Character
Roth first created the character of 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. In Zuckerman Unbound (1981), he has become established as a novelist and must deal with the fall-out from his ribald comedic novel Carnovsky. Though wildly successful, the novel has brought to Zuckerman unwanted attention from both readers and his family, who object to their portrayal in his work.
Read more about this topic: Nathan Zuckerman
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“When trying a case [the famous judge] L. Cassius never failed to inquire “Who gained by it?” Man’s character is such that no one undertakes crimes without hope of gain.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)