| Chapter 1: | The Making of Nathan Zuckerman |
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dialectic between a writer’s “useful fictions” and his “true story” might be said to be at the very center of Roth’s vaster narrative project, I suggest considering My Life as a Man as a pivotal text in Roth’s oeuvre. As Brauner masterfully summarized:
The novel is, in fact, an extended exploration of the writer’s primary relationship with his subject and his material—his self. As Tarnopol tries to explain to Dr. Spielvogel:
In this respect, My Life as a Man might be considered a fictional dress rehearsal. This chapter aims to highlight the different solutions Roth’s art of fiction offers to the writer’s artistic problem, which lies at the very center of the Zuckerman books as well—the transformation of life into fictional material, or, to be more precise, the fruitful interaction between the two in the dialectical relationship between truthfulness and impersonation. It will, furthermore, try to illuminate the reader’s coping with this dialectical relationship while meeting two contrasting versions of Nathan Zuckerman.
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Structurally speaking, My Life as a Man is built as follows: a first part, “Useful Fictions,” made up of two chapters, “Salad Days” and “Courting Disaster”; and a second part, “My True Story,” made up of five chapters. The paratextual proviso indicates clearly that both the fictional stories and the autobiographical writing are to be considered as stemming from Peter Tarnopol’s pen. The Note to the Reader poses Roth, the author on