Culturebox: Not Letting Go

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books Not Letting Go Philip Roth explores the perils of decency. By Michael Gorra Posted Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, at 7:00 AM ET For years now Philip Roth has divided his work into categories. There are "Zuckerman Books" and "Kepesh Books" and even "Roth Books," a cluster that includes both memoirs and fiction, as well as the catch-all gathering of "Other Books," one that contains some of his best, like Sabbath's Theater. It's a quick way to make sense of a career that now spans nearly half a century. With this new volume, Roth has added another grouping: "Nemeses: Short Novels." Beginning with Everyman, these four works are haunted by questions of death and judgment. These haven't always gotten the best press. Despite their weighty theme, they have risked seeming not merely slight but regressive, books that married the grave to a goatish obsession with sexual detail--Roth, for better and worse, irrepressible as ever. A new sobriety marks Nemesis as very different from the preceding trio. Yet in lending the set its name, this curiously toned-down book provides the late-career quartet with a retrospective coherence. Nemesis isn't the same type of goddess as Athena or Artemis, the kind we might paradoxically call a person, a figure with her own set of vanities and foibles. She is instead a personification, a principle: judgment, retribution, the enemy from whose hounding we can't hope to escape. Few myths attach to her as such--instead, she's a figure in other people's stories. She's what they fight against, though usually they describe it as something else. For the main character of Roth's new book, the improbably nicknamed "Bucky" Cantor, that force is called polio. Or at least that's how it looks at the start. To continue reading, click here. Michael Gorra teaches English at Smith. His books include The Bells in Their Silence: Travels Through Germany and, as editor, The Portable Conrad. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: Leaders Like Bishop Long Are Fouling the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement The Fox News Suit Against Robin Carnahan Makes No Legal or Journalistic Sense The Tea Party's Most Provocative T-Shirts, Posters, and Propaganda	Advertisement
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