Book Review – Nemesis by Philip Roth
When I saw a copy of this at the library, I was pretty excited. Originally, I had planned to review a digital ARC of this through NetGalley, but they pulled it from their list for whatever reason.
Nemesis, written by the same icon of Jewish-American literature who brought you Portnoy’s Complaint, examines the Jewish-American experience during the 1944 polio epidemic. We see the disease spread from urban New Jersey to rural Pennsylvania, ravaging in particular the Weequahic section of Newark.
Bucky Cantor, playground coordinator and athlete extraordinaire, spends much of this book running from conflict. He declines to join his friends in military enlistment, he runs from Weequahic when the polio epidemic intensifies, and he runs from Marcia, his fiancée, when he falls victim to polio himself. He seems to be, on many levels, impotent; he tells us so himself.
But is he really? Native American symbols abound in the latter half of this book, when the Poconos camp where he works engages in some Native American roleplaying. When polio strikes the camp, he believes himself to be the “invisible arrow” (a term borrowed from Native American epidemiology) that brought the illness to the camp from the city. Although doctors try to reassure him that the odds of this are slight, Bucky revels in “self-castigation,” and Marcia later calls him out on this inherent masochism. The “arrow” imagery insinuates potency, virility. It is all but phallic. So while Bucky is powerless to navigate his own relationships and quick to dodge potential conflict, perhaps the “invisible arrow” identity allows him to feel a certain measure of power. Perhaps it is not self-loathing, but self-indulgent.
Powerlessness is one of the prominent themes at work in this story. Parents withdraw their children from playgrounds and camps to protect them from polio. People yearn so deeply for a culprit, an epidemiological scapegoat they can identify and subsequently avoid, that they point fingers at restaurant hot dogs. Lawmakers consider quarantining entire communities to stop the spread the virus. People like Bucky flee the cities in hopes of avoiding infection. None of these measures proves to be particularly effective. No one can suppress the biological realities of polio.
Also of note is Bucky’s crisis of faith as the epidemic intensifies. He becomes something of an agnostic cliché, turning his anger on his god when polio hits close to home. His anger, his powerlessness, and a sense of self-blame more virulent than the polio itself ruin him. The disease ravages his body, but it is his mind that reduces him to the bitter cynic he becomes. Polio robs him of loved ones and of his once-athletic body, but he robs himself of a life with Marcia.
The book ends with a memory from Arnold Mesnikoff, the former student of Bucky who narrates parts of this story. Even after running into Bucky decades after the epidemic and witnessing his bitterness firsthand, he remembers him differently in the end. We are left not with the image of a crippled, impotent version Bucky, but a youthful, healthy one who could throw a javelin with expert precision. Bucky has no narrative control over this memory, so he cannot taint it with his self-loathing. So we remember Bucky as his students do: with fondness and admiration. The tragedy lies in what his life might have been if he had seen himself in this same light.
