E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #83: My Life as a Man by Philip Roth
by Ernie on 08/05/08 at 9:45 am
My Life as a Man, Philip Roth, 1974. Like many unabashedly ambitious novelists, Roth can be dazzling and exasperating by turns, sometimes, like Faulkner, simultaneously. There is little question that he is one of the best living American novelists, and his recent enshrinement in the Library of America series (very few living authors warrant inclusion) seems to cement his case. I decided on a novel that displays Roth’s easy brilliance and great emotional and comic range but which is not one of his better-known books (Portnoy’s Complaint and American Pastoral seem to hold these positions, and My Life as a Man meets these very different books midway). The novel really consists of three books. The first section, “Useful Fictions,” contains two short stories about a character named Nathan Zuckerman (who will star in another series of Roth books, though the Zuckerman of “Useful Fictions” is not an exact biographical match to the later Zuckerman). A young novelist named Peter Tarnopol is the author.
The twin stories share many similarities but showcase two very different attitudes: in one, the triumphant, brilliant young writer encounters difficulties and overcomes them to become stronger, never wavering in his belief in his own powers; in the second, the young writer encounters problems (largely with women) and succumbs, losing himself in a Lolita-like entanglement that ends with his exile to Italy and the dissolution of his creative powers. The third section of the novel, the lion’s share, “My True Life,” is excruciating and quite funny. Roth’s alter-ego Tarnapol (who wrote the first two parts) describes his promising beginnings and his disastrous, nearly deadly relationship with the brilliantly (and some might think misogynistically) drawn Maureen (inspired by Roth’s own relationship with Margaret Martinson). Through the vividly evoked lovers’ quarrels (these are really better described as nuclear escalations and exchanges), Tarnopol agonizes over his own responsibility for the failed marriage, weathering barrages of accusations and condolences from his therapist, who may well be mad himself. The real focus and meat of the novel is a consideration of the ways in which one’s life affect one’s art, but the book is a roller coaster of insane bickering and public displays of romantic hatred. Highly recommended!
