American_Pastoral commento

8/10/2019 American_Pastoral commento

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NOTHING IS IMPE RSONALLYPERCEIVED: DREAMS, REAL ISTICCHRONICLES AND PERSPECTIVALEFFECTS IN AMERICAN PASTORAL

Pia Masiero

Universit Ca Foscari Venezia

American Pastoralis a rather complex novel. Each time I teach it, I get the same

response: Roths Pulier winning book is a great book, but it is dicult to put

together. The single most baing item listed by my students when pressed to

articulate what makes it complex concerns the disappearance of the rst-person

pronoun. In other words, where is Zuckerman, the presiding consciousness of the

rst eighty-odd pages? Why does he not return to wrap up the Swedes story?

What follows will address these questions and try to illuminate the narrato-logical issues at stake in Roths masterpiece: I rmly believe that the experiential

conditions of readers (Toolan, Irresponsibility 265) are the backdrop against

which to measure any critical endeavor.

Narratologically speaking, American Pastoral can be divided in two clear-cut

sections. In the rst one, ending on page 89, the reader is confronted with Philip

Roths most cherished characterNathan Zuckermanwho speaks in his own

voice using the rst person pronoun. From page 90 up to the very end of the book

the rst-person account gives way to a third-person narrative strictly focalized onSeymour Levovthe Swedewe have come to know through Zuckermans own

recollections of his childhood years.

Thus stated, the narratological structure would seem clear enough. And yet,

once we try to dene the precise contours of this second (so to speak) section and

its relation to the rst, numerous questions arise.

First of all, the pivotal referential shift characterizing the novel is not visually

emphasized by a chapter break. A cursory look at the book contents page, in fact,suggests that American Pastoral is the story of an apparently seamless trajecto-

ry detailing the recollection of a situation of harmony (Paradise Remembered)

followed by a disruption (The Fall) and the consequent awareness of a loss

(Paradise Lost). The only possible hint at a change in perspectival gear depends


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on making the most out of the specication remembered which in itself implies

a remembering subject. And yet, there is no way of distinguishing this recollect-

ing subject from the one who falls and loses a previously idyllic life. Dierently

put, the reader is tricked into believing that the book is made up of three sections

(harmoniously made up of three chapters each) related by echoing titles. Well, ob-

viously enough, the book ismade up of three sections which nonetheless are only

apparently reader friendly: thematic development notwithstanding, these titles

do not mark in any way the dramatic change in perspective1dening the narra-

tological structure of the book.2I suggest that burying the cut dividing the book

in two clearly distinguishable narratological halves in the middle of the chapter

which closes section one (Paradise Remembered) may be taken to be an ob-

jective correlative of the strategy of disguise Roth via Zuckerman is a master of.

What has been buried, in fact, is not so much the narrative shift from rst to third

person which is visible enough, but the originating source of the presentation of

the Swedes consciousness, namely Zuckermans inventiveness.

The key to understanding American Pastoralis contained in the transition be-

tween the two focalizing modes: thus, the high school reunion is the place where

one can start to grasp the relationship between them. Not only does the shift take

place while Zuckerman is dancing with Joy Helpern, but we are explicitly in-vited to consider the whole book we are reading as originating there. The news

Zuckerman receives from the Swedes brother Jerry, in fact, sets the writers mind

in motion and the result of Zuckermans immersion is the as-yet untitled manu-

script of American Pastoral.3Signicantly, the paragraph immediately following

Jerrys bare essentials details the months to come in which Zuckerman think[s]

about the Swede for six, eight, sometimes ten hours at a stretch [] inhabit[s] this

person least like [himself], disappear[s] into him, day and night [tries] to take the

measure of a person of apparent blankness and innocence and simplicity, chart

his collapse (74).

This three-page-long section interrupts the high-school reunion opening a pro-

leptical window on Zuckermans creative period: the writer tells us about the

end of his obsessive absorption and its result, the actual completion of his manu-

script. Considering the level of the story, American Pastoralcannot be identied

as a framed narrative; once we take into account the level of discourse, however,

these pages provide the closing of the frame we will not get where we would

1 I prefer to use the term perspective because it can be associated both to point of view and to opinion.

2 There is another signicant detail going in the same (not-reader-friendly) direction: the account of Sept 1, 1973 co-

incides with the beginning of chapter ve, which is the middle chapter of section two (The Fall). The obvious result

is that the account of that eventful day oversteps the boundaries of the section diusing the perception of its unity.

3 For an analysis concerning the books (possibly) wrien by Nathan Zuckerman in his whole career see my Philip

Roth and the Zuckerman Books, pp. 207-212.


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N A R R A T I N G T H E P A S T O R A L

expect (and would like) it to be, namely, at the end of the book. No wonder that

buried as it is in the middle of a very emotionally intense scene, the closing of the

frame ends up forgoen exactly like the spelling out of the source of the Swedes

presentation. In the whole book, there is just one other reference to writing this

book, liable like this one to be read and forgoen (more about this later). After this

crucial meta-narrative asideparaphrasing Zuckermans own words, this is as

far as we get, as much of a framing earful as we are to hear from the narratorwe

are plunged back into the high-school reunion. We alreadyknow that the Swede

and his family came to life in [Zuckerman] (77; my italics) through a work based

on sorting out aesthetically relevant facts4and providing the missing links, but

we will now be given important clues to understand the directions this making

up will take. The shift in focalizationadumbrated in Zuckermans using two

highly signicant verbs (inhabiting and disappearing)is carefully prepared and

explained. We are shown into Zuckermans mind and accompanied in his pro-

gressive involvement in a perspective dierent from his own.

Zuckerman is dancing with Joy and cannot help thinking about the Swede and

trying to make ends t: the image of the smiling Swede at the Shea Stadium, the

uneventful dinner at Vincents and the news he has just received from his brother.

Zuckerman begins imperceptibly to do his jobinventing sense-making storiesand stories that make (narrative) sense. The sense depends crucially on imagin-

ing thoughts appropriate to the kind of person the Swede was. While Jerry was

still talking and showering his opinions about his brother on him, Zuckerman

had already wondered: righteous anger at the daughter? No doubt that would

have helped. [] But given the circumstances, wasnt it asking a lot, asking the

Swede to overstep the limits that made him identiably the Swede? (72). The

story Zuckerman wants to tell and is already beginning to weave while dancing

with Joy has to be identiably the Swedes in spite of its coming from his own

imaginative work. Or, to be more precise, his imaginative work has to revolve

around a strictly mimetic ingredient. The famous writer begins sliding toward his

heros point of view, puing forward what he believes to be the foundation of the

Swedes existential predicament: I was thinking again of the Swede [] a man

[] awakening in middle age to the horror of self-reection (85).

Zuckerman begins to contemplate the very thing that must have baed the

Swede till the moment he died: how had he become historys plaything?(87) af-

ter repeating to himself the very words Jerry told him:

4 Of course I was working with traces; of course essentials of what he was to Jerry were gone, expunged from my

portrait, things I was ignorant of orI didnt want[] (76; my italics).


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He kept peering in from outside at his own life. The struggle of his life was to bury

this thing. But how could he? Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, Why are

things the way they are? Why should he bother, when the way they were was always

perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer,

and up till then he was so blessed he didnt even know the question existed.(87; em-

phasis in original)

The verbatim repetition has an incantatory quality: Zuckerman rehearses the te-

nets around which his imaginative foray must revolvethe facts on which his c-

tion has to be foundedand plunges into a third-person narrative. The contem-

plation thus is not tentative, but bears a necessity both existentially authentic and

narratively tenable. Zuckermans search for the right key to access the Swedeshorrendous self-reection is as sharp as a surgical knife: I began to try to work

out for myself what exactlyhad shaped a destiny unlike any imagined for the fa-

mous Weequahic three-leerman (87; my italics).

Hed invoked in me, when I was a boy [] the strongest fantasy I had of be-

ing someone else. But to wish oneself into anothers glory, as boy or as man,

is an impossibility, untenable on psychological grounds if you are not a writ-

er, and on aesthetic grounds if you are. To embrace your hero in his destruc-

tion, howeverto let your heros life occur within you when everything istrying to diminish him, to imagine yourself into his bad luck, to implicate

yourself [] in the bewilderment of his tragic fallwell, thats worth think-

ing about. (88)

Zuckerman is not only detailing how it is the news of the Swedes destruction that

renders him a possible subject for the writers mind, he is reecting about the nar-

ratological structure he deems worththinking about. The terms Zuckerman uses

here are crucial and foundational: the writer becomes the Swede leing his life oc-

curwithin him,implicatinghimself in thebewildermentof his tragic fall. This speci-

cation adds to the basic concept of choosing a specic perspective, the further,

second-order layer of imagining his hero reecting about himself. Zuckermans

portrait of the Swede centers on his imagining the Swedes own facing his predic-

ament starting, as we have seen, from what is identiably the Swedes. The reader

can judge the plausibility of the language and the perspective Zuckerman will

present thanks to the long immersion in the mystique of the Swede s/he has been

exposed to in the rst section: the paradise Zuckerman remembers functions

as the necessary premise to measure the internal verisimilitude of Zuckermans

story.


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I am thinking of the Swedes great fall and of how he must have imagined

that it was founded on some failure of his responsibility. There is where it

must begin. It doesnt maer if he was the cause of anything. He makes him-

self responsible anyway. [] Yes, the cause of the disaster has for him to be a

transgression. How else would the Swede explain it to himself? It has to be a

transgression, a single transgression, even if it is only he who identies it as

a transgression. The disaster that befalls him begins in a failure of his respon-

sibility, as he imagines it.(89; emphasis in original)

This paragraph precedes the shift in focalization and shows the writers mind cir-

cling around a (narrative) target which gets closer and more convincing: his con-

templation has found some key termsfailure, responsibility, transgressionmingled with the modal must (and its variant has to) and the verb imagine, all

repeated again and again. The core of the narrative logic Zuckerman is sure he has

found (Yes, we hear the writer say) is highlighted with italics: as he imagines it

condenses in a sentence the gural strategy Zuckerman has come up with. The

discourse will emanate from the focalized consciousness of the reector charac-

ter as a result of Zuckermans illusionistic narrative technique (Fludernik 344).

So far, we have been close-reading the high-school reunion scene as it is piv-

otal to understand Zuckermans eminently gural project. The Swede is lifted onZuckermans stage5through the spelling out of the magic words I dreamed a

realistic chronicle (89). Each of these words helps delimit the framework of the

subsequent narrative, condensing synthetically what Zuckerman has been reect-

ing upon during the reunion. The writers I is the uncontested source of the

presentation of the Swedes consciousness; the Swede comes to life in his imagi-

nation, but this dream will look like a chronicle reporting the inner occurrences

of an individual consciousness. The indeterminate article a conrms indirectly

that this is Zuckermans version of the Swede and, that there may be alternativeversions characterized by dierent slants and/or omissions.

When Zuckerman invokes the generic frame of a realistic chronicle, it is in or-

der to diuse the association with pure fantasy the verb to dream is liable to trig-

ger. We should not forget that in the meta-narrative aside proleptically showing

Zuckerman past his Swedish immersion, the writer advocates for his ction a

truth comparable to Jerrys (and just as disputable as his) (76-77). The concept

of distortion inherently contained in the semantic eld of dreaming is here both

5 It is worth stressing that the generic I lifted the Swede up onto thestage (88) becomes in the paragraph contain-

ing the shift in focalization I lifted onto mystage the boy we were all going to follow into America (89). The sen-

tence condenses in itself the tenets of Zuckermans endeavor: 1. Zuckerman is the one who lifts the Swede onto his

stage (everything begins and ends in Zuckermans agency as a writer). 2. The one on the stage is the Swede, he is the

one who occupies the center (restricted internal focalization). See also Masiero 145-152.


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conrmed and redirected toward the notion that an undistorted account of events

simply does not exist. Zuckerman defends his ction of the Swede on the basis of

the method he has applied: rigorous research on the eld (trips, photos, pictures,

microlmed sport pages, books) and a consequent mimetic adherence to what he

is sure to be identiably the Swedes.

The new paern of focalization could be taken as an exemplary instance of

Zuckermans commitment to Roths ventriloquist passion. It can in fact be un-

derstood as a masterful handling of two voicesZuckermans voice as narrator

(focalizing onthe Swede) in the background and the voice we perceive as coming

from the Swede (focalization throughthe character) in the foreground.6

Posing Zuckerman as the author ofAmerican Pastoraldirects our aention to the

originary presence and voice (the writers) providing the anchoring for another

dierentvoice (the Swedes). The explicit spelling out of the source of all textual

uerancesZuckermanoers the readers a viable way to naturalize7the tonal

quality of the text. As a ventriloquist, Zuckerman must convincingly sustain the

illusion of the Swedes recognizably individual and specic voice while leing us

hear his own voice. The pleasure is precisely in the throwing [] of voices rath-

er than in any nal xing of their source. The act of ventriloquism problematizes

presence. But it does so by staging presence (Aczel, Commentary 704-705). Inless metaphorical words, FID [the most obviously ventriloquist device] is consti-

tuted in the perceived dierence of voice in the FID uerance from the voice of the

broader uerance in which it is embedded (Aczel, Hearing 478).

How do these two voices and perspectives interact concretely?

The second section of Roths novel seems to t well Stanzels description of a

gural narrative (even if not, as we shall see, prototypically) revolving around the

interplay between a mediating voice and the point of view that voice mediatesadistinction well describing what we might provisionally call Zuckermans audi-

bility and the Swedes visibility. This laer is best understood through the notion

of strict focalization. The second half of the book is, in fact, rmly locked in a

deictic center determining the specic spatio-temporal coordinates of the Swedes

obsessive probing at the ungraspable reasons of his stupendous fall. This anchor-

ing is associated with a singulative frequency mode and the presentation of events

in scenic sequence; the Swede is furthermore rendered visible by the whole pan-

oply of what Jahn calls criterial features of focalization (Windows 243): the

6 Even if I understand Fluderniks aacking the distinction between voice and focalization (New Wine 634-635),

I would argue that we gain a notable heuristic pay-o in conceiving American Pastoralas built around this basic

structure: Zuckerman tells what (he thinks) the Swede perceives either in the Swedes voice or in his own (or both).

7 Naturalization may be described as the automatic evocation of an appropriate (natural) context for a given

uerance.


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text overows with perceptual indicatorswhat the Swede sees, watches, hears,

imagines, dreamsthat mark the texts anchoring to his gural perspective.

Strictly focalized perspective notwithstanding, we should not forget that thecontinued employment of third-person references indicates, no maer how un-

obtrusively, the continued presence of a narrator (Cohn 112). The change con-

cerns crucially the writers relationship with his materials. Zuckerman contin-

ues to be present as narrator, as the origin of everything the reader is oered.

Zuckerman conveys the Swedes consciousness resorting to the three types of ren-

dering Dorrit Cohn listspsycho-narration, [thought-report] quoted monologue,

narrated discourse [FID]8(14).

Let us see (and especially hear). Once Zuckerman is past the foundational

premise that it doesnt maer if he was the cause of anything (88), he seems to

align himself with his protagonists interpretationsthe dream, that is, takes the

form of a (ctive) chronicle.

The rst scene Zuckerman (while still dancing with Joy) comes up withbear-

ing all the required features he has already decided upon (failure, responsibility

and transgression)stages a thirty-six-year-old Swede at the seaside with eleven-

year-old Merry. To redress what he has just donehe has, inexplicably, made funof her stueringhe kisses her stammering mouth with the passion that she had

been asking him for all month long while knowing only obscurely what she was

asking for (91). How Zuckerman wants this scene to be read and interpreted is

immediately made clear: never in his entire life, not as a son, a husband, a father,

even as an employer, had he given way to anything so alien to the emotional rules

by which he was governed, and later he wonderedif this strange parental misstep

was not the lapse from responsibility for which he paid for the rest of his life

(92; my italicsexample of thought-report: the recognizably narratorial discourse

about a characters consciousness). The scene we have witnessed as taking shape

in Zuckermans mind is rewrien away from its real source and as coming from

the Swede as the shift from thought-report to FID suggests: after the disaster,

when he went obsessively searching for the origins of their suering, it was that

anomalous moment [] that he remembered. [] What went wrong with Merry?

What did he do to her that was so wrong? The kiss? That kiss? So beastly? How

could a kiss make someone into a criminal? (92; my italics)

8 I will hereafter (reluctantly) use the term free indirect discourse (FID) instead of Cohns termnarrated mono-

loguebecause the former has become the standard one. My reluctance depends on the awareness that Cohns term

has the unquestionable advantage of maintaining the reference to the inclusion of the narrators voice in its language.

I will use thought-report for the same reason.


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In the rst (gurally focalized) pages, Zuckerman takes great pains in school-

ing the reader to sele the precise aribution of the emotional tones the text deliv-

ers, repeatedly directing him/her toward the Swedes obsessive search: once the

inexplicable had begun, the torment of self-examination never ended (92). The

never-ending quality of the Swedes obsession sustains the ction of the Swedes

delving unrelentingly into all the signicant moments of his daughters lifethe

Audrey Hepburn phase, the catholic phase, speech therapy sessions, her stuer-

ing diary, her Saturday trips to New Yorkdetail after detail after detail. In spite

of this (generous) provision of a naturalizing context, however, the interplay be-

tween Zuckermans narratorial statements and the Swedes perceptions and con-

ceptualizations is far from straightforward.

Generally speaking, Zuckerman does not display any special cognitive privi-

lege9and his diction and style do not transcend the reectors perceptional or

conceptual ability. And yet, Zuckerman is far from being a covert and unobtru-

sive narrator: he does not use his voice only to do the typical job a vocal autho-

rial narrator does, that is, to provide contextual informationquotational signals,

chronological underpinnings etc.but, signicantly, his overt intrusions take the

atypical10shape of consonant reinforcements of the Swedes own take on things.

Zuckermans authorial glosses do not maximize the distance between his per-ception and knowledge and the Swedes but aim at implicating the reader in the

Swedes logic and in his existential predicament.

No wonder he felt so untamed, craving to spill over with talk. Momentarily it was

then againnothing blown up, nothing ruined.As a family they still ew the

ight of the immigrant rocket, the upward, unbroken immigrant trajectory

from slave-driven great-grandfather to self-driven grandfather to self-con-

dent, accomplished, independent father []. No wonder he couldnt shut up.

It was impossible to shut up. The Swede was giving in to the ordinary humanwish to live once again in the past []. (122; my italics)

This paragraph follows the Swedes inebriated talk with a Rita Cohen still in dis-

guise. It displays the artful mixture of FID (in italics) and narratorial commen-

tary (normal text) so typical ofAmerican Pastoral. On the one hand, Zuckermans

voice is perfectly recognizable because it actually repeats something we have al-

ready heard in the rst pages of the book11, on the other, neitherthe Swedenor

9 There is only one proleptical window I am aware of: Meanwhile, under the impetus of that force which, by fail-

ing to size up the situation, would lead her into humiliation before the night was through, Jessie went waveringly on (332;

my italics).

10 According to Cohns inuential distinction either a narrator is intrusive and dissonant or unobtrusive and conso-

nant. See also Fludernik New Wine 624-626.

11 Repeatedly in the second section of the book Zuckermans opinions are recognizable to the word.


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Zuckerman wonder at what has just happened: this means that the same textual

portion may convey boththe SwedesandZuckermans meaning and the italicized

text may actually be an instance of thought-report (rather than FID). The interplay

itself renders overt the change in perspective and implicitly highlights the narra-

tors presence: voiceof any kindcan only be perceived as voice-dierent-

from (Aczel, Hearing 478).

The diculty in seling aributive maers the text may at times present stems

from an overall absence of authorialdissonantrhetoric. After the Swedes pos-

sible fallacy has been dismissedhe makes himself responsible anyway (88; my

italics)Zuckerman yields to the Swedes perspective and seems never reluctant

to countenance the appropriateness of his heros reactions (self-delusion includ-ed). The narrative situationthe Swedes unique baement as representative

of the vaster human baement at the mysterious dealings of historypushes

thought-report toward the gural idiom, that is towards what Cohn calls stylis-

tic contagion12(33). The mimetic quality of the narrative is maintained and rein-

forced by Zuckermans glosses because the readers aention is not drawn away

from the Swedes interiority. As a result, the reader cannot always tell which is

which as in the above-quoted excerpt. This contagion salvages the illusion of im-

mediacy typical of purely gural narratives and is responsible for Zuckermansapparent disappearance: it minimizes Zuckermans perceptibility while amplify-

ing the Swedes.13

To decide whether a given statement is a FID or a narratorial comment Toolan

suggests rewriting the dubious sentence in two ways, one explicitly bound to the

narrators and the other to the characters perspective: one of the two (articial)

sentences typically produces a beer t in terms of content and context (132).

Jahn furthermore extends Toolans suggestions to include a test of internal focal-

ization addressing the issue of who is more likely to conceptualize a given pieceof information in a certain way (NarratologyN1.24). It is interesting to note that

the result of these rewritings both conrms the astounding overlapping of the

two perspectivesthe narrators language lapsing into the colour of the char-

acters language, and indicates that, well beyond this double aributive validity

(making the most of FID as a mode of empathetic identication with characters

[McHale, Survey 275]), there are moments in which Zuckermans voice is very

clearly audible.

12 The phrase [] designate[s] places where psycho-narration verges on the narrated monologue [:] a reporting

syntax is maintained, but [] the idiom is strongly aected (or infected) with the mental idiom of the mind it ren-

ders (Cohn 33).

13 This narrative situation looks like the combination of intrusive narratorial voice and strictly focalized perspective

Aczel (Hearing) demonstrates to be peculiarly Jamesian. The obvious and crucial dierence concerns the fact that

Zuckerman is very literally an authorialnarrator.


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The most glaring case concerns the (implicit) reference to the book being writ-

ten: and the following week, with their doctor already arranging for Dawns hos-

pitalization, the Swede went alone to visit Conlons widow. How he managed to

get to that womans house for tea is another storyanother bookbut he did it,

and heroically she served him tea [] (215). Zuckerman cannot go unnoticed in

this sentencethe writer writing thisbook directing the Swedes movements on

hisstage.

Other cases easy to sele concern what Zuckerman literally supplements, name-

ly, what does notoccur to the Swede, what he does not imagine:It did not occur

to the Swede that he was right (323); Certainly, seeing Orcu dressed like that

down in the village [] you would not have imaginedif you were the Swedehis paintings having that rubbed-out look as their distinctive feature (334). This

is a rather typical function of thought-report, the most overtly narratorial mode

of rendering a characters consciousness: there is no way we can will Zuckerman

away from what he knowsabouthisportrait of the Swede.

These obvious (and marginal) cases excluded, I would argue that the key to un-

derstanding the peculiar overlapping thatAmerican Pastoralis literally built upon

can be grasped in the two quotations that follow:

A beautiful wife. A beautiful house. Runs his business like a charm. Handles

his handful of an old man well enough. He was really living it out, his ver-

sion of paradise. This is how successful people live. Theyre good citizens.

They feel lucky. (86)

Got to marry a beautiful girl named Dwyer. Got to run a business my father

built, a man whose own father couldnt speak English. Got to live in the pret-

tiest spot in the world. Hate America? Why, he lived in America the way he

lived inside his own skin. (213)

The two excerpts seem to be wrien on a par: the coordinates of the Swedes

existential set-upwife, house, business, fatherare listed in both; the Swedes

relationship with a vaster geopolitical arena (being a good citizen, America) is

similarly present in both. And yet, they belong in the rst and the second

section respectively. In the former, Zuckerman presents a catalogue listing the ba-

sic elements of the Swedes world; the present tense conveys a sense of (almost)

Proppian ingredients: Zuckerman rehearses them and while doing it inserts a

sentence in the past tensehe was living it out, his version of paradisewhich

could be read as an instance of thought-report if we were already in the context

of a gural narrative. The plunge into the thought-report mode and the absence

of Zuckermans rst person pronoun (before he formally sheds it) make this para-

graph a good candidate for the second section here represented by the other


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quoted excerpt showing a typical mixture of quoted monologue (note the posses-

sive adjective my) and thought-report (or is it FID?). The juxtaposition of these

two paragraphs is not a textual exception, but a rule: Zuckerman formally gives

up the rst person pronoun well after he has told and retold about the Swedes

talent for being himself in the third person in the rst 90 pages. Indeed, the

readers aention is directed to the Swede starting with the very rst words of the

novel spelling out his nickname. The distinctive quality of the perspectival eects

American Pastoralpresents lies in the peculiar linguistic mirroring each section

reects back on the other: Zuckermans absorption in the Swede is uniformly (if

dierently) present in both for the rather simple reason that bothare the result of

the writers immersion in his childhood years hero: we should not forget that the

high-school reunion dance is the seminal source of the wholebookchildhood

memories included. Sentences echo each other playing the subtle game of bury-

ing a dierence within a sameness as in the dierent indexing of the personal

pronoun we (the rst excluding Zuckerman, the second including himthe

strongest possible marker, if need be, of Zuckermans presence in this second

section) in the following excerpts:

Thinking: She is not in my power and she never was. She is in the power of

something that does not give a shit. Something demented. We all are.Yes, at the age of thirty-six, in 1973, [] the Swede found out that we are all

in the power of something demented. (256)

This minimal change foregrounds unmistakably the narrators voice.

The famous close of the book presents a narratological abridgement of this

multi-layer mirroring.

Yes, the breach had been pounded in their fortication, even out herein secure

Old Rimrock, and nowthat it was opened it would not be closed again. []And whats wrong with their life? What on earth is less reprehensible than

the life of the Levovs? (423; my italics)

Whose voice is this? It would seem easy to le this sentence with Zuckerman

as it echoes the very metaphor the writer had already used at the very beginning

of the bookThe daughter and the decade blasting to smithereens his particular

form of utopian thinking, the plague America infltratingthe Swedescastleand

thereinfectingeveryone (8; my italics). And yet chapter eight closes with a very

similar image to be ascribed to the Swede: Dawn and Orcu: two predators.

The outlaws are everywhere. They are inside the gates (366). Thus if the clos-

ing words can certainly be aributed to Zuckerman who closes the curtain on the

Swedes performance with a rhetorical question concerning the very subject of the


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whole bookthe mysterious (and baing) discrepancy between a good seed and

its foul fruitthey seem to emerge from a chorus-like, polyphonic substratum.

The resulting dialogic contamination is signaled and condensed in the presenceof two deicticshere and nowwhich plant into a clearly narratorial gloss a jar-

ring element mining it from within. The (desired) consequence is that the com-

mentary becomes a sort of hybrid, an in-between form posing the narrator in the

here and now of his beloved protagonistthe formal manifestation of inhabiting

the Swede Zuckerman had spoken about in the meta-narrative aside in the mid-

dle of chapter three.

Zuckermans empathetic (often hybridized) presence alongside the suering

Swede is what the reader witnesses throughout the whole second section of the

book. First throughout the ve years after Merrys bombing and her disappear-

ance while he is besieged by a gruesome inner life of tyrannical obsessions (173)

and then during the nal aack on his psyche taking place on Sept 1, 1973. It is no

wonder that the quantitative relationship between FID and narrative context mir-

rors the progressive narrowing in on the Swedes short-circuiting ruminations ig-

nited by Rita Cohens leer: FID intensies while the Swede is being unmade by

steadily sinking under the weight (384) of new disruptive revelations. FID is es-

sentially an evanescent form, dependent on the narrative voice that mediates andsurrounds it, and is therefore peculiarly dependent on tone and context (Cohn

116). In other words, it is in the very nature of this device to throw into relief the

narrators presence at the very moment it seems to obscure it. Signicantly enough,

the terms of sincere endearment the writer displays intensify in this part of the book

with the contextual intensication of FID (the best mode to confer naturalness to

stream-of-consciousness) and long stretches of (often unsignaled) quoted mono-

logues in the rst-person or thought-report stripped to its almost Faulknerian ex-

treme (Thinking: Futile, every last think he had ever done [...] 256).

The dilatation of the time of narration to reect the narrated time makes this

day a memorable literary tour de force: each single event the Swede has to face

during the long excruciating day triggers a long ashback through which the

protagonist tries to come up for the last time with an answer to explain what

was beyond understanding (238). Each single new revelation the Swede has to

face, each plunge he takes into the past is glossed by Zuckerman with empathy.

About his acceding to Dawns decision to build a new house (and the consequent

ashback on hisdream of living in the old stone house), we hear Zuckerman say:

that was the only way the Swede knew for a man to go about being a man

(201). During the phone call with Jerry which brings the Swede to tears, we hear

Zuckerman stop the ow of the conversation to think out loud: and these two

brothers, the same parents sons, one for whom the aggressions been bred out,


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the other for whom the aggressions been bred in (278). We hear Zuckerman

back up the Swede concerning the place to sele in with Dawn: But the Swede,

rather like some frontiersman of old, would not be turned back. What was im-

practical and ill-advised to his father was an act of bravery to him (310). After

the recollection of the Swedes visits to a hospitalized Dawn, we hear Zuckerman

provide the link for the following ashback concerning his wife: it was a great

help to him, driving home after one of those visits, to remember her as the girl she

really was (181). We hear Zuckerman opening a window on his protagonists re-

membering the Thanksgiving dinners the Levovs and the Dwyers spent together:

so the deal was cut, the youngsters were married [] and both families got to-

gether every year for Thanksgiving dinner up in Old Rimrock (400); and closing

it it is the American pastoral par excellence and it lasts twenty-four hours (402).

Examples abound.

I started this narratological journey by spelling out the questions my students

ask me when I teachAmerican Pastoral: Where is Zuckerman? Why does he not re-

turn to wrap up the Swedes story? There is only one answer: Zuckerman is every-

where, audible in ways I hope I have made suciently clear. Nothing is imper-

sonally perceived (167) and as such everything is personally accounted for in the

uid space between dream and chronicleanother, masterful chapter in PhilipRoths ongoing exploration of the relationship between a writer and his materials.

W O R K S C I T E D

Aczel, Richard. Commentary: Throwing Voices. New Literary History32.3

(2001): 703-705.

. Hearing Voices in Narrative Texts. New Literary History29 (1998):467-500.

Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds. Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in

Fiction.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Fludernik Monika. Towards a Natural Narratology. London: Routledge, 1996.

. New Wine in Old Boles? Voice, Focalization, and New Writing. New

Literary History32.3 (2001): 619-638.

Jahn, Manfred. Windows of Focalization: Deconstructing and Reconstructing a

Narratological Concept. Style30.2 (Summer 1996): 241-267.

. Narratology. A Guide to the Theory of Narrative. 28 May 2005. 23 July 2011.

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Masiero, Pia. Philip Roth and the Zuckerman Books. The Making of a Storyworld.

Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2011.

McHale, Brian. Free Indirect Discourse: A Survey of Recent Accounts. PTL: AJournal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature3 (1978): 249-287.

Toolan, Michael. Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction. 2nd ed. London:

Routledge, 2001.

. The Irresponsibility of FID. Ed. P. Tammi and H. Mommola. FREE lan-

guage INDIRECT translation DISCOURSE narratology. Tampere: Tampere

University Press, 2006: 261278.

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