Day 1,353, Quasi-Quarantine: "Zuckerman Unbound" Tracks An Author's Struggles With Fame, Guilt, Expectation, Paranoia in Mid-Twentieth-Century Manhattan

 "Ordinary everyday thoughts on the subject of who one was were lavish enough without an extra hump of narcissism to carry around."

Nathan Zuckerman is back in this sequel to "The Ghost Writer," though he reappears as an (in)famous novelist, struggling with fame and expectation on the heels of writing a lascivious book. The writer is an omniscient narrator, though much of what he actually wants and values is shielded from the reader.

"But all the grieving over his father's body had taken place when Nathan was twelve and fifteen and twenty-one: the grief over all his father had been dead to while living. From that grief the death was a release."

Under Philip Roth's meticulous hand, Zuckerman wanders through is own life, wracked by paranoia, haunted by failed relationships, hounded by an obsessive fan, and guilt-ridden over what his writing choices have cost his family. When his brother eviscerates him at the end, Henry voices much of what many readers have to be feeling about Nathan.

A very short story -- with very small type, in my version -- "Zuckerman Unbound" is largely intended as a setup for the final book in the trilogy. In semi-autobiographical fashion, Roth does a masterful job of exploring the relationship between art and the artist, as well as capturing the zeitgeist of 1960s New York.

"Their conversation grew louder and more shameful and went on for another ten minutes. His world was getting stupider by the hour, and so was he."