Spring Break
Roth's 'Indignation' wants for fury
by Hannah Kirsch
Deputy Editor
Arts | 1/13/09
Posted online at 12:44 AM EST on 1/13/09
Philip Roth definitively marks his territory only a few pages into Indignation, his novel that was published last September. In it, we meet Marcus Messner, a nice, young, Jewish boy from Newark who dutifully makes straight As and bashfully accepts the plaudits of a gaggle of approving adult Jews. He eagerly works for his father, a kosher butcher, absorbing homilies without resistance: "That's what I learned from my father and what I loved learning from him: that you do what you have to do." And, soon enough, Marcus develops daddy issues.
Our nice, young, Jewish boy flees Newark and Robert Treat College due to the increasingly paranoid, controlling elder Messner little Markie once idolized. His destination? Winesburg, Ohio, a nod to the repressed Midwestern town of Sherwood Anderson fame. There, Marcus single-mindedly pursues his studies, diverting from previous Roth men in his continuing eagerness and devotion to duty: "I wanted to do everything right. If I did everything right, I could justify to my father the expense of my being at college in Ohio rather than in Newark. I could justify to my mother her having to work full time in the store again," Roth says. He gives another knowing nod in the novel to Marcus' father having to sacrifice Isaac, a young, Orthodox Newarkian, as a paid apprentice in the butcher shop.
This is no Alexander Portnoy, wracked with guilt, shame, bitterness and anger; Marcus wants to be valedictorian, to become a lawyer and above all to avoid being a private in the Korean War. But these desires are utterly passive, voiced with no inner conflict whatsoever. In a confrontation with the stolid, obsessively conservative dean, he says with titular indignation, "I am not a malcontent. I am not a rebel," and this is the most discouraging aspect of Marcus' character. While frustrating, it is not surprising that Marcus undergoes little development from his supine state throughout the course of Indignation. You see, Marcus is dead, recounting from some agnostic form of limbo the events that led to his tragic demise at age 19, which he casually informs us almost as an aside not far into this short novel: "And even dead, as I am and have been for I don't know how long."
Our nice, young, Jewish boy flees Newark and Robert Treat College due to the increasingly paranoid, controlling elder Messner little Markie once idolized. His destination? Winesburg, Ohio, a nod to the repressed Midwestern town of Sherwood Anderson fame. There, Marcus single-mindedly pursues his studies, diverting from previous Roth men in his continuing eagerness and devotion to duty: "I wanted to do everything right. If I did everything right, I could justify to my father the expense of my being at college in Ohio rather than in Newark. I could justify to my mother her having to work full time in the store again," Roth says. He gives another knowing nod in the novel to Marcus' father having to sacrifice Isaac, a young, Orthodox Newarkian, as a paid apprentice in the butcher shop.
This is no Alexander Portnoy, wracked with guilt, shame, bitterness and anger; Marcus wants to be valedictorian, to become a lawyer and above all to avoid being a private in the Korean War. But these desires are utterly passive, voiced with no inner conflict whatsoever. In a confrontation with the stolid, obsessively conservative dean, he says with titular indignation, "I am not a malcontent. I am not a rebel," and this is the most discouraging aspect of Marcus' character. While frustrating, it is not surprising that Marcus undergoes little development from his supine state throughout the course of Indignation. You see, Marcus is dead, recounting from some agnostic form of limbo the events that led to his tragic demise at age 19, which he casually informs us almost as an aside not far into this short novel: "And even dead, as I am and have been for I don't know how long."
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