Philip Roth and the Zuckerman Books: The Making of a Storyworld ...

the cover, in the position of an alleged editor who has somehow come across Tarnopol’s writings. This distancing device is part and parcel of the narratological equipment Roth plays with throughout the novel and, my argument goes, via this novel. The Note to the Reader, furthermore, partakes of the characteristics of framing devices; it seeks to order and organize the reader’s perceptual modalities. The absence of any information that might close the frame—where the writings have been found, what the relationship between Roth the editor and Tarnopol the writer is—becomes part of the fictional manipulative game Roth starts exploring here. Rules are being created as much as Nathan Zuckerman’s traits.

At the core of this experimentation stands the choice of a writer as protagonist. In this respect, Peter Tarnopol is Nathan Zuckerman’s ancestor in two senses. First, Zuckerman is the mask Tarnopol the writer chooses to tackle with his subject; second, he precedes Nathan in providing Roth with a writer’s mask to wear. Nathan is the writer’s protagonist and, at times, the narrator whom Tarnopol uses to distance himself from his material. This distancing device that allows both revelation and concealment is the narratological structural core of all Zuckerman books. Here, Russian-doll-like, Roth hides behind Tarnopol, who is a writer, who hides behind Zuckerman, who is a writer. Masking allows both surrogacy and vicariousness. My emphasis here is on the cognitive aspect of masking. Masks are metaphoric devices through which different viewpoints are presented and new experiences and stances are appropriated. The first move masking calls for—projecting onto someone else a biographical subject—results in taking a step back from one’s life, dislocating its perception. This distancing move marks a retreat from the usual place the novelist as an individual inhabits while apprehending the world and opens up new perceptual possibilities unhindered by the novelist’s self.

The paradoxical consequence of narrative impersonation is that the self can be possessed only by amplifying the identification with an-other. Distancing results in naming a difference and, in the same breath, looking for proximity and sameness. Masking, in this respect, becomes a