Nemesis (2010)
4 Stars out of 5
Philip Roth
280 pages
(Spoilers ahead.)
“He was struck by how lives
diverge and by how powerless each of us is up against the force of
circumstance. And where does God figure in this?”
Nemesis
“When I write,
I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed
religion to save me.”
Philip Roth
In Philip Roth’s 31 novels (as of 2016) there are several
consistent themes and places: Newark NJ and a nostalgic view of childhood there
during WWII, secular Judaism, anti-Semitism, alienation, overt sexuality and
guilt. Each of these will occur in his 2010 short novel, “Nemesis”. Roth has
told the public, this book, number 31 (which is also the fourth in a series grouped
under the title of Nemeses), will be his final book. The superficial Nemesis in
“Nemesis” is the polio virus. The book will describe the virus’ depredations on
Newark NJ in the summer of 1944 and will center on one young man, Eugene “Bucky”
Cantor. The reader will come to quite a different conclusion by the novel’s ending
as to who the actual nemeses of the book are, actual and literal.
Bucky is 23 and a mixture of contradictions in 1944. His
mother died giving birth to him, and his father was jailed for embezzlement;
Bucky’s future prospects should have been bleak. His future could have been a catastrophic
failure but for his grandparents (his mother’s parents); they were his hope and
salvation. Eugene later nicknamed “Bucky” by his grandfather would grow by his
20’s into a muscular, athletic and empathic man, one filled to the brim with a
sense of integrity and duty. Among the many contradictions in Bucky’s life
would be two very big ones: his sense of duty and empathy to the needs of
others will ironically take him to that miserable future his grandparents tried
to help him avoid.
Because he was short (less than 5 ft. tall) and severely
nearsighted, he was not successful in his attempts to enter the army at the
outbreak of WWII. Bucky was left behind, chafing at his failure to perform his
obligations, his duties as a young American male during the war. All of his
friends were overseas, but Bucky was left home to work as a Phys. Ed. teacher
and playground supervisor in the Weequahic neighborhood of Philip Roth’s own
childhood. It was in that playground where Bucky proved his devotion to the pre-teen
and teen-aged boys he supervised, and where Bucky will take his first steps to
his own personal perdition.
It is July 1944, and the polio virus has not yet been
conquered (that lies 11 years in the future with Jonas Salk). It is a hot
summer, and children are beginning to show symptoms of infection by the virus.
Soon, the sounds of ambulance sirens are heard throughout the city as kids
(sometimes older victims) are rushed to the nearest hospital and an iron lung.
Some will recover with hardly a trace of the illness, others will be maimed
through paralysis, and others still will not survive their first night of the
day they first show symptoms.
Is there anything more terrifying to a parent of small
children than the knowledge of a secret murderer with unknown means stalking
their kids? In this atmosphere, Bucky finds an evolution in his public personae
and in his inner psyche. The external changes begin with him as an acclaimed
hero in the eyes of the boys he supervises, especially when he stares down a
group of Italian toughs. As the epidemic of polio infections gains strength,
the scared parents turn to him for advice. Then four of his boys get sick, and
two rapidly die. He seeks out the parents of one dead boy to offer comfort. The
epidemic worsens, and in the blink of an eye, Bucky is transformed from hero to
villain when he is accosted by one parent as being irresponsible in allowing
her two boys play in the heat. She screams at Bucky and lays the blame directly
at Bucky’s feet for their illness. Ironically, they are the two local bullies,
the ones that gave Bucky the most grief on the playground; funny how their bad
play is reflected in their mother’s irrational anger at Bucky. It is certain
this mother is a bit of an outlier of local parenthood – but not that much of
an outlier. The best part of “Nemesis” is the detail Roth brings to how a
population fearing the worse and knowing close to nothing about their nemesis
seeks constantly for an explanation of their foe or failing that, for someone to
blame for their travails. It is quite understandable in the context of this
story and is a not so subtle reminder of what is taking place across the
Atlantic in Nazi Germany with respect to the European Jews.
Bucky has a girlfriend, Marcia; someone, he loves very much
and who loves him back with equal intensity. She is fearful for Bucky and
pleads for him to leave the equatorial (Roth’s term) realm of Newark NJ to join
her at a camp in the Pocono Mountains. She believes he will be safe from polio
there. He refuses at first out of a strong desire to protect his boys. She wins
this argument and Bucky leaves Newark for the Poconos where his soon-to-be fiancé
awaits him. Bucky is quickly overcome with guilt though, thinking again he has
abandoned the boys he watched in Newark. Just as with his inability to join the
army, he believes he has again shirked his duty. And just as he before, he
refuses to accept the simple fact that he had no say in either outcome. He
takes the blame regardless, though he leaves room to rail at a God that would
create a polio virus; a creature seemingly designed to take the lives of little
boys.
Inevitably, polio reaches the camp where Bucky now watches a
new group of boys, and inevitably one will die. Bucky is now convinced he is
the source of evil plaguing the Jews of New Jersey. He had once screamed his
anger and frustration at God for the deaths. But now in act of remarkable
hubris and lacking any evidence for his guilt, Bucky takes it all. He once killed
his mother and is now the killer stalking New Jersey; not God or his polio
virus. When Bucky himself is maimed by the disease, he breaks off all relations
with his beloved Marcia. Again, he takes the blame and offers his behavior as
an example of him acting with integrity and doing his duty by her. He claims it
is for her sake (so she can marry a healthy man). Marcia is not convinced, nor
will the reader be.
How did a young man with so much promise, so much true
integrity and beloved by so many, take such a wrong turn in life? How could he
turn away a woman and her family that could have been his second salvation
(after that provided by his grandparents)? It is an interesting question and
one not really addressed by Roth in any manner. Bucky is more of an object
lesson. As a Jew he should have known well the Book of Job and the lesson
therein that God is not in the business of reward or punishment. As a secular
Jew, if not an atheist, Bucky had more than sufficient sense to work towards a
clear understanding that there is no design in terms of individual deaths at
the hands of the polio virus. It does not pick and choose from the virtuous and
the evil of mankind. It simply infects, sometimes maims, sometimes it kills. It
really does not need any help from Bucky. Bucky’s claim of guilt is more a
manifestation of his lingering neurosis over his mother’s death come to full fruition.
As short a book as “Nemesis” is, it reads like two books to
me. In book 1, we meet a young man that could be and is to his young charges
invincible. He lives in an America that measures up to Roth’s dreams of an
America at her best in terms of ideals and sense of community. All Americans,
WASPS, Jews, Blacks and Japanese will work together during WWII to defeat the
fascists. And while Bucky may be short and nearsighted, he is an outstanding
javelin thrower, weight lifter, and educator. He is a model for the boys he
teaches and who he cherishes. His fiancé and her family, and Bucky’s still
surviving grandmother cherish him. They have only good reasons to do so. But deep within Bucky a seed grows; it was
planted on the day of his birth, the day of his mother’s death. In the second
book, this seed will grow into a thorny hedge of self-destructive self-hatred.
Bucky will grow up learning of his mother’s worth, missing her as a ghost he
never knew, and wondering at his role in her passing. These thoughts will begin
their corrosive effects on his mind, and will come to full effect as children
begin to die all around Bucky. He knows
he has killed them all. He will come to use his hedge to wall off the world he
fears/knows can only benefit by lacking any contact with him.
Another reason to see this book as two books and one of the cleverest
aspects of the book is the narrator. He (and he is a he) seems to be the
standard 3rd person omniscient narrator. Near the middle of the
book, we learn, no; the narrator is one of the boys from the playground, now
grown to middle age. The first part of the book is actually 2nd
person narrated, and in the second half switches to 1st person. We
learn how Arnie (the narrator) explains how it is that he knows all – it might
not be believable, but it serves a very neat purpose. It allows the narrator (a
stand in for Roth?) attempt with logic and empathy to try to persuade the now
elderly and bitterly alone Bucky to shed his guilt and live what is left of his
life. I will leave it to the reader to figure for themselves how successful Arnie is. Roth closes “Nemesis” with a short epilog,
a kind of paean to the Bucky that was and then wasn’t. I actually this short “song”
to “Bucky the Invincible” reveals a lot about what Roth was hoping for in terms
of his flawed hero and maybe what this book was mourning the loss of.
“Nemesis” may well be Roth’s last book and though certainly
not his best, it is worth reading. For an author that the critic Harold Bloom
has listed as one of the four best still working (the others being Thomas
Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Cormac McCarthy), it is incredible to see him do as
well as he did with “Nemesis”. It is not a book that I would group with the highest
art due to the brevity of its examination of the themes of death, guilt, and
hubris; subjects I think deserve a more in depth exploration. I also found the
language to be lacking much art or poetry of expression. It is also largely
lacking in emotional impact, especially so for the subject of lost children. In
a comparison to one of Bloom’s other favorites, Cormac McCarthy and his “Cities of the Plain”, “Nemesis” comes off as a very poor second in terms of how each author
grapples with the subject of death. That being said Roth does raise the themes
of death and guilt in a manner that is more than sufficiently well done to get
any reader to start thinking about them – clearly not something very many books
on the Best Seller’s List are designed to do. In a final analysis, this book is
worth reading for its examination of the aforementioned themes, and to see a
master story teller still very much performing brilliantly on his way out the
door.
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