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THE COUNTERLIFE may be Philip Roth's most imaginative work of fiction. It is certainly
his most original. It speaks of the different paths that a life can take, of the
motivations behind the choices that individuals make, and of the repercussions of those
choices. It also delves into the Diaspora and the reality of being a Jewish American.
Divided into five sections --- Basel, Judea, Aloft, Gloucestershire, and Christendom ---
THE COUNTERLIFE explores the fate of Henry and Nathan Zuckerman as their lives revolve
around one event.
In Basel, Henry lies dead in a coffin as his brother Nathan contemplates the events that
put him there. A heart condition and medicine that made him impotent sent Henry to the
operating table for surgery that was risky but would make him able to perform sexually
again. THE COUNTERLIFE that Henry was leading, unbeknownst to his wife, becomes the focus
of Nathan's thoughts.
In the second section, Henry has survived the operation but takes his new lease on life as
a push toward his religious homeland and embraces the doctrine of Zionism in Judea.
Nathan, at the urging of Henry's wife, goes to see Henry. "The relationship to Henry
was the most elemental connection I had left, and however vexing its surface had become
after the long years of our estrangement, what was evoked in me by Carol's call was the
need to be responsible not so much to the disapproving brother with whom I'd already come
to blows but to the little boy in the flannel pajamas who was known to sleepwalk when he
was overexcited."
In Aloft, Nathan contemplates the visit to his brother while at the same time being
pursued by a young Jewish man in awe of Zuckerman, the writer. The section moves from
comic intrigue to a poignant philosophical exploration by Nathan that hits on the very
theme of the novel. "Zionism, as I understand it, originated not only in the deep
Jewish dream of escaping the danger of insularity and the cruelties of social injustice
and persecution but out of a highly conscious desire to be divested of virtually
everything that had come to seem, to the Zionists as much as to the Christian Europeans,
distinctively Jewish behavior --- to reverse the very form of Jewish existence. The
construction of a counterlife that is one's own anti-myth was at its very core. It was a
species of fabulous utopianism, a manifesto for human transformation... "
Gloucestershire has Nathan facing the heart operation in the wake of his impotence due to
medication, while Christendom offers yet another counterlife for Nathan as he struggles
for happiness and identity in a London where the shards of anti-Semitism fray the edges of
his fragile existence.
It is the place of a novelist to play God with the lives of his characters, and who can
blame him if he wants to explore the multitude of options available to him, for real life
offers us but one chance. Roth displays his cunning talent as he weaves the various
threads of choice into a coat of possibilities that Nathan Zuckerman tries on again and
again.
--- Reviewed by Vern Wiessner
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