The lecture focused on Philip Roth’s interest in the Holocaust as part of, and
corresponding to the narrative of Holocaust reception in the United States. It
concerned specifically the so-called ‘Zuckerman novels’ – such as The Ghost Writer
and The Anatomy Lesson, featuring Nathan Zuckerman, an alter ego of the author, as
a character and narrator – and ‘Roth books’ – such as Patrimony and The Plot against
America, featuring Roth himself as a character and narrator. The lecture illustrated
how these novels try to fill in the ‘unbridgeable distance’ between the Holocaust and
American life and to explore the inauthenticity of most attempts to lessen that distance.
24 maggio, 2022