Philip Roth, Indignation
Being a Philip Roth novel, Indignation features what the scientists would primly call “an episode of receptive oral sex.” Roth is rather more straightforward with his nomenclature than either the scientists or I can be (this is a family publication, after all): the novel that brought him infamy, Portnoy's Complaint, featured a chapter that we’ll have to call “C-Word Crazy.”
The “receptive episode,” as we’ll call it here, sets off a chain of disasters for Indignation’s narrator — the episode’s recipient, as it were. He’s already left home in New Jersey (most Roth novels take place in New Jersey) to get away from a father who appears to be going insane. Until then, Marcus and his father had been just about as close as two people could be: they worked side by side in the father’s Newark kosher butcher shop, and Marcus was all that a father could ask for: well-behaved, straight-A student, working nonstop, eyes always on the prize, intense. Then, for no reason that Marcus can discern — though it may be related to the thousands of Americans dying in Korea as this domestic disaster is happening — dad starts suspecting the worst: he asks Marcus constantly where he’s been (as it turns out, “the library” is just about as wild an answer as dad should ever expect), locks him out of the house if he gets back a moment past curfew, and generally makes his life a nightmare. So Marcus leaves home, abandons the familiar confines of college in Newark, and enters a polite Baptist college in the middle of Ohio.
You might wonder a couple things at this point: how a paranoid father would possibly release his son into the American heartland, and where the insanity came from. These are the first two of several “Huh?” moments in Indignation. Another is that receptive episode. It comes basically out of nowhere, and surprises Marcus just as much as it surprises us. Like a lot of people, the discovery of sex tears Marcus’s world apart. And it couldn’t come at a worse time for him: he’s already moved out of one student dormroom because his intense, studious ways conflict with the antisocial habits of his roommate. After the receptive episode, he feels compelled to defend the girl’s honor against his second roommate, who promptly coldcocks Marcus. So on he moves to his third room, the coldest, least-desirable pit on the entire campus.
Each of these shocks to Marcus’s life seems rather unsupported by the story leading up to it. This bugged me until the final few pages, which tilt the story on its head; I’m still processing what they’re about, but my sense is (I’m being careful not to give anything away here) that they change the story from a straightforward walk down memory lane to a satirized lecture on the collapse of American morals. I wish I could say more about the ending; if anyone out there reads it, email me and let me know what you think.
In any case, I think it’s safe to say that the book’s whole structure, in light of its ending, is a risk for Roth. At least until the end, I think the reader is likely to feel cheated by one unmotivated shift in the plot after another. Many readers would probably put it down before finishing it.
It helps Roth, then, that Indignation is a little thing — 200ish small pages with generous spacing. It’s easy to tear through in one sitting. I essentially started and finished it over the course of two 90-minute commutes. It’s a fine book, but Roth shouldn’t get credit for just being Roth: many authors could have written something as good as Indignation, which is not something I can say for a book of similar heft like Roth’s Dying Animal. Your time is probably better spent on the latter.
(Note: I read an early review copy of Indignation, generously supplied to me by the publisher. The book will be released tomorrow. Details of its printing may differ from what I read, but I can’t imagine that the story itself will.)