If I were still teaching Advanced Placement, I would add this book to the reading list as a point of comparison during any discussion of tragedy. A number of reviewers have touted it as a modern day tragedy just dripping with Greekness in the same way that they touted Edgar Sawtelle, the canine upgrading of Hamlet that was all the rage a couple of years ago. Roth's novel contains all the elements of tragedy except the most important, a great soul who can feel deeply. That isn't to say that it is a disappointing novel. It isn't. Like everything Roth writes, it is topical, witty, innovative, and nearly impossible to ignore.
Bucky Cantor, our hero, is a young, bespectacled man who seems to carry misfortune around with him like a cloak. His mother died in child birth and his father, an inveterate gambler, was sent to prison for two years and never returned to Newark. Bucky ended up with his grandparents and managed to live a good life. He became a great athlete and diver, notwithstanding his rotten vision. Much to Bucky's shame, his vision kept him out of the army during the 1944 build up of WWII. Instead he ends up as a teacher, lifeguard, coach, and summer playground director in Newark.
Of course, this smattering of good fortune is interrupted by the Newark polio epidemic of 1944 and Bucky is so disturbed by the mounting number of dead or dying boys and girls that he, convinced he must be doing more harm than good, rationalizes an escape to the Poconos and the summer camp where his fiancee works.
Life at camp is good. Bucky's life is a lot like Bill Murray's in Meatballs, or it would be if Bucky were a little less serious. But when even the camp isn't safe from the epidemic, Bucky becomes convinced that he is a carrier. And becomes further convinced that this God everyone keeps worshipping is at best an incompetent bungler and at worst an evil inventor of ways to torment the innocent.
It should be no surprise that Bucky contracts the disease, or maybe he was a carrier. At the end we see him bitter and alone, talking with the novel's narrator who finally reveals himself at the end in a Rothian tour de force manipulation of point of view.
So why isn't all this tragic? I loved Bucky and worried about him and all the little kids he cared for. I knew he wasn't going to survive the book unscathed, so I was filled with all the dread I needed for a catharsis. But I'm sorry Bucky. I knew Hamlet and you're not him.
Bucky mostly reminds me of The Chief, Salinger's hero in "The Laughing Man." John Gedsudski, The Chief, loved his little Central Park charges. He regaled them with stories and feats of mythic proportions on the playing fields of Manhattan. He was their hero for one perfect summer and he let an unrequited love ruin that world for a little while.
The Chief disappears and his charges are left disillusioned. Bucky's charges die and disappear and he is the one left in disillusionment.
His initial heroism on the playground standing up to the epidemic, consoling kids and parents alike, was admirable. And when he eventually turns his gaze toward the heavens and literally shakes his fist at the gods, he verges on the brink of the tragic stance. But he loses sight of the gods when his sacrifices for the good of others seem more like petulant bursts of egotism than the stuff of tragic heights.
Finally, this reminds me of my comparison of Freedom to Anna Karenina last year. Why does great literature have to be ponderous and difficult to read? Why is Tolstoy better than Franzen or Roth? The obvious answer is that their characters are greater souls than the ones Franzen and Roth create. I would have to agree, but hasten to add that American Realism doesn't lend itself to the tragic emotion the way Russian Romanticism does.
Bucky is just an everyday schmuck with a past no more troubled or blessed than lots of ordinary schmucks' lives. He rises to the challenges of his life with love and courage and fear and rationalizations and recriminations just like a lot of people would. Watching his story unfold is fascinating and poses all sorts of great questions about fate, panic, despair, blame, and the way communities deal with inexplicable loss.
This book was made to be taught to high school seniors in Advanced Placement.
* * * * *
A SMALL DIGRESSION
Have you heard about the Unluckiest Man In The World?
When he was just a child--confirmation age--he was at a church picnic during the spring. He was out in left field watching his parents sitting together on the bleachers cheering him on just like they always did when a lightening bolt came out of nowhere and turned both mother and father into cinders.
The kindly parish priest invited the poor orphan to come and live in the basement of the church. There our hero stayed through high school, shoveling coal into the furnace and chasing rats out of the same church basement where he was sodomized twice a week by the old man in the flowing cassock.
But ever resilient, he escaped the church and managed to get himself all the way to NYU in New York City where he began to study drama. Things went well for his undergraduate years and when he went to his first audition he even landed a lead part in a new production being mounted that year.
Of course, on the way to his first rehearsal he was crossing 42nd Street when he caught his foot in a street grate and a Federal Express van, in the act of parking, crushed our poor friend's ankle.
Needless to say, he was replaced by his understudy, a strange, brooding young man named Marlon Brando, who went on to win his first Tony for his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Our hero never really recovered from that disappointment. His ankle never returned to normal and he made a living by teaching drama in a local Catholic high school.
But one day he did get a call from a long lost acquaintance in Los Angeles who had remembered his audition for Street Car all those years ago. He offered him a part in a new sit com and told him to get right out to LA.
The Unluckiest Man In The World got his ticket and was flying happily 30,000 feet above Iowa when he noticed that the far left propeller had stopped turning. Soon, a gentleman across the aisle shouted that the far right propeller had also stopped. As the remainder of the propellers stopped working, our hero sighed and walked slowly up to the front of the plane and entered the cockpit.
"Excuse me, but I know how to get the plane safely down."
The pilots were ready for any suggestion.
"You see, I am The Unluckiest Man In The World and the props are going out because of me. Just give me a parachute and let me jump and the rest of you will be fine."
In no position to argue, they gave him a parachute and sent him out the nearest door. No sooner had he started his descent than all four engines whirred back to life.
Our hero smiled and pulled his rip cord.
You'll never guess what happened.
That's right.
So he pulled the emergency cord.
Yep, you guessed it.
Finally out of options and plummeting to earth, The Unluckiest Man In The World put his hands together in prayer.
"St. Francis, my patron saint. If you've ever helped me help me now."
And a big hand came out of a cloud and grabbed The Unluckiest Man In The World. And with a booming voice asked, "ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI OR ST. FRANCIS XAVIER?"
"Xavier," The Unluckiest Man In The World replied.
And with that the big hand opened up and dashed the scrawny body to the earth in disgust.
No comments:
Post a Comment