On an unpleasant and raining Saturday evening, lovely and cozy to be inside, I have finished Philip Roth's Nemesis, comfortably sitting at the sofa and drinking a cup of hot milk with honey -in hope of taming the sour throat and this sort of mild, annoying flu. I have to say that I liked it, despite being a horrible story to recount, dolorous and heart-wrenchingly, as the Sunday Times review says.
Have the critics been favorable? Somewhere I read that the dialogues are so, so -don't remember the word I read- and that the characters of Nemesis are two-dimensional. I learned early this week that the third component of a velocity field, w (third dimension, z) can be readily calculated from the continuity equation, once the first two dimensions are known for an in-compressible fluid:
(d2w / dz2) =- (d2u / dx2) - (d2v / dy2)
In a similar way, one can reflect on the latent third dimension of the characters of a story, hidden to the eyes of the reader, but nevertheless present. The grandmother, Marcia, Marcia's father, the camp directors, Arnie Mesnikoff, naturally Bucky, all the characters are profound in my view. Healthy Bucky -it is true, overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility and high-esteemed- did not want to leave his grandmother alone in Newark, when going to Indian Hills to take over as a director of the waterfront and meet there his girl, Marcia, but this little old woman, suffering from a tremendous chest pain, proved that a physically weaken heart can be the stronger prove of God Love and Tenderness: sick Bucky was taken care and nursed by her for years.
Throughout the pages, lots of details are revealed and I could not but whispered "o, yes, o, yes"; permeated deep and got them straight. Almost everything seemed natural and profound to me at the same time. For example, the first night in Indian Hills, after making love to Marcia in a secret place across the river that she made cleaning and gathering leaves with her own hands the night before, Bucky is distraught by the rage of guilt and feels the urgency to leave in the middle of a strong summer storm, but cools down to the opposite extreme as soon as the sun warm the daylight the very next morning... Who has not sense that sort of blindness and confusion, staggering between two extreme and unreasonable choices to just remain irresolute at the end? Who has not... At the age of 23... Or 33?
The scene that Arnie finally pulled up out of Bucky chest during their weekly lunches in 1971 concerning how he and Marcia broke up is a tearer, so painful and heart-breaking. The end of Bucky started there. But, still, one can understand (I can understand): the virus of poliomyelitis has swept across the spine and nerves of Bucky (he, the one-time, just yesterday, invincible athlete! -invincible is the last word of the novel: a synonym of Nemesis, but opposed to it in the context) and he is stuck to a wheel chair. Marcia shows up gorgeous, looking like a woman, with longer hair than the last time he saw her, petite and pretty, wearing a pair of lovely gloves, and she is smart and only 22... Oh! Who man has not suffered from the realization -or the unreasonable delusion- that the woman you love seems to be a different person and that you have not track the metamorphosis?!
However, Marcia is in love with Bucky. The scene is true as the real life is. He is just deluded and relinquish her wrong. Many Buckys are out there, men with an unbeatable and common Nemesis: themselves. It can be pride or arrogance, who cares, it is the same. Just imagine this electrifying scene. Marcia cannot be more charming, pretty and teared apart in sorrow and she is weeping and crying and letting herself out: "I'm not trying to be anything other than the person who loves you and wants to marry you and be your wife", "Bucky, it's not complicated (...) We'll do it perfectly", "You make me happy. You always have". And more cry: "Stop this, please. I've seen your arm and I don't care", "Stop, I beg you! You think it's your body that's deformed, but what's truly deformed is your mind!". Bucky has made up his mind already and the argument escalates: "Just because you got polio doesn't give you the right to say ridiculous things. You have no idea what God is!", "You were never crazy.You were perfectly sane. Sane and sound and strong and smart. But this! Spurning my love for you, spurning my family -I refuse to be a party to such insanity". Here it is when Marcia collapse and starts crying inconsolably: "Can't you believe that it's you I love, whether or not you had polio? Can't you understand that the worst possible outcome for both of us is for you to take away from me? I cannot bear to lose you -is there no getting that through to you? Bucky, your life can be so much easier if only you'll let it be. How do I convince you that we have to go on together? Don't save me, for God's sake. Do what we planned -marry me!"...
Ah!... Don't save me, a golden lesson for men. Marcia Steinberg is the train that us men should never let go. And you did, Bucky.
I am writing this because I think I will enjoy reading me back two or three years from now -wherever I am by then-, and I want to mention a final comment about the role that God and Religion might play in the novel. It is true that Bucky's vision of God can be referred as childish and that of Marcia or Arnie as a much more elaborated and sensible. However, it is not uncommon that perfectly reasonable and educated parents compose a raging and out-of-senses discourse against God if they, for example, suffers the painful experience of losing a child. I have a couple of examples close to me. I can venture the ambitious suspicion that Roth's message might be that God, in general sense, at least at moments stricken by tragedy, can also become the Nemesis of any men.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
Have the critics been favorable? Somewhere I read that the dialogues are so, so -don't remember the word I read- and that the characters of Nemesis are two-dimensional. I learned early this week that the third component of a velocity field, w (third dimension, z) can be readily calculated from the continuity equation, once the first two dimensions are known for an in-compressible fluid:
(d2w / dz2) =- (d2u / dx2) - (d2v / dy2)
In a similar way, one can reflect on the latent third dimension of the characters of a story, hidden to the eyes of the reader, but nevertheless present. The grandmother, Marcia, Marcia's father, the camp directors, Arnie Mesnikoff, naturally Bucky, all the characters are profound in my view. Healthy Bucky -it is true, overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility and high-esteemed- did not want to leave his grandmother alone in Newark, when going to Indian Hills to take over as a director of the waterfront and meet there his girl, Marcia, but this little old woman, suffering from a tremendous chest pain, proved that a physically weaken heart can be the stronger prove of God Love and Tenderness: sick Bucky was taken care and nursed by her for years.
Throughout the pages, lots of details are revealed and I could not but whispered "o, yes, o, yes"; permeated deep and got them straight. Almost everything seemed natural and profound to me at the same time. For example, the first night in Indian Hills, after making love to Marcia in a secret place across the river that she made cleaning and gathering leaves with her own hands the night before, Bucky is distraught by the rage of guilt and feels the urgency to leave in the middle of a strong summer storm, but cools down to the opposite extreme as soon as the sun warm the daylight the very next morning... Who has not sense that sort of blindness and confusion, staggering between two extreme and unreasonable choices to just remain irresolute at the end? Who has not... At the age of 23... Or 33?
The scene that Arnie finally pulled up out of Bucky chest during their weekly lunches in 1971 concerning how he and Marcia broke up is a tearer, so painful and heart-breaking. The end of Bucky started there. But, still, one can understand (I can understand): the virus of poliomyelitis has swept across the spine and nerves of Bucky (he, the one-time, just yesterday, invincible athlete! -invincible is the last word of the novel: a synonym of Nemesis, but opposed to it in the context) and he is stuck to a wheel chair. Marcia shows up gorgeous, looking like a woman, with longer hair than the last time he saw her, petite and pretty, wearing a pair of lovely gloves, and she is smart and only 22... Oh! Who man has not suffered from the realization -or the unreasonable delusion- that the woman you love seems to be a different person and that you have not track the metamorphosis?!
However, Marcia is in love with Bucky. The scene is true as the real life is. He is just deluded and relinquish her wrong. Many Buckys are out there, men with an unbeatable and common Nemesis: themselves. It can be pride or arrogance, who cares, it is the same. Just imagine this electrifying scene. Marcia cannot be more charming, pretty and teared apart in sorrow and she is weeping and crying and letting herself out: "I'm not trying to be anything other than the person who loves you and wants to marry you and be your wife", "Bucky, it's not complicated (...) We'll do it perfectly", "You make me happy. You always have". And more cry: "Stop this, please. I've seen your arm and I don't care", "Stop, I beg you! You think it's your body that's deformed, but what's truly deformed is your mind!". Bucky has made up his mind already and the argument escalates: "Just because you got polio doesn't give you the right to say ridiculous things. You have no idea what God is!", "You were never crazy.You were perfectly sane. Sane and sound and strong and smart. But this! Spurning my love for you, spurning my family -I refuse to be a party to such insanity". Here it is when Marcia collapse and starts crying inconsolably: "Can't you believe that it's you I love, whether or not you had polio? Can't you understand that the worst possible outcome for both of us is for you to take away from me? I cannot bear to lose you -is there no getting that through to you? Bucky, your life can be so much easier if only you'll let it be. How do I convince you that we have to go on together? Don't save me, for God's sake. Do what we planned -marry me!"...
Ah!... Don't save me, a golden lesson for men. Marcia Steinberg is the train that us men should never let go. And you did, Bucky.
I am writing this because I think I will enjoy reading me back two or three years from now -wherever I am by then-, and I want to mention a final comment about the role that God and Religion might play in the novel. It is true that Bucky's vision of God can be referred as childish and that of Marcia or Arnie as a much more elaborated and sensible. However, it is not uncommon that perfectly reasonable and educated parents compose a raging and out-of-senses discourse against God if they, for example, suffers the painful experience of losing a child. I have a couple of examples close to me. I can venture the ambitious suspicion that Roth's message might be that God, in general sense, at least at moments stricken by tragedy, can also become the Nemesis of any men.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT).
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