Friday Column: Classify Thyself

(a guest post by Barrett Hathcock)

I’ve been working on a review of the upcoming Philip Roth novel for the fall issue of The Quarterly Conversation. The novel, called Exit Ghost, is purportedly Roth’s last Nathan Zuckerman book, which will bring his Zuckerman total to nine (eight novels and one novella). In preparation for the review, I’ve re-submerged myself in Roth, and, aside from trying to turn every conversation into a shrieking debate, a side effect is that I’ve become increasingly preoccupied with how his books are presented, specifically, the “Books by Philip Roth” page opposite each novel’s title page.

Like Bellow, like Updike, this simple listing of previous work is heavy with significance. Flip open a late Roth and there’s at the least a rough draft syllabus on postwar American fiction staring you back in the face.

For the longest time, these books were listed chronologically. It looked like this:
Goodbye, Columbus
Letting Go
When She Was Good
Portnoy’s Complaint
Our Gang
The Breast
The Great American Novel
My Life as a Man
Reading Myself and Others
The Professor of Desire
The Ghost Writer
Zuckerman Unbound
The Anatomy Lesson
The Prague Orgy
Zuckerman Bound
The Counterlife
The Facts
Deception
Patrimony
Operation Shylock
Sabbath’s Theater
American Pastoral
I Married a Communist

I Married a Communist was the last first-edition hardback to appear with this chronological list of Roth’s work. Beginning with—fittingly—The Human Stain, his previous work page came categorized into subgroups: Zuckerman Books, Roth Books, Kepesh Books, and Other Books. Somewhere between the story of Ira Ringold and Coleman Silk, some classificational shuffling took place. And lately, this change has even made its way into the Vintage paperbacks. You can get an approximate feel for how recent the print run was on your copy of, say, The Ghost Writer.

I say “fittingly” because The Human Stain capped off the second Zuckerman trilogy and concurrently solidified the emergence of Roth as a critic’s favorite. Soon everyone was lining up to say that his productivity at this late stage in his career was unprecedented. And it has been, but still it’s amazing to see how fast an opinion can calcify and get passed around like so much wisdom. By the time The Human Stain’s title page was being set, the canonization—of Roth within contemporary letters, of Roth within himself—was underway.

What does this mean? Or, more pointedly, who cares? I for one hold a special fondness for the chronological listing; it’s like seeing the geological strata in a roadcut in some mountain pass. And with Roth—whose oeuvre might be as self-conscious about its embedded harmonies as Nabokov’s—it’s especially rewarding to see what got written when.

Of course, some novels may have been written earlier and then only appeared after another, later novel came into print. But Roth, with his relentless success from his 20s on, doesn’t seem like the kind of writer whose works leapfrog over themselves into print. He seems like the kind of writer that writes and publishes, writes and publishes, one book after another. An entirely subjective conjecture, sure.

And what’s so special about seeing what got written—or at least published—when? Well, there’s the burst of Portnoy’s Complaint, growing in the fallow Midwestern fields of When She Was Good. There’s a reprise of Portnoy—at least in scope and focus—in My Life as a Man, after Our Gang and The Great American Novel. It was as if Roth had two roads he could take after Portnoy—satire or outrage. He took the first but thankfully returned to the latter. There’s the steady march of the first Zuckerman trilogy, which will later by matched by the second trilogy. There’s the growing fascination with the self and the portrayal of the self—like an inward spiral of self and counter-self from The Facts to Deception to Patrimony to Operation Shylock, only stopping and turning with Sabbath’s Theater (itself another reprise of Portnoy).

It’s also nice to see everything organized into its little group. It reminds me of Updike’s similar efforts in The Early Stories. In the Zuckerman Books category, the difference between The Counterlife and the others is quietly illuminated by a space break, but the Other Books category—everything from Reading Myself and Others to Portnoy—shows just how clumsy this method of organization can be. And what’s lost along with subtlety is the history, the irrevocable passage of time—the ability to look at the chronological list and notice how far, and how little, a writer has come: in subject matter, in location, in presentation, in effect.

I wonder who is responsible for the reordering of the page—Roth or some editor along the way? With Roth’s forthcoming novel—that Zuckerman capstone experience that harkens back to the very first Zuckerman novel—it’s hard not to think (another subjective conjecture) that he hasn’t had a hand in everything. It almost feels too planned, too neat a job of organization. Or maybe the graphic designer simply couldn’t fit all the titles in a single-small caps column any longer. I mean, it’s a seriously long list.

—Barrett Hathcock

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Comments

[Dan]

Mmm I can hear that conversation in my own office. "But doesn't it make more cents to have them listed under their groupings?" Yeah. I meant cents.

[zhunzaly]

It seems quite pragmatic to me. The chronological list is a little intimidating - playing up the way the books can be grouped into sequences makes the oeuvre more approachable (it's helpful to know where not to start). There's probably a certain commercial logic to it too, making people feel that to have the full experience they should read whole sets.

Your article makes me wonder to what extent Roth has pre-planned the way his books should fit together as a life's work. It strikes me that he's certainly the kind of writer capable of thinking a few years ahead and ordering his books to solicit maximal interest.