What kind of choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand the onslaught of circumstance? These are the dark questions that animate Nemeses , the quartet of thematically related short novels that are published here together for the first time in this final volume of The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected works. Everyman (2006) is the sparse and affecting story of one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality. Set against the backdrop of the Korean War, Indignation (2008) ...
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What kind of choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand the onslaught of circumstance? These are the dark questions that animate Nemeses , the quartet of thematically related short novels that are published here together for the first time in this final volume of The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected works. Everyman (2006) is the sparse and affecting story of one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality. Set against the backdrop of the Korean War, Indignation (2008) is the extraordinary narrative of a young man struggling against the conformity of McCarthy-era America and his father's overwhelming fear. In The Humbling (2009), aging actor Simon Axler embarks on a risky and aberrant affair in a desperate attempt to recoup his lost artistic gifts. And in Nemesis (2010), Roth offers an exacting portrait of the emotions--fear and anger, bewilderment and grief--bred by a polio epidemic in Newark in the summer of 1944. Philip Roth is the only living American novelist to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by The Library of America. He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner Award three times, the National Medal of Arts, and the Gold Medal in Fiction, the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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The Library of America gave the late Philip Roth (1931 -- May 22, 2018) the deserved distinction of publishing his collected works in a definitive edition while he was still alive. The LOA published its first volume of Roth's novels in 2005 and, in February, 2013, published this ninth volume which almost surely will be the last. The volume includes for brief works composed between 2006 and 2010 which Roth designated as his "Nemeses" novels. At about 475 pages, the volume is short for a book in the LOA. Set in different times with different characters, it may seem arbitrary to make these four books a series. But the books share a common concern with death, fate, change, and sexuality.
Roth has been a prolific and erratic writer. Opinions about his books vary, particularly regarding these late four novels. The "Nemeses" books lack the broad sweep and the biting tone of much of Roth. They focus instead on individual characters and on introspection. But they have the mixed tone of tragedy, thought and humor common to Roth's work as a storyteller. A recent review in the Independent aptly describes the "Nemeses" novels as "sharing a stylistic link often found in late works: the prose is utterly shorn of any authorial flourish. They represent a tailing-off of the stylistic brio that has marked every novel of Roth". Many readers and critics have reviewed each of the individual books in this volume. I offer the following brief comments on each work.
Probably the best of these works is a novel about death and growing old, "Everyman", published in (2006). Everyman The title refers to a medieval morality play and to the name of a jewelry store operated by the father of the nameless protagonist in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to give the store an appeal to all customers regardless of race, religion, or nationality. The book opens with the funeral of the protagonist and reflects back on his life filled with health problems, troubles, and loneliness stemming in large part from philandering and divorces. Showing the end of a flawed life, Roth's novel is dark but suggests that life is to be lived and treasured. The protagonist's understanding of life is given in a small motto that he repeats frequently to his faithful daughter, Nancy: "There's no remaking reality", he says. "Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes."
Roth's novel "Indignation", (2008) Indignation (Vintage International) is a tragic coming of age story, a character study, and a tale of the difficulty of adjusting to change. It is set during the years of the Korean War. The major character, Marcus Meissner, is the only child of a kosher butcher and his wife in Elizabeth New Jersey. At great expense, the couple sends Morton to a small, conservative college in Winesburg, Ohio. Young Marcus loses his way, sexually, academically, and personally, as he struggles to adjust to college life. Even though the story ends tragically, it shows a fondness for much of mid-20th Century America. The book suggests that the United States may recover some of its bearings by reflecting upon, if not by emulating, its earlier values.
Written in 2009, "The Humbling" The Humbling is a slight work about the sadness of growing old, the never-ending power of sexuality, and the difficulty of changing one's character. Roth tells the story of Simon Axler, an aging actor who is set adrift when he fears he has lost the one thing in life that has mattered to him - his ability to act. Axler's life momentarily is redeemed when he begins a relationship with an academic woman in her 40s, Pegeen. Both Axler and Pegeen are humbled when they try to give up the identities they have created for themselves over the course of their lives. The book suggests that individuals in the last analysis cannot become other than the persons they are.
Roth's final novel, and the last work in this collection, "Nemesis" Nemesis is set in the Jewish community of Newark, New Jersey, during a polio epidemic in 1944. Roth knows this community well, and in this last book he describes it lovingly. The main character, Eugene "Bucky" Cantor is a physical education instructor whose chance for happiness is lost as a result of fate, his own conscientiousness, and some questionable decisions. The story ultimately devolves into a theological consideration of the nature of evil. With all his affection for the
Newark Jewish community, the book retains an uncompromisingly secular character. Roth ended, it appears, his career as a novelist with this poignant, thoughtful book.
Philip Roth undoubtedly will be regarded as a major American writer. The Library of America is to be commended for publishing its definitive collection of Roth's works. This "Nemeses" volume offers an excellent way to get to know his late works.
