About Nathan Zuckerman

Who is Nathan Zuckerman?

Zuckerman is the narrator of The human stain, a writer that happens to be
Colemans neighbor and whom Coleman chooses to share his story with. He
acts as a mere observer to Colemans complex story, which is then revealed
through his eyes. He acts as a kind of alter-ego for the author.
The human stain, however, is not the first novel in which this character
appears. Roth first created a character named Nathan Zuckerman in the
novel My Life as a Man (1974), where he is the "product" of another fictional
Roth figure, the writer Peter Tarnopol (making Zuckerman, in his original
form, an "alter-alter-ego").
In later books, Roth uses Zuckerman as a protagonist, starting with the 1979
novel The Ghost Writer, where he is a writing apprentice on a pilgrimage to
cull the wisdom of the reclusive author E. I. Lonoff.
There are 9 books in which Zuckerman appears: The ghost writer (1979),
Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), The Prague
Orgy (1985) - all these are collected under the title Zuckerman Bound, The
Counterlife (1986), American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998) ,
The Human Stain (2000), Exit Ghost (2007)
From The Ghost Writer we learn that Zuckerman, like Roth himself, was born
in America in a Jewish family. This duality is what eventually takes him closer
to Colemans story. We also find out that after being diagnosed with prostate
cancer he has a surgery that leaves him impotent, this in turn leading to his
isolation. His friendship with Coleman is something that brings him back to
the real world. He lives through Colemans stories and affairs.
The interesting thing is, as Tim Parrish notes in his essay Becoming Black:
Zuckermans bifurcating self in the human stain, that Zuckermans identity
seems to be constructed differently according to the events and stories that
he observes and writes about. To understand The Human Stain then, one
must first confront how in the trilogy Roth has made Nathan Zuckerman very
much subject to the histories he portrays. Each of the novel employs a kind
of a Proustian technique whereby Zuckerman's present is absorbed by his
memories of the past so that his current identity is but a consequence of the
events -and other lives- he recalls.
Zuckermans role in the narrative
Roth uses a framing narrative to unveil the story of the protagonist. The
presence of Zuckerman becomes an embodiment of metafiction in Roths
work. The narrative is complex, constructed on different alternating levels
that describe the stories of the characters present or past events. At first,
Roth presents the story as if it were Zuckermans story, when he recalls the

events of the summer of 1998. This eventually gives him more authority as a
narrator.
As the story unfolds, the narrator introduces alternating scenes that reflect
Colemans past.
Basically, The Human Stain, along with American Pastoral and I married a
communist, are all accounts of how Zuckerman ended up writing these
novels. However, this metafictional construct doesnt seem to diminish the
realism of the novels. I think that Zuckermans presence acts as a medium
between Roth, his characters and the readers. The fact that we see the story
through the eyes of an immediate observer gives an even more realistic
view.
Zuckerman vs. Roth
It is clear that Zuckerman becomes Roths alter-ego. From the first books in
which he appears as a character we find out that he and Roth share many
common traits - Zuckerman is also Jewish, he is Roths age, hes from
Newark, hes a writer. However, some of the novels that evoke Zuckermans
life uncover various differences as well.
When Roth eventually wrote an autobiography, The facts (1998), tracing his
life from his childhood in Newark, New Jersey to becoming a successful,
widely respected novelist, he included, at a metafictional level, a letter from
Zuckerman himself addressed to Roth, in which he urges him to stay with
fiction rather than autobiography. Not surprisingly, Philip Roth himself reacts
badly to the idea that he's an autobiographical writer. "To label books like
mine 'autobiographical' or 'confessional'", he once told the French writer
Alain Finkielkraut, "is not only to falsify their suppositional nature but, if I
may say so, to slight whatever artfulness leads some readers to think that
they must be autobiographical." He also told Hermione Lee in 1984 that
"Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence
out of the actual drama of my life is my life. There has to be some pleasure
in this job, and that's it. To go around in disguise. To act a character. To
pretend. The sly and cunning masquerade."
The conclusion would be that Nathan Zuckerman acts more as an
intermediate between Roth and his characters stories, and his presence
bring these stories closer to the readers, as they both seem to share the
perspective of an observer.
[Zuckerman] became a kind of stage for an endless play of different, even
contradictory, roles.
Zuckerman's seemingly endless self-inventions are a consequence of the
historically situated identity choices available to him.