My Life As A Man

MY LIFE AS A MAN

by Philip Roth

 

Nomination: National Book Finalist 1975

 

Date Read: February 5, 2021

 

I am going down a Roth-hole and this is the first of the Nathan Zuckerman novels I am reading. I wished I had held off on reading The Ghost Writer but I shall press on. The Zuckerman portion in My Life As A Man is terribly brief, constituting only 2 small chapters here but this is where we start.

 

I cannot tell if Roth is a misogynist, clueless about women, informed only by the times (this novel was written in 1974) or all of the above. The portrait he paints of women in this novel is bleak. Women are to be fucked, manipulated by, escaped from, dominated or, again, all of the above. I am going to give Roth the benefit of the doubt and say he was limited in his understanding by the cultural times, where women were beginning to come into their own.

 

My Life As A Man focuses on an insane marriage between Peter Tarnopol (Roth?) and Maureen, a manipulative shrew if ever there was one. She is horrendous in their courtship and even worse in their marriage. I found Peter agreeing to marry her a difficult pill to swallow considering her behavior, pregnant or not. We learn early on that only through Maureen’s death is Peter set free from the nightmare of his marriage – a circumstance that consumes him and he obsesses over until the very end. For all of his narcissistic posturing, I found his capitulation to marriage nearly unbelievable. 

 

I have Roth to thank for certain images that I can’t get out of my head. In Sabbath’s Theater, I cannot forget Sabbath masturbating on the grave of his dead lover. And now I can add Maureen literally crapping her pants while the figurative crap is beat out of her. Thanks, Roth!

 

This Roth specimen has all the earmarks of what is considered typical Roth – graphic sex scenes, deep-dives into the psyche of his narrator and, I’ll admit, a beautiful and profound understanding of certain aspects of the human experience. And now on to The Anatomy Lesson.

 

Looking Forward: American Pastoral, The Anatomy Lesson, The Counterlife, Everyman, The Human Stain, Operation Shylock, The Plot Against America, The Professor Of Desire

 

Looking Back: The Ghost Writer, Sabbath’s Theater

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