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example, is still revolted by his father’s decision to place his desk “dead center” in the
middle of the factory floor “so he could keep an eye on everybody.” Lou Levov was “one
impossible bastard. Overbearing. Ominpresent.” His brother, Seymour, is more compliant
but nevertheless, removes the chair and moves into a glass enclosed office when he takes
charge of the business. To Coleman Silk, despite his father’s struggle, he—and his
father—would forever remain “n-----s.”
Roth’s sons are all physically big and powerful men who in this respect
overpower their fathers. Reingold is a”giant” of a man who may suffer from the same
height malady as Lincoln. Levov is an “Apollo” whose classical physical bearing is still
evident in his sixties and Silk’s boxer’s physique is intact in old age. The achievements of
the sons eventually match their physical size. They become big men as media celebrity,
entrepreneur and college dean and buy big houses quite different from the crowded
apartments and shops and their fathers. But as these features of the sons are enhanced, the
neighborhoods of their youth psychically grow. Zuckerman, Roth’s narrator, is
astonished by the intensity of his feelings for the old neighborhood: “fifty years later…
has the immersion ever again been so complete as it was in those streets, where every
block, every backyard, every house, every floor of every house—the walls, the ceilings,
doors and windows of every last friend’s family apartment—came to be so absolutely
individualized? (43) He continues to recall in adoring detail, the physical objects in the
neighborhood (“linoleum and oilcloth,” “yahrzeit candles,” “Ronson table lighters,”
“venetian blinds”) and his friends (“…we knew who had what kind of lunch in the bag in
his locker and who ordered what on his hot dog at Syd’s…who walked pigeon toed and
who had breasts, who smelled of hair oil and who over-salivated when he spoke…). And
Convention