Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Tibor Tóth: The Golden Cradle: Philip Roth's Revision of the Golden Bough Tradition

This is a most cruel authorial statement and it is clear that Philip Roth deprives his character of the possibility to employ the fictional conclusions of the novelist's experiments with life, art and creativity. The professor of comparative literature is doomed to fail because he refuses the traditional moral and ethical solutions to his dilemmas although he is not in possession of valid alternatives. He invokes art to help him sort out his existential problems but because he cannot master either dimension all he can do is revolt against the above state of affairs claiming that reality has more style. His final argument makes the whole story credible. He castigates a world that is crazy enough to allow things like the one that happened to him occur. My Life as a Man The professor of comparative literature ended up as a breast as a result of his mistaken interpretation of the relationship between art and life. The situation does not get any better in My Life as a Man, where Philip Roth's experiments with the narrative point of view limit his protagonist's possibilities. The first part of the novel belongs to Peter Tarnopol, but in the second half of the novel, entitled 'My True Story,' Peter Tarnopol is telling Peter Tarnopol's story in the third person. This means that he cannot identify with the interpretations of his fictional experiences. Consequently his search for freedom is in all instances mirrored through polemics or someone else's fictional understanding and is actually a travesty of Camusian interpretation of freedom. Authority over definition of freedom is thus transferred to Spielvogel, Maureen, Susan rather than to Tarnopol. The different perspectives, through their alterations create scenarios that expand and fragment the definition of freedom to such a degree that the perplexed protagonist can't abandon or reverse them any more, however hard he tries. Tarnopol's understanding of freedom remains contaminated, emptied of factual authority and any sense of the search, in short it is doomed to disintegration. A fine example of the eloquent polemic on the aesthetic implications of the search for freedom, and its existential interpretations arises out of Tarnopol's rage at Spielvogel's fictionalised version of his self-image. 121