PHILIP ROTH, FRANZ KAFKA, AND JEWISH WRITING

Abstract

What does it mean to be a Jewish writer, but to write in the tradition of Franz Kafka rather than that of normative Judaism? This is a question that finally and fully emerges from the work of Philip Roth with the completion of Zuckerman Bound. Early in his career Roth is accused of being a self hating Jewish writer for his less-than-flattering depictions of Jews. In Zuckerman Bound Roth uses Franz Kafka to position himself on an alternate branch of Jewish writing, a branch that cannot simply be judged on whether it is good or bad for the Jews. The young Philip Roth was not able to formulate the question of Jewish writing to his own advantage. Though he took great pains in lecturing his Jewish critics concerning his goals as a writer,1 he implicitly accepted their definition of Jewish writing. This definition states that the Jewish writer begins with a desire to say something about Jews. The writing in turn can then be judged as to whether what is being said is good or bad for the Jewish people. If the writing is good for the Jews, the writer is a noble Jewish writer; if the writing is bad for the Jews, the writer is a self-hating (even antisemitic) Jewish writer. Roth argues that he is concerned with writing about people; if some of these happen to be Jewish, their Jewishness is part of the story and is not to be generalized to concern the entire Jewish people. He thus says of 'Epstein' (one of the stories in Goodbye, Columbus): 'I write a story of a man who is adulterous to reveal the condition of such a man. If the adulterous man is a Jew, then I am revealing the condition of an adulterous man who is a Jew' (RM 152). Roth writes stories not because he is Jewish but because he is an artist who expresses himself in words. Putting the matter bluntly, Roth concludes (in 1963 at age 30): 'I am not a Jewish writer; I am a writer who is a Jew.'2 And yet, as Philip Roth's career progresses, not only does 'Jewish' seem to be an apposite description of his fiction, but Roth demands that he be respected as a Jewish writer. In a review of Zuckerman Bound Harold Bloom can therefore write: