Between Rising and Passing: Justice Suspended in the Fiction of Philip RothJackie Weisman
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Having obliquely established the connection between whiteness and Americanness in American Pastoral, Roth complicates the placement of Jews within this scheme in The Counterlife, posing the same question in a different context and with a slightly altered cast of characters. In this text, he addresses the problem of feeling like an outsider in spite of one's whiteness. By leaving available the possibility of becoming American by the racial standards he puts forth, Zuckerman inadvertently concurs with Matthew Jacobson's notion of contingent whiteness. During an argument with his Gentile wife, Zuckerman asserts "[The Jews] are not a race . . . I am Caucasian, kiddo. In the U.S. census I am, for good or bad, counted as Caucasian." [13] At the same time as Zuckerman stakes his claim on whiteness, he nonetheless maintains his Jewish identity, suggesting that the two are not in fact mutually exclusive. He has reached the point of 'normal difference,' which his Israeli friend Shuki unwittingly describes, stating, "you are the Jews living interesting lives, comfortable lives, without apology, without shame, perfectly independent . . . you are the Jews with all the confidence and cultivation that comes of feeling at home where you are." [14] In spite of Zuckerman's self-assuredness, the novel also challenges his conclusions that his Jewishness need not be at variance with any other facet of his identity.
One such challenge comes from Zuckerman's sister-in-law Carol, after his brother Henry rediscovers his religious roots and moves to Israel, abandoning his wife and children. Zuckerman advises Carol to entice Henry to return to the United States by telling him that he can be an equally observant Jew in Essex County, New Jersey. Carol (who is herself Jewish) disagrees, listing Henry's features seemingly in opposition to his being a Jew: "No. I married a very handsome, tall, athletic, very sweet, very sincere, very successful, responsible dentist. I didn't marry a Jew." [15] She reaffirms this sentiment in remarking "I want to live as a human being. The last thing I want to be strapped into is being an authentic Jew." [16] Here, Carol acts as a foil to Zuckerman and Shuki's stance on being at once Jewish and American. Like Zuckerman, however, she appears to have her own notion of contingent Jewishness, evidenced by her belief that she could achieve a universal human identity in spite of having been born a Jew. However, Carol's argument regarding these conditional terms neither mentions nor alludes to race. On the contrary, her belief that Jewishness can be discarded at will indicates that it is not a racial trait. Nonetheless, she remains convinced that one cannot achieve authentic Americanness in tandem with a developed, authentic Jewish identity.
Choosing a Path
Over the course of Roth's body of work, his characters' conceptions of their whiteness evolve, as do the mechanisms they use to make themselves increasingly American. From a literary perspective, their transition resembles a shift from a racial passing to an economic ascent approach, whose relative analogue on the social spectrum is a shift from assimilation to acculturation. To the degree that the former scale informs our understanding of the latter, one way to understand assimilation vis-a-vis passing is that both require their subjects to relinquish some significant aspect of their pre-American identities. On the side of rising and acculturation, however, such a transformation transcends mere material benefits; any change the subject undergoes is either superficial or innately desirable. These points of overlap and divergence between rising and passing present a useful framework for placing Roth's characters along the spectrum, but they also raise a number of questions. Arguably the most salient question pertaining to these characters is how much they are made to sacrifice, if assimilation and acculturation may be gauged in part by the nature of the loss involved.
In keeping with this guideline, one potential model of the assimilation paradigm is Goodbye Columbus' Brenda Patimkin, girlfriend of the novella's narrator, Neil Klugman. By all measures, the Patimkins have achieved American success in the fullest: Mr. Patimkin owns a lucrative sink company whose fixtures are found in the libraries at Harvard, his son Ron is a former athletic hero at Ohio State, Brenda is a decorated equestrian and student at Radcliff, and the family lives in the exclusive Short Hills suburbs, only recently open to financially-qualified Jews. But as ably as the Patimkins and Jews of their ilk integrate into traditionally non-Jewish spaces, there are several subtle allusions to the passing genre's theme of loss. For one, Brenda has the telltale Semitic bump in her nose surgically removed; Ron's nose job is to follow in the fall. Neil learns of the procedure by inquiring as to Brenda's caution when she rushes the net in a tennis match against "Simp," short for Laura Simpson Stolowitch. When Neil asks why Simp isn't referred to as "Stolo," clearly the more Jewish-sounding of the two surnames, Brenda replies that the adaptation is her "Bennington name," referring to the traditionally non-Jewish college she attends. [17]
Although Brenda and Simp do not need to ensure that their Jewish roots remain completely secret, the idea of literally erasing identity from one's face and name conjures the racial passing narrative. Roth further brings out the racial issues implied in Brenda's brand of assimilation by persistently setting her in opposition to Neil, whom he strongly aligns with the novella's black characters. In their first phone conversation, for example, Brenda asks Neil to describe his appearance, to which he replies, "I'm . . . dark;" Brenda in turn asks, "Are you a Negro?" [18] With this initial hint of a connection, Roth draws numerous analogies between Neil and Carlota, the Patimkins' "Navaho-faced Negro" maid, and more significantly, with a young black boy who, like Neil, finds refuge in the public library where Neil works. [19] In fact, one of the work's most drawn-out motifs is the parallel between how the black boy regards Gauguin's paintings of the Tahitian landscape and women, and the way that Neil views Brenda in the exotic paradise of Short Hills. Neil attests to this unity of perspective when remembering that he would need gas in his car "before [he] started up to Short Hills, which [he] could see in [his] mind's eye, at dusk, rose-colored, like a Gauguin stream." [20]
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Jackie Weisman is a first-year student at New York University School of Law.