Volume 37, Number 9 · May 31, 1990
Theme and Variations
By Gabriele Annan
Deception
by Philip Roth
Simon and Schuster, 208 pp., $18.95
In Philip Roth's last novel, The Counterlife, Nathan Zuckerman's brother died, was buried in New Jersey, and then started another life in Israel. Things more unorthodox still happen in Deception: time and reality are more finely splintered, knocked sideways, abolished, and arrogantly reassembled. The novel is about a love affair. The lovers are aware that their story is an early model for The Counterlife, in which Zuckerman was married to an Englishwoman called Maria. In the fictional time scale, Deception therefore ought to precede The Counterlife. So it is startling to learn, at the very outset of Deception, that Zuckerman is dead. Of course one realizes that death, with Roth, is not necessarily a permanent condition. Still, in this new novel, Zuckerman is and stays dead. A young writer is working on his biography, and the middle-aged lover in Deception, whose first name is Philip, is writing a novel about the young writer writing a biography of Zuckerman.
Review, 1387 words
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