20
of course, are the same ones that confront those who empathize with those who
experience great misfortune. In the case of Roth’s populist citizens, for example, will
such empathy lead the observer to excuse Reingold’s rage against capitalists, Levov’s
fury at the “violent Uncorrupted,” Silk’s anger at feminists? Will it lead to a conversion
of emotions in which the views of these men become one’s own? Will the observer
succeed in avoiding these hazards but pity those who were never “really” Americans?
Perhaps, however, such an attempt might lead to one similar to what Nussbaum
hopes for those who empathize with suffering great misfortune. A sympathetic focus on
populist anger might lead one to appreciate not only the burdens of mobility but also the
values the populist seeks to support and his difficulty in realizing them. Roth’s American
trilogy, in fact, can be viewed as an example of this attempt. For the most part, the effort
he has undertaken to understand populist fury does not lead him to any of these
conclusions despite the fact that Roth’s work in general has been described as the
animated by rage and violent fantasy (Rosenberg 2001, 185-206).
x
For in the trilogy,
Roth’s uses the “framed narrative” in each of these novels. Lives are presented to the
reader as texts discovered by brothers and friends relieved of the more severe forms of
anger due to age (Murray Reingold in I Married a Communist), illness (Nathan
Zuckerman in The Human Stain) or geographical distance (Jerry Levov in The American
Pastoral). Murray, himself a victim of McCarthyism, who has “outlived dissatisfaction”
and learned “the disciplined sadness of stoicism” (78) tells his brother’s story to one who
knew him as a young man. Zuckerman, coping with the after effects of a prostate cancer
operation, helps Silk write his memoirs. The manuscript is so choleric that Zuckerman
assumes the role of biographer. Other figures, whose anger is even more ferocious,
Convention