The problem of identy in Philip Roth’s “American pastoral”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.2024/ckfmqk80Keywords:
identity, American dream, alter egoAbstract
Against the perception - often abetted by Roth himself - that his fiction has compromised the integrity of Jewish- American cultural identity, Roth has consistently asserted his primacy as an artist by claiming and dramatizing what we might call the self’s essential elusiveness. Near the conclusion of The Counterlife (1986) Roth's alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, reflects that should such an entity as "an irreducible self' exist, it "is rather small, I think, and may even be the root of all impersonation - the natural being may be the skill itself, the innate capacity to impersonate."
References
Philip Roth, The Counterlife (New York: Farrar, 1986), p. 320;
Elaine M. Kauvar, "An Interview with Cynthia Ozick," Contemporary Literature 34.3 (1993), p. 373.
Philip Roth, American Pastoral (New York: Houghton, 1997), p. 3,
G. Neelakantan. Monster in Newark: Philip Roth's Apocalypse in "American Pastoral" Studies in American Jewish Literature (1981-), Vol. 23, Philip Roth's America: The Later Novels (2004), pp. 55-66
Downloads
Published
Conference Proceedings Volume
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Sitora Khayrulloyeva (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
