Prometheus remains the quintessential rebel-hero, the mythological figure who defied Zeus, stole the secret of fire from Hephaestus, and gave it to mankind. For that liberating act, he was punished—chained to a rock where an eagle pecked away at his liver. Nathan Zuckerman is a paler post-Modernist version. He defied the American Jewish community, exposed its dirty little secrets and then blabbed the whole business in public—i.e. Gentile—print. For that liberating (?) aesthetic act, he became Rich and Famous, Remorseful and Troubled. Zuckerman's portrait of the assimilated American Jew specialized in warts. No wonder his readers cried "Foul!" when they saw the mirror he held up to their nature.

Nathan Zuckerman is, of course, Philip Roth's fictionized extension, his way of paying off old debts, of exorcizing old guilts, at the same time that he can, and does, insist that one keep author and character forever separated. In large measure the device worked in My Life as a Man (1974) and it was brilliantly effective in The Ghost Writer (1979), but, this time, even True Believers will have trouble swallowing the latest installment of Nathan Zuckerman's "complaints."

Zuckerman Unbound is about the surprises that success brings. Like Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, it is an exercise in biting the hands that have fed them, at the same time that it aspires toward confession. In earlier, simpler times, a writer like F. Scott Fitzgerald could believe that "The rich are different from you and me" and set about writing fiction that would convince his countrymen that the mystique was true…. Poor Zuckerman lives in a tougher-skinned, less romantic decade. Nobody is interested in hearing about how hard life in the fast lane can be because, as Nathan points out, "a poor misunderstood millionaire is not really a topic that intelligent people can discuss for very long."

Nonetheless, Nathan Zuckerman cannot not discuss his put-upon, beleaguered life, and Philip Roth cannot resist any chance to play "defender of the [aesthetic] faith."… But Zuckerman protests too much about highmindedness. He is yet another of Roth's Temper Tantrum Kids, this time with the Harvard Classics at his fingertips and the Modernist Giants firmly in his handgrasp. When Zuckerman yells, he insists on good literary company: "What would Joseph Conrad do? Leo Tolstoy? Anton Chekhov? When first starting out as a young writer in college he was always putting things to himself that way…." The rub, of course, is that none of those writers grew up Jewish in Newark…. Out of the nearly equal measures of attraction and repulsion, of frustration and self-righteousness, about American Jewish life, Nathan Zuckerman's art is made.

By now, all of this has a familiar look—not only in terms of Roth's canon …, but also in terms of the longer tradition of American Jewish letters. Zuckerman is uncomfortable—yea, guilt-ridden—about the money that crashes in as copies of Carnovsky roll off the presses…. In Abraham Cahan's scathing portrait of the alrightnik, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), success is synonymous with an ashy taste. Despite his millions (or, more correctly, because of them), Levinsky tries desperately to reestablish contact with his earlier, authentic (read: Jewish) self. Roth is perhaps the first American Jewish writer to give the scenario a literary twist; now High Art, rather than the garment industry, can make one wealthy and estranged.

Roth has specialized in this corner of the American Jewish saga. He writes about Jewish kitsch as if that alone constituted the cultural whole. His voice—half wise-guy, half Jeremiah—is still his greatest resource. And yet, it is when Roth waxes poignant, as he does when describing his father's death and its aftermath, that he can generate passages that move us in ways that his broad assaults on Jewish motherhood, however funny, never quite do. Zuckerman Unbound ends with a symphony to fatherhood we have not heard as powerfully since the last pages of The Professor of Desire (1977).

Given Roth's penchant for self-analysis, it is fitting that the last words about Zuckerman Unbound come from one of Roth's own characters. For some time Roth has been writing with his head arched over his shoulder, as if his reviewers and critics might be gaining on him…. Nonetheless, in The Ghost Writer, a much younger Nathan Zuckerman sought out an established writer to act as his mentor, father-figure, and role model. In Zuckerman Unbound, his secret-sharer is Alvin Pepler, the wacky know-it-all who can match Zuckerman paranoia for paranoia, self-righteousness for self-righteousness. In his unfinished review of Carnovsky, Pepler/Roth makes a very savvy point:

Fiction is not autobiography, yet all fiction, I am convinced, is in some sense rooted in autobiography, though the connection to actual events may be tenuous indeed, even non-existent … yet there are dangers in writing so closely to the heels of one's own immediate experience: a lack of toughness, perhaps; a tendency to indulgence; an urge to justify the author's ways to men.

The same things could be said, in spades, about Zuckerman Unbound. (pp. 53-4)