Word: zuckerman
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...narrative toreadors are his brother,Murray Ringold, and Nathan Zuckerman, Roth'sperennial almost-autobiographer. Sitting onZuckerman's deck, burning a citronella candle,they talk, for six nights, about Ira. In the firstthird of the book, the plot of Ira's life has beensketched, and what follows is Murray and Zuckermanunpacking. Murray utters his six-night fractalintensification of detail, and Zuckerman listens,rapt to elderly Murray's deposition on his deathbrother. as a teenager, Zuckerman had taken Ira onas a mentor, and Roth is at his most interestingwhen he illustrates the knee-jerk memories evokedin Zuckerman by Murray's revelations...
Sometimes these two voices sound too alike,Murray and Zuckerman are both old, wifeless andliterate. Shakespeare is quoted. Ira's boringtirades are related in the sweet, slow molassesconversation of these two old men. The style islike the slow tourist boats that puff down theRhine, playing the uncanny Lorelei, the ballad oflove lost on the Rhine's violent rocks. It is thesort of voice Roth always does well, but it losesits punch when scattered across two differentpersonalities...
...springing for thestar-gazing narrators out of the past, are thebrain of Roth's book. If Ira's story seems opaque,maybe it's his brother's act of remembrance thatis tragic and exciting Murray's retellingcertainly determine the structure of the book.Roth, even when speaking through hisquasi-autobiographical Zuckerman, seems tounderstand the historiographic sacrifice thatMurray has to make to remember his brother socompletely...
News Editors: Adam S. Hickey '99, Jal D. Mehta '99 Night Editor: Elizabeth S. Zuckerman '99 Assistant Night Editors: Georgia N. Alexakis '00, Stephanie K. Clifford '00 Feature Editor: Molly Hennessy-Fiske '99, Story Editors: Georgia N. Alexakis '00, Stephanie K. Clifford '00, Abby Y. Fung '99, Jal D. Mehta '99, Laura C. Semerjian '99 Design Editors: Debbie J. Lee '01, Sung Hee Moon '00 Sports Editors: Zachary T. Ball '99, Bryan Lee '00 Editorial Editor: Geoffrey C. Upton '99 Photo Editors: Ronald Y. Koo '00, Samantha A. Goldstein '00, Aparna A. Sridhar '01 Business Editors: Jeremiah B. Mann...
...downfall, in typical Rothian fashion, is filtered through the textures of separate memories. One of them belongs to Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's longtime fictional impersonation, who as a high school student had been befriended and bedazzled by Ira at the peak of his glory. The other narrative voice is that of Murray Ringold, Ira's elder brother and Nathan's long-ago high school English teacher. Now 90, Murray meets Nathan again and decides to talk about a troubled past: "I'm the only person still living who knows Ira's story, you're the only person still living...