Nathan Zuckerman | |
---|---|
First appearance | My Life as a Man |
Last appearance | Exit Ghost |
Created by | Philip Roth |
In-universe information | |
Occupation | Novelist |
Religion | Judaism (non-practicing) |
Nationality | American |
Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character created by the writer Philip Roth, who uses him as his protagonist and narrator, a type of alter ego, in many of his novels. [1]
Roth first created a character named Nathan Zuckerman in the novel My Life as a Man (1974), where he is the "product" of another fictional Roth figure, the writer Peter Tarnopol (making Zuckerman, in his original form, an "alter-alter-ego"). Discrepancies (including date of birth, details of his upbringing, and personal background) exist between the characters, leading most to consider this an early version, and not necessarily the Zuckerman around whom subsequent novels would revolve. In later books, Roth uses Zuckerman as a protagonist, starting with the 1979 novel The Ghost Writer , where he is a writing apprentice on a pilgrimage to cull the wisdom of the reclusive author E. I. Lonoff. In Zuckerman Unbound (1981), he has become established as a novelist and must deal with the fall-out from his ribald comedic novel Carnovsky. Though wildly successful, the novel has brought to Zuckerman unwanted attention from both readers and his family, who object to their portrayal in his work. [2]
Exit Ghost (2007) is the ninth book in the Zuckerman series, and is the last Zuckerman novel. The book explores Zuckerman's life as an older man, returning to New York City after an extended period of seclusion in the Berkshires. [3]
By creating parallels between Zuckerman's life as a novelist (with the novel Carnovsky a stand-in for his Portnoy's Complaint ) and his own, Roth expressed his interest in the relationship between an author and his work. Roth mined such meta-fictional concerns more deeply in his series of novels published in the 1980s, most radically in The Counterlife and Operation Shylock .
By the mid-1990s, though, Roth tamped down on the self-referentiality. He reintroduced Zuckerman as witness and narrator in a trilogy of historical novels: American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000), set in the period from the 1960s into the 1990s. The British Indian author Salman Rushdie used Zuckerman as a character in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), where in an alternate universe, it is the literary alter-egos (and their novels) that are real. [4]
Actors who have portrayed Nathan Zuckerman include Mark Linn-Baker (in the 1984 television adaptation of The Ghost Writer ), Gary Sinise (in the 2003 film adaptation of The Human Stain ) and David Strathairn (in the 2016 film adaptation of American Pastoral ).
(The above four books are collected as Zuckerman Bound )
The Human Stain is a novel by Philip Roth, published May 5, 2000. The book is set in Western Massachusetts in the late 1990s. It is narrated by 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, who appears in several earlier Roth novels, and who also figures in both American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), two books that form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain. Zuckerman acts largely as an observer as the complex story of the protagonist, Coleman Silk, a retired professor of classics, is slowly revealed.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Operation Shylock: A Confession is a 1993 novel by American novelist Philip Roth.
American Pastoral is a Philip Roth novel published in 1997 concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a successful Jewish American businessman and former high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, which in the novel is described as a manifestation of the "indigenous American berserk". It is the first in Roth's American Trilogy, followed by I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000).
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Zuckerman Bound is a trilogy of novels by Philip Roth, originally published in 1985.
The Ghost Writer is a 1979 novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the first of Roth's novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of the author's putative fictional alter egos, and constitutes the first book in his Zuckerman Bound trilogy. The novel touches on themes common to many Roth works, including identity, the responsibilities of authors to their subjects, and the condition of Jews in America. Parts of the novel are a reprise of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Anatole Paul Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for The New York Times. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, Intoxicated by My Illness (1992) and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (1993), were published after his death.
I Married a Communist is a Philip Roth novel concerning the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, known as "Iron Rinn." The story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, and is one of a trio of Zuckerman novels Roth wrote in the 1990s depicting the postwar history of Newark, New Jersey and its residents.
My Life as a Man (1974) is American writer Philip Roth's seventh novel.
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography is a book by Philip Roth that traces his life from his childhood in Newark, New Jersey to becoming a successful, widely respected novelist. The autobiographical section is bookended by two letters, one from Roth to his fictional alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, the other from Zuckerman himself, telling Roth what he sees as problems with the book.
Deception is a 1990 novel by Philip Roth. It is a spin-off of Roth’s 1986 novel “The Counterlife.”
Zuckerman Unbound is a 1981 novel by the American author Philip Roth.
The Anatomy Lesson is a 1983 novel by American author Philip Roth. It is the third novel from Roth to feature Nathan Zuckerman as the main character.
The Counterlife (1986) is a novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the fourth full-length novel to feature the fictional novelist Nathan Zuckerman. When The Counterlife was published, Zuckerman had most recently appeared in a novella called The Prague Orgy, the epilogue to the omnibus volume Zuckerman Bound.
Exit Ghost is a 2007 novel by Philip Roth. It is the ninth, and last, novel featuring Nathan Zuckerman.
The Prague Orgy (1985) is a novella by Philip Roth. The short book is the epilogue to his trilogy Zuckerman Bound. The story follows Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, on a journey to Communist Prague in 1976 seeking the unpublished manuscripts of a Yiddish writer. The book, presented as journal entries by Zuckerman, details the struggle of demoralized artists in a totalitarian society.
The Human Stain is a 2003 drama film directed by Robert Benton. Its screenplay, by Nicholas Meyer, is based on the novel of the same name by Philip Roth. The film stars Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.
The Library of America's definitive edition of Philip Roth's collected works (2005–2017) is a series collecting Philip Roth's works. The Library of America's aim is to collect and republish all of Roth's literary output. Originally envisioned as an eight-volume series, the revised plan presents Roth's oeuvre in ten volumes. First published in 2005, ten volumes have been published as of 2017, all edited by Ross Miller, except the last one, by Roth himself.
This is a bibliography of works by and about Philip Roth.