Word: swede
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...narrated by Roth’s authorial alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who examines his high school’s star athlete—a man nicknamed “the Swede” (although he, like the narrator, is Jewish). On the very first page Roth explains that the Swede gave the neighborhood the chance to “enter into a fantasy about itself and about the world.” Zuckerman explains, “Our families could forget the way things actually work and make an athletic performance the repository of all their hopes...
...first chapter, which takes place years after they have graduated high school, the Swede, who wants help writing a memoir about his recently deceased father, invites the elderly Zuckerman to dinner. Zuckerman is captivated by the opportunity to explore what he dubs “the substratum,” his term for the deep and authentic life of the mind. This quest for the profound proves devastating as the Swede only discusses the happy, superficial lives of his family and does not even mention grieving for his father. During the dinner scene, Roth juxtaposes paragraphs in which the Swede...
...dinner conversation dramatizes Roth’s self-destructive tension between the inner and outer life, which paralyzes the novel. Ironically, Zuckerman himself lacks a self-sufficient inner life and must search for the nonexistent inner life of the Swede to justify his own mental existence. While the Swede hopes to resolve the troubles of his inner life with the accomplishments of the outer life, the remaining characters are cut off from meaningful action...