His oh-by-the-way manner of revealing this is surprising, despite its casual delivery. But even more surprising is how little Roth makes use of this unusual narrative perspective. He offers up a description of the afterlife that is so sparse and succinct, that he might as well be describing a room at Motel 6. (Clean, comfortable, quiet... what more is there to say?) Marcus Messner, our hero, merely lets it drop that he is dead, shares a few meager details, then goes on with his story.
This tale turns on Messner’s struggles to release himself from the controlling instincts of his father, a kosher butcher who can’t seem to accept that his college-age son has a life of his own. Finally the youngster decides that he needs to leave his New Jersey home, and arranges for a transfer to a small college in Ohio. The college is called Winesburg, but this is not Sherwood Anderson territory. Roth plays masterfully with all his familiar themes: the impinging of historical events (the Korean War, in this instance) on day-to-day realities; Jewish identity in American life; getting laid; tempers running out of control; and other matters that we have seen in his previous novels.
Flaming tempers play a major role in the plot. Even if Messner falls short of previous Rothian exemplars of Indignation with a capital I, such as the young terrorist who bombs buildings (in American Pastoral) or the crazed veteran out for blood (in The Human Stain), he nonetheless finds he has a short fuse that causes recurring problems. The conflict with his father is followed by battles with two different roommates at Winesburg, and then a heated encounter with a Dean.
This latter conversation, spurred ostensibly by the college’s requirement that students attend chapel services, follows in the steps of Bertrand Russell’s position in his famous lecture / essay “Why I Am Not a Christian.” By Roth’s own admission, much of Messner’s argument is taken verbatim from Russell. Yet at other times our hero finds that a thrown punch is even more satisfying than a philosopher’s ratiocinations in resolving disagreements. Time and time again, Messner seems driven to escalate conflicts that he might just as easily ignore. These eventually cascade into a spiral of indignation that threatens to backfire on him, perhaps even cause his (as we know) inevitable death.
Article comments
1 - Steven Augustine
"Yet Roth’s strangest twist here is his introduction of a dead
protagonist."
Protag isn't dead, he's dying.
2 - Ted Gioia
Roth told an interviewer, after the book was published, that his protagonist is in a coma and not really dead. But this is not made clear in the book. In fact, the narrator tells the readers that he is dead. There is no mention of a coma, dying, etc. I can only review the novel Roth wrote, and don't really know how to address additional plot details added in interviews after publication.
3 - Steven Augustine
Read the next-to-last chapter in the actual book. Starts on page 225.
4 - Ted Gioia
There is no mention on p. 225, or anywhere else in this novel, that the story is narrated while the protagonist is in a coma. Instead, we find:
Page 54: "dead as I am and have been for I don't know how long."
Page 200: "I knew without a doubt . . . would turn out to be the angel of death."
Page 226: "Now he was well and truly dead."