| Synopsis: |
The comedy of neuroses, as Roth practices it, has much of the elegance of an 18th-century comedy of manners, but it also allows itself plenty of latitude. ZUCKERMAN BOUND has room for farce, when Zuckerman spends a night with an Irish film star whose steady lover is Fidel Castro; as well as for a full, accomplished treatment of a grim routine, the death of a Jewish father. But mainly it has one great comic character, the sad and threatening Alvin Pepler, ex-Marine and ex-Tv celebrity, now alleging the theft of his private hang-ups, which are on the same lines as Portnoy's, for use in the famous novel. In this chapter Dickens and Waugh live again' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. |