Philip Roth - Zuckerman Unbound

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Contents

For Philip Guston

19131980

Let Nathan see what it is to be
lifted from obscurity. Let him not
come hammering at our door to tell us
that he wasnt warned.

E. I. LONOFF

to his wife

December 10, 1956

1 Im Alvin Pepler

What the hell are you doing on a bus, with your dough?

It was a small, husky young fellow with a short haircut and a new business suit who wanted to know; he had been daydreaming over an automotive magazine until he saw who was sitting next to him. That was all it took to charge him up.

Undaunted by Zuckermans unobliging replyon a bus to be transported through spacehe happily offered his advice. These days everybody did, if they could find him. You should buy a helicopter. Thats how Id do it. Rent the landing rights up on apartment buildings and fly straight over the dog-poop. Hey, see this guy? This second question was for a man standing in the aisle reading his Times.

The bus was traveling south on Fifth Avenue, downtown from Zuckermans new Upper East Side address. He was off to see an investment specialist on Fifty-second Street, a meeting arranged by his agent, Andr Schevitz, to get him to diversify his capital. Gone were the days when Zuckerman had only to worry about Zuckerman making money: henceforth he would have to worry about his money making money. Where do you have it right now? the investment specialist had asked when Zuckerman finally phoned. In my shoe, Zuckerman told him. The investment specialist laughed. You intend to keep it there? Though the answer was yes, it was easier for the moment to say no. Zuckerman had privately declared a one-year moratorium on all serious decisions arising out of the smashing success. When he could think straight again, he would act again. All this, this luckwhat did it mean? Coming so suddenly, and on such a scale, it was as baffling as a misfortune.

Because Zuckerman was not ordinarily going anywhere at the morning rush hourexcept into his study with his coffee cup to reread the paragraphs from the day beforehe hadnt realized until too late that it was a bad time to be taking a bus. But then he still refused to believe that he was any less free than hed been six weeks before to come and go as he liked, when he liked, without having to remember beforehand who he was. Ordinary everyday thoughts on the subject of who one was were lavish enough without an extra hump of narcissism to carry around.

Hey. Hey. Zuckermans excited neighbor was trying again to distract the man in the aisle from his Times. See this guy next to me?

I do now, came the stern, affronted reply.

Hes the guy who wrote Carnovsky. Didnt you read about it in the papers? He just made a million bucks and hes taking a bus.

Upon hearing that a millionaire was on board, two girls in identical gray uniformstwo frail, sweet-looking children, undoubtedly well-bred little sisters on their way downtown to convent schoolturned to look at him.

Veronica, said the smaller of the two, its the man who wrote the book that Mummys reading. Its Carnovsky.

The children kneeled on their seats so as to face him. A middle-aged couple in the row across from the children also turned to get a look.

Go on, girls, said Zuckerman lightly. Back to your homework.

Our mother, said the older child, taking charge, is reading your book, Mr. Carnovsky.

Fine. But Mummy wouldnt want you to stare on the bus.

No luck. Must be phrenology they were studying at St. Marys.

Zuckermans companion had meanwhile turned to the seat directly behind to explain to the woman there the big goings-on. Make her a part of it. The family of man. Im sitting next to a guy who just made a million bucks. Probably two.

Well, said a gentle, ladylike voice, I hope all that money doesnt change him.

Fifteen blocks north of the investment specialists office, Zuckerman pulled the cord and got off. Surely here, in the garden spot of anomie, it was still possible to be nobody on the rush-hour streets. If not, try a mustache. This may be far from life as you feel, see, know, and wish to know it, but if all it takes is a mustache, then, for Christs sake, grow one. You are not Paul Newman, but youre no longer who you used to be either. A mustache. Contact lenses. Maybe a colorful costume would help. Try looking the way everybody does today instead of the way everybody looked twenty years ago in Humanities 2. Less like Albert Einstein, more like Jimi Hendrix, and you wont stick out so much. And what about your gait while youre at it? He was always meaning to work on that anyway. Zuckerman moved with his knees too close together and at a much too hurried pace. A man six feet tall should amble more. But he could never remember about ambling after the first dozen stepstwenty, thirty paces and he was lost in his thoughts instead of thinking about his stride. Well, now was the time to get on with it, especially with his sex credentials coming under scrutiny in the press. As aggressive in the walk as in the work. Youre a millionaire, walk like one. People are watching.

The joke was on him. Someone wasthe woman whod had to be told on the bus why everyone else was agog. A tall, thin, elderly woman, her face heavily powdered only why was she running after him? And undoing the latch on her purse? Suddenly his adrenalin advised Zuckerman to run too.

You see, not everybody was delighted by this book that was making Zuckerman a fortune. Plenty of people had already written to tell him off. For depicting Jews in a peep-show atmosphere of total perversion, for depicting Jews in acts of adultery, exhibitionism, masturbation, sodomy, fetishism, and whoremongery, somebody with letterhead stationery as impressive as the Presidents had even suggested that he ought to be shot. And in the spring of 1969 this was no longer just an expression. Vietnam was a slaughterhouse, and off the battlefield as well as on, many Americans had gone berserk. Just about a year before, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been gunned down by assassins. Closer to home, a former teacher of Zuckermans was still hiding out because a rifle had been fired at him through his kitchen window as hed been sitting at his table one night with a glass of warm milk and a Wodehouse novel. The retired bachelor had taught Middle English at the University of Chicago for thirty-five years. The course had been hard, though not that hard. But a bloody nose wasnt enough anymore. Blowing people apart seemed to have replaced the roundhouse punch in the daydreams of the aggrieved: only annihilation gave satisfaction that lasted. At the Democratic convention the summer before, hundreds had been beaten with clubs and trampled by horses and thrown through plate-glass windows for offenses against order and decency less grave than Zuckermans were thought to be by any number of his correspondents. It didnt strike Zuckerman as at all unlikely that in a seedy room somewhere the Life cover featuring his face (unmustached) had been tacked up within dart-throwing distance of the bed of some loner. Those cover stories were enough of a trial for a writers writer friends, let alone for a semiliterate psychopath who might not know about all the good deeds he did at the PEN Club. Oh, Madam, if only you knew the real me! Dont shoot! I am a serious writer as well as one of the boys!