Between Rising and Passing:

Justice Suspended in the Fiction of Philip RothJackie Weisman

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If Jerry Levov's character may be reduced to its function in American Pastoral, he is symbolic of one who lives as he wants. A powerful cardiac surgeon, Jerry has been married four times to different nurses. The Swede confesses that his brother's divorces "drove [their] dad a little nuts," but adds that "Jerry's a big guy, a gruff guy and so even my dad fell in line. Had to. Would have lost him otherwise." [34]

Jerry discloses his philosophy when the Swede calls him in a moment of crisis after discovering his fugitive daughter in a squalid flat in Newark. Her underground life has found her begging for money, building bombs on communes, working in filthy food establishments, and getting raped, twice. But when the Swede begs her to return home, she gently refuses and asks him to leave, and he complies. When he recounts the reunion to Jerry in search of sympathy, Jerry impatiently tells him to "go back to the room and get her." The Swede explains that that is not what she wants, to which Jerry responds "Fuck what she wants. Get back in your fucking car and get over there and drag her out of that fucking room by her hair. Sedate her. Tie her up. But get her. That's just the way it works." [35] In keeping with his modus operandi, Jerry's advice is that if one has the capacity and desire to do something, there is no reason not to do it. Tautologically, the reason to do it is that one has the capacity and desire, not because it is moral or even useful. And as even the Swede recognizes, Jerry is no worse off for acting according to this principle. His father accepts, even loves, Jerry's successive wives because Jerry leaves him no other option. Working completely outside of the paradigms that rely on the rising and passing notions of fairness and injustice, Jerry sets the terms by which he lives and forces others to fall in line or confront him. As he also ensures that confrontation will prove both futile and maximally unpleasant, he ends up with the results he wills in the first place: the wife of his choice and a consenting father.

The Counterlife's Henry Zuckerman embodies the opposite pole on Roth's spectrum. Though Henry is not alive in the novel's first chapter, Roth reveals the circumstances prior to his death by excerpting Nathan Zuckerman's notes on exchanges he has had with Henry regarding Henry's mistress, Maria. When Maria asks Henry to move to Basel, Switzerland with her, he is wracked with temptation but finally decides against it. Six months after she relocates with her own husband, she calls Henry to wish him a "Merry American Christmas," to which he replies, "we [don't] observe Christmas." [36] From this, Zuckerman infers that while it might not literally have been Judaism that held Henry back, his general sense of commitment restrained him in the face of his strongest wishes. Zuckerman diagnoses Henry with having "passed too long for a paragon," declaiming, "How absurd, how awful, if the woman. . .who meant to him a break with the past, a revolution against an old way of life against the belief that life is a series of duties to be perfectly performed. . .was to be nothing more or less than the humiliating memory of his first (and last) great fling because she observed Christmas and we do not." [37] And as Roth again demonstrates, Henry does not benefit from his decision, because it is based on a notion of morality that carries no weight in the world where Henry lives. Instead, profits belong to those who confiscate them through direct action, not those who hope that they will follow indirectly through noble action.

Conclusion

During his conversation with Jerry following his brief reunion with his daughter, the Swede realizes, "If what you are telling me is what I was . . . wasn't enough, then . . . I'm telling you—I'm telling you that what anybody is is not enough." [38] Although it takes an overwhelming tragedy for the Swede to reach this conclusion, it is precisely this knowledge that drives Jerry's actions from the start. To his brother's sad realization, Jerry enthusiastically responds "Exactly! We are not enough. We are none of us enough! Including even the man who does everything right!" Here, Jerry takes up Roth's argument that living righteously simply has no bearing on whether one's life will pan out as one wishes. Like Roth, Jerry testifies to the Swede's impeccable moral record but recognizes the irrelevance and futility of trying to use it as a predictor of outcome. This dialogue also lies at the heart of Roth's position on the viability of the American Dream, namely that to the extent that it even exists, there is no prescribed blueprint for capturing it. And just as he utilizes his predecessors in racial passing and economic ascent narratives to inform his own characters' paths to Americanization, so does his conclusion on the matter reflect a blend of the two genres.

If there is one conclusion that Roth shares with the authors of the passing genre, it is that the prescribed formula of honesty and persistence set forth in rising narratives does not ensure one's success. But while passing authors believe that whiteness is the unspoken variable in the equation, Roth takes an even more cynical approach. His belief, which sets him apart from both rising and passing authors, is that the American Dream is more myth than reality, and that those who have ostensibly achieved it are just as likely to have come into it fortuitously or even ignobly as they are to have achieved it through respectable means. Ironically, this conception aligns Roth with the ascent narrative's notion of an even playing field. But Roth perverts the circumstances that represent equality of opportunity in ascent narratives to represent uniform vulnerability in his Jewish mobility narratives. This distinction is crucial in underscoring the element of control utterly lacking in Roth's novels. Whereas Alger predicates capitalist equitability on the idea that all individuals are at liberty to partake in the system and its benefits, Roth's characters are also part of a system whose rules apply evenly to all participants. The difference between the two is that in Roth's Jewish mobility narratives, the characters do not dictate the results of their endeavors but succumb to the designs of fate.

At this point, it is fair to point out that Roth would object to his novels being labeled "Jewish," and in many ways, though the epithet is not inaccurate, it is irrelevant, and one might argue redundant. When asked if being seen as an "American-Jewish" writer" meant anything to him, Roth answered, "I'm an American. You can't talk about this without walking straight out into horrible clichés that say nothing about human beings. America is my first and foremost. . .it's my language. And identity labels have nothing to do with how anyone actually experiences life." [39]

This concept is central to understanding Roth's literature. Although his statement about the insignificance of identity labels may sometimes be true in the way that people view themselves, it was not always the case for Jews who were barred from certain hotels and neighborhoods, or for blacks trying to access spaces designated "White Only." But at times, Roth's characters seem to overlook the fact that this is no longer the case for them. Swede Levov, for instance, is barely recognizable as a Jew by the time he leaves college, if not earlier. And though his family is at the "vanguard of the vanguard" of Jews becoming American Jews, he still feels that acting like a WASP is the only sure way to experience real America. [40]

Aside from the outward attempt to appear American, the internal struggle to reconcile one's various identities pervades Roth's literature. The struggle of his characters is private by nature. And as he implies, this personal struggle has far greater influence on a person's life than does his technique for appearing American. Although Roth draws on rising and passing narratives to frame his characters' actions, his characters overestimate the importance of which path they take. On the whole, their gravest error is believing that they will feel comfortable as Americans once "real" Americans see them as such; in reality, their greatest barrier to contentment is their inability to see that they are as much Americans as are those whom they emulate.

This failure of self-recognition provides insight into why Roth's characters never seem to fit the molds they otherwise follow after. If they are mistaken to trust that rising or passing will deliver them to a certain identity, then surely they are wrong to think that the notions of justice attached to these dubious methods should apply to them as well. Rather, Roth seems to suggest that identity should be treated as a commodity that one constructs and claims ownership of, just like any other more tangible prize. And as one might imagine Jerry Levov would believe, it simply does not matter how one arrives at his identity, only that he does. Whether a person relinquishes every last vestige of his former self or asks that the world accept him as he is, the outcome is likely to be the same regardless of what precedes it.

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Jackie Weisman is a first-year student at New York University School of Law.