Zuckerman Unbound

Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth (1981) I waded into this one unenthusiastically—I don’t know why—maybe the off-putting title. I can’t think of a worse title—well, there’s plenty (Rabbit Redux, Ratner’s Star, I, Robot) and it’s not Philip Roth’s fault a more famous “Zuck” came along. No audiobook available (to me), so I was reading it at work between angry phone calls. But I zipped through this book (it’s relatively short) and looked forward to it every minute I wasn’t reading it—it reminded me of why I love reading. It’s the return of Philip Roth’s writer protagonist, Nathan Zuckerman, dealing with life—that’s possibly based on the direct experience of the author. The first of these I read was, I believe, the last, Zuckerman in his seventies (Exit Ghost) which I really liked. Most recently I read The Ghost Writer, the first. In this story, he’s dealing with massive, somewhat unexpected, success and uncomfortable notoriety—even infamy, depending on who you ask—due to his sexually and in other ways explicit novel, “Carnovksy”—and you get as weary hearing about it as he does. I probably haven’t ever read anything that made the idea of fame seem less appealing—even harrowing and dreadful—but there’s a part of me that has always imagined this trajectory without even experiencing it. Even though the story is elegantly told, somewhat low-key and measured (which works to great effect, almost like a magic trick), there are some pretty seismic events related, some absolute craziness—and in the event that anyone might be reading my acknowledgement, here, who hasn’t read the book, and might, it would be a disservice to go into any more detail. After you’ve read it, let’s talk about it!

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