover, the Bar Mitzvah grandiose, even if the kid doesn´t comprehend anything. Isn´t it right that there is an abnormal tendency to catalogue us all into Freudian or not Freudian misbehavior, self compulsion is universal in our modern generations? I am certain that the hint to the success of antidepressants around the world, with thousands of drugs claiming to be the panaceas for us all is actually self hatred. Does not the media blinds or Brian-washes us to be perfect, beautiful, sexual, virile, and slim, among others? No wonder each and all of us desires to escape, and that is what "The Counterlife" conveys in each of his five chapters: escapism from reality.
Philip Roth employs sarcasm, irony, jokes, satire, euphemisms, and grabs them all up to conceive this important peace of literature that should to be read more than once. It owns magnetism and excellence. I recommend it with an open and honest heart.
¤

4) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. I have read roth´s books before and usually enjoy them. this book was a chore to read. nathan zuckerman´s brother dies in bypass surgery and then we find the same brother in Israel so that the bypass scenario was perhaps a book zuckerman was writing. various characters live different scenarios throughout the book and it doesn´t seem important which is the real one. Unfortunately, besides being incredibly confusing it is deadly dull. Roth spends most of the book indulging in tedious , repetitive monologue---i can best describe most of it as blah, blah, blah. so the scenarios really don´t matter because there is no story--just a framework for pointless verbiage.¤

5) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. Roth excells here in narrative reconstruction, in creating characters whose lives are made vivid, and who are then given counterlives, the lives they might have had. In the course of this Roth also explores Israel- Diaspora relations as one of the characters takes off for Israel and there joins a Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria. Roth also explores what will become an obsessional subject for him in most recent years, the subject of illness and aging.
Roth is a writer whose prose moves and is alive. He can hit you unexpectedly with a remark which will make you laugh outloud. I would only suggest that in showing himself so much a master of the art of ´narrative alternatives´ he takes from us a bit of the real sympathy we might have from people who having only one life and story, seem to us more real.¤

6) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate.

Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book´s evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the miind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that´s paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist´s office in suburban New Jersey, or in a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, or in a church in London´s West End, or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel´s occupied West Bank.¤

7) Paperback Book The Counterlife by Vintage. The saga of Henry and Nathan Zuckerman continues, 13 years after novelist Nathan Zuckerman first appeared in Roth´s 1974 effort, My Life as a Man. In The Counterlife, the dentist Henry suffers an unsettling--and for Roth, a predictable--side effect to his heart medication: impotence, which leads him to undergo an ill-fated operation. The multi-layered plot line travels from New York to London to Israel, while the characters undergo a series of surprising transformations. In the words of Nathan, a change in one´s life causes "a counterlife that is one´s own anti-myth." It´s vintage Roth.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 21-Nov-2008, 06797490479780679749042, 270-120-490-780-890-470-900-8

The Counterlife, Book, Image © Vintage

Search: Vintage, Book Posters, Book Art