The Counterlife is the fifth part of Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman series, and is by far the most ambitious and complex of them. Whereas Roth had previously played with the semi-autobiographical novel form, here he smashes it to pieces. The Counterlife is like a cubist painting; Roth uses it to examine the various possibilities that his characters face given a difference of one event in their lives.
Formally, it is dazzling. It is composed of fragments of ‘manuscripts’, letters, reminiscences and conventional narratives, but never to the detriment of the writing which is, as always with Roth, wonderfully precise and clear.
The jumping-off point for the novel is Zuckerman’s brother’s death on the operating table. Henry has decided on surgery because the medication for his heart condition has destroyed his love-life by making him impotent, even though he could continue living an otherwise normal life without it. Nathan tries to persuade him not to have the surgery, even after Henry confides in him about an affair he’s been having with his assistant, and out of which Nathan begins to sketch a novel. This novel.
The second section is a massive jolt from the first. Rather than dying, Henry has survived the surgery and emigrated to Israel where he has joined radically observant Jewish settlers building on the West Bank. He has come under the influence of a charismatic sect leader, and Zuckerman visits him to try to talk some sense into him.
In the third part, Zuckerman is flying back to London from his unsuccessful mission to Israel when his plane is hijacked by a fanatic whose acquaintance he has made in Jerusalem (bizarrely, by playing catch with him beside the Wailing Wall). Much of this section consists of letters written by Zuckerman on the flight.
In the fourth, it is Nathan who has had the heart trouble. He starts an affair with Maria, an intelligent, middle-class Englishwoman and decides that he needs the surgery in order to be able to live a full life with her. Now it it is he who dies on the operating table, and the remainder of the section is narrated by Henry – who in this alternative history is neither dead nor in Israel. He desperately tries to recover the manuscript fragments that Nathan has left behind that would uncover Henry’s affair.
On to part five, and Nathan is not dead. He’s landed at the end of a ‘quiet flight’ and is back in London. He’s now living with the woman he was having an affair with, except this time he doesn’t have heart disease. In this section, Roth turns his laser glare on racism, and anti-Semitism in particular, in the English middle and upper classes. Maria’s mother is barely able to keep a civil attitude towards him, and he and Maria argue about it. Later they eat in a fancy restaurant, where Zuckerman is racially abused and causes a scene that results in the breakup of their relationship. The remainder of the novel consists of letters between Nathan and Maria examining this dilemma from all angles.
As I said, it’s dazzling. While it probably sounds confused from my plot summary, it is quite the opposite in practice. It’s a gigantic riff on fiction itself, as the entire Zuckerman series is, but here it reaches its apotheosis. Roth is in perfect control of all of his characters, and of his ambitious structure. This is the perfect post-modern novel: it is formally inventive, but for a purpose not just for play, although it is playful too. Where in other hands formal experimentation such as this can feel forced or mannered, with Roth it is an absolute delight.
The Counterlife is a complex, ambitious and beautifully written novel. I think it’s Roth’s masterpiece. I urge you to read it.
Possibly related posts: