Zuckerman Bound by Philip Roth

First published: 1985; includes The Ghost Writer, 1979; Zuckerman Unbound, 1981; The Anatomy Lesson, 1983; The Prague Orgy, 1985

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Comic realism

Time of plot: 1956-1976

Locale: Newark, New Jersey; the Berkshires, Massachusetts; New York City; Miami; Chicago; Prague

Principal characters

• Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish American writer
• Victor “Doctor” Zuckerman, his father, a podiatrist
• Selma Zuckerman, his mother
• E. I. Lonoff, a Russian Jewish writer living in seclusion in the Berkshires
• Amy Bellette, a Jewish student staying with Lonoff

The Story:

Nathan Zuckerman has published several short stories that, although critically well received, have caused conflict within his family. His story “Higher Education” is a thinly fictionalized account of a family dispute over the distribution of an inheritance, and it portrays Jews in an unflattering and stereotypical—although to Nathan, realistic and necessary—light.

After corresponding with his literary idol, E. I. Lonoff, an older Russian Jewish writer, Zuckerman leaves for a visit to Lonoff’s secluded home in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Zuckerman seeks validation from Lonoff to counter the criticism he is receiving at home; moreover, he wants to see firsthand the writer’s life he so idealizes.

Zuckerman’s visit with Lonoff shows a marriage in turmoil, the price that a serious writer pays in devotion to his or her craft. Adding to the family strife is the presence of the young, attractive Jewish student currently staying with Lonoff, Amy Bellette. As Nathan retires to bed, he imagines that Amy is none other than Anne Frank, the renowned diarist and Holocaust chronicler. Zuckerman fantasizes about marrying Frank and taking her home to meet his parents. In the morning, it becomes clear again that Amy is not Frank. Zuckerman returns to New York City, but not before Lonoff’s wife sets off on foot, intending to leave Lonoff, and Lonoff follows her.

Zuckerman is in the middle of a third divorce. He is now wealthy and famous following the publication of his first novel, Carnovsky, a controversial, amoral, and blatantly sexual account of coming of age as a Jew in Newark, New Jersey.

Zuckerman’s life, still, becomes unmanageable as the division between his public persona—the same rash, lustful, provocateur that Zuckerman describes in Carnovsky—and his private self—generally considerate, proper, and respectful—becomes increasingly hard to discern. He is receiving anonymous phone calls from someone threatening to kidnap his mother, Selma. As he becomes convinced that the threats against his mother are real and are being perpetrated by someone he knows, his ailing father, Victor, takes a turn for the worse in the Miami Beach rest home where he is living.

In Miami Beach, Zuckerman finds out that his father has read Carnovsky in its entirety; Victor, a retired podiatrist, is so chagrined by the contents of the book that his family is convinced that the novel will kill him. At his father’s deathbed, Doctor Zuckerman whispers his last word into his son’s ear: “bastard.” Zuckerman then returns briefly to Newark and finds it much changed. He realizes he is truly unbound from his history, his family, and his religion.

Four years later, Zuckerman is living alone in New York, crippled by a debilitating, inexplicable pain in his neck and shoulders; he is living as a shut in, unable to write and administered to by his “harem” of four mistresses. He has tried everything to alleviate the pain, but to no avail, and he turns to self-medicating with copious amounts of alcohol and prescription painkillers.

As Zuckerman considers switching professions entirely—from writer to doctor—he meditates on his mother’s recent death. The pain in his body has forced him to consider more urgently his own mortality. He heads to Chicago, and while en route pretends to be a porn-magazine publisher, shocking and offending anyone who will listen to him.

Zuckerman never makes it to his planned destination in Chicago; instead, nearly out of his mind on painkillers, he visits a cemetery with a childhood friend’s father and begins having violent delusions; he blacks out and hits his face on a tombstone, forcing him to stay in the hospital for weeks with his jaw wired shut, both for physical recovery and for rehabilitation.

Zuckerman writes in diary entries about meeting Jewish Czechoslovakian immigrant Zdenek Sisovsky. Through him, he learns of Sisovsky’s father’s unpublished short stories, written in Hebrew and currently in the possession of Sisovsky’s estranged wife, Olga. Sisovsky convinces Zuckerman that the stories need to be recovered and published in the United States.

Traveling to Prague, Zuckerman meets Olga and finally convinces her to hand over the stories, which she jealously guards because of lingering resentment over Sisovsky’s departure. As Zuckerman attempts to leave the country with the stories, he is apprehended by Prague government agents; the stories are confiscated, and Zuckerman is sent back to the United States.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold, ed. Philip Roth. Broomall, Pa.: Chelsea House, 2003. A brief but excellent critical overview of Roth’s themes and purpose in Zuckerman Bound.

Brauner, David. Philip Roth. New York: Manchester University Press, 2007. A study of some of Roth’s later novels that discusses the paradoxes and other difficulties the works present as a way of illustrating how rewarding it is to read the works.

Cooper, Alan. Philip Roth and the Jews. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Examines at length Roth’s work as reflective and representative of Jewish American experience.

Hendley, W. Clark. “Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer: A Bildungsroman for Today.” In Design, Pattern, Style: Hallmarks of a Developing American Culture, edited by Don Harkness. Tampa, Fla.: American Studies Press, 1983. Examines Roth’s manipulation of the bildungsroman form in The Ghost Writer.

Kartiganer, Donald M. “Zuckerman Bound: The Celebrant of Silence.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, edited by Timothy Parrish. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Examines the roles and forms of “silencing,” both literally and metaphorically, in Zuckerman Bound. Part of a larger study that critiques all of Roth’s fiction, examining the themes of sexuality, cultural identity, and the Holocaust in the works.

Pozorski, Aimee. “How to Tell a True Ghost Story: The Ghost Writer and the Case of Anne Frank.” In Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, edited by Derek Parker Royal. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. Explores the relationship between the real Anne Frank and Zuckerman’s and the larger social conception of her.

Safer, Elaine B. Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Treats Roth in some of his later works as a creator of humor and comedy with tears just beneath the surface. Focuses on the novels from The Ghost Writer to The Plot Against America (2004).

Wilson, Alexis Kate. “The Ghosts of Zuckerman’s Past: The Zuckerman Bound Series.” In Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author, edited by Derek Parker Royal. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005. Discusses in detail Roth’s examination of the relationship between life and art in Zuckerman Bound.