It is a 4.5.

For me, this book, rightfully lands at the top of Roth's oeuvre.

It is a kind of 4321 avant la lettre, steeped in the typical elements of Roth in their purest form - sex, Judaism, family. On the back cover, Martin Amis talks about Roth's comic vein. Well, of course, there is always his irony at the base, but never as in "The Counterlife" is it wiped away by an overwhelming wave of melancholy.

The final two letters are unforgettable.

This work showcases Roth's masterful storytelling and his ability to explore complex themes with depth and nuance. The characters are vividly drawn, and the plot keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. It is a must-read for fans of Roth and anyone interested in exploring the human condition through literature.

This is the second novel that I have read, written by Philip Roth and I liked it more than the first novel read by the same author, "My Life as a Man".

The title of the novel already puts us on the topic of what we are going to discover when reading it. Thus, when things are put in comparison, the themes are: Israel - Jews and non-Jews, Jewish-Arabs, America - England, envy or love between brothers, marriage - celibacy, wife-lover, religion-fanaticism, love-sex or even obscenity.

The novel begins with Henry Zuckerman, the brother of the writer Nathan Zuckerman, a family man from New Jersey, who, discovering that he suffers from a fatal heart disease whose treatment makes him impotent, faces the possibility of multiple and very risky surgical interventions, this being the only way to continue his sexual adventure with his own assistant. And from here the great dilemma for Henry, a quiet, banal and healthy life with his family or the power, fantasy and sexual freedom with his lover? Henry chooses sex and dies leaving Nathan to reveal his secret posthumously in a so-called fictional book.

But Henry survives the operation and, instead of sexual ecstasy, has the revelation of a higher meaning of his new life, settling in an Israeli community in the West Bank and embarking on the adventure of exploring his hitherto unknown Jewish identity. So Nathan goes after his brother to Israel, trying to convince him to return to his own family.

The narrative continues with another plot in which Nathan is the one who suffers from heart disease and has an adventure that he cannot fulfill without the risk of the respective operation after which, in the end, he dies!?? We don't know for sure because in the end he comes back.

Henry, the dentist, discovers his brother's manuscript in which he reveals the adultery and the whole adventure of the identity conversion in Judea and decides to destroy it.

The story is captivating and the technique approached by the author is very interesting because you don't know when he is describing the life of the two or when it is actually about the book thought by the writer brother, Nathan Zuckerman.

Once upon a time, I sought marital counseling from a therapist. The doctor asked me, “Where have you visited that you might like to live?” I replied, “Let’s say Las Cruces, or Santa Fe, or Boulder.” “Fine,” the doctor said, “what would Santa Fe be like for you? How might you be different there?” “Ah, right,” I said, realizing that I would still be the same person regardless of where I lived. I could start a new relationship, but I would still have my “issues” with whomever I was with. However, I also thought, why not try to reinvent myself from time to time? (I didn’t actually move to any of those places).

The Counterlife, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1987, is a postmodern story that includes several “drafts” about two very different brothers in mid-life. It focuses on two things Roth often explores: sex and Judaism. I had never read it before, but I think it’s one of his best works, a precursor to the American Trilogy in dealing with actual political situations. This book specifically focuses on Israel and Jewish identity.

I liked the book very much, despite the fact that it begins with Nathan focusing on his brother Henry’s heart condition, which requires medication that makes him unable to achieve erections. Phallo-centrism was an important literary subject, but it seems that this may be why almost no women (at least on Goodreads) seem to read or review Roth. Who cares about your sex life? Anyway, we later learn that this early narrative was written as a eulogy because Henry has died. He gave up his medication to save his (sex) life, which is a tragic turn of events. In a way, we can see how Roth attempted to “elevate” the penis to a high (comic) literary status, which evolves into great dark comedy.

Part Two presents another possibility where Henry has survived the operation and, after a lifetime of atheism, suddenly commits to Zionism and moves to Israel. When Nathan visits Henry, dialogues about secular and religious Judaism ensue between them and also with Zuck and other Zionists. The main thrust of this book is not about what people eat or wear, or descriptions of natural settings as a backdrop for the action. Instead, it is almost entirely about intense talks, dialogues, rants, from a variety of perspectives, usually aggressive and often angry, on whatever subject comes up. Reading Roth is intellectually challenging, with impressive visceral dialogue, but it is not “pastoral” or relaxing. Exactly, Roth would interject! If you want relaxing, go meditate! This second section, while also a serious exploration of Jewish identity, is often funny. Even when people are annoying, or perhaps because they are annoying, they can be humorous.

Part Three is a manic encounter with Jimmy, a crazy guy who claims to have a grenade on the plane in which he and Nathan are flying. The authorities interrogate Nathan as an accomplice, and the fact that the cops have never heard of him angers him. “I’m an emerging, newly famous writer, c’mon!” This is another crazy manic scene, another “counterlife.”

Part Four posits Nathan as the brother with the heart condition, and he promptly dies. What would dentist Henry say at his estranged brother Nathan’s funeral? We see Henry going through Nathan’s notebooks, excising entries that could expose him to his “foibles” (affairs, always). This is a funny, interesting, and insightful turnabout for Nathan, the arrogant writer, to have his own fiction turned on him.

Part Five focuses on Nathan and his fourth (shiksa) wife, Maria, who resents being written about. She says, “I began to wonder which was real, the woman in the book or the one I was pretending to be upstairs. Neither of them was particularly ‘me.’ I was not myself just as much as Maria in the book was not myself. Perhaps she was. I began not to know which was true and which was not, like a writer who comes to believe that he’s imagined what he hasn’t. . . The book began living in me all the time, more than my everyday life.” Roth’s novelist Nathan Zuckerman’s book Karnovsky (like Roth’s own Portnoy’s Complaint) is seen by the Jewish reading public as a mocking, self-hating Jewish diatribe. But here, in the last draft of The Counterlife, with Zuck married to British Maria and her anti-Semitic British family, Zuckerman rails against anti-Semitism. And we get the joke that he is neither a self-hating Jew nor devout. Maybe it is most useful to see here that Roth is fictionally examining subjects like sex and ethnic identity from all angles and attitudes. He does this through Zuckerman, who does it through Karnovsky, and so on.

I think that this book, while not always easy or fun to read (Zuckerman and his endlessly manic/angry argumentative talkers can be a bit exhausting), is still on par with his best novels, such as American Pastoral. Not quite, though. For me, the ones that deal more with politics and history as well as identity are the best, and the American trilogy (and The Plot Against America) deal with several political issues. Yes, the examination of Judaism and Israel here is a political focus, of course, but at its best, Counterlife is breathtaking in its examination of the uses of fiction in the construction of a life. In this book, he speaks of “the construction of a counterlife that is one’s own antimyth. . . a species of fabulous utopianism,” thus the book’s title. Try to reinvent yourself through fiction, since the self is always a fiction. He also says, “The treacherous imagination is everyone’s maker—we are all the invention of each other, everyone a conjuration conjuring up everyone else. We are all each other’s authors.” Here’s a longer passage on the subject of the self as performance: “I’m talking about recognizing that one is acutely a performer, rather than swallowing whole the guise of naturalness and pretending that it isn’t a performance but you. . . . All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self. It certainly does strike me as a joke about—my—self. What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself—a troupe of players that I have internalized, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required, an ever-evolving stock of pieces and parts that forms my repertoire. But I certainly have no self independent of my imposturing, artistic efforts to have one. Nor would I want one. I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.” “But it is interesting trying to get a handle on one’s own subjectivity—something to think about, to play around with, and what’s more fun than that?” He’s talking here about the close relationship between writing fiction and living life. To an extent, all of us are engaged in living counterlives, since we are changing and sometimes depart from the selves we or others think we are. That’s what this book is about: Inventing your life as you go, and not as somehow tapping into some “essential” and “natural” self. If all this seems too “pomo” or intellectualized for you, I understand, but I liked it a lot.

My only previous encounter with Roth's works was The Plot Against America, which I devoured shortly after its paperback release. I derived pleasure from that book, yet I wasn't left with an insatiable craving to read more. Over the past few months, there has been a lively discussion about Roth within the Mookse group, and this particular book emerged as the one that most members were eager to explore.

I find it nearly impossible to discuss this book without delving into spoilers. However, in a narrative filled with numerous alternative realities, spoilers don't hold the same weight as in a traditional linear story. Nevertheless, I will employ spoiler tags as a precaution:

This is an astoundingly clever yet somewhat contrived piece of storytelling. Instead of adhering to a conventional sequential narrative, Roth opted to structure this book into five distinct sections. Each section presents alternative versions of the tales of his central characters, the novelist Nathan Zuckerman and his younger brother Henry. Both characters are killed off and then resurrected in the subsequent chapter. Other characters share names; for instance, all the main non-Jewish women are named Maria.

The first part, Basel, is narrated by an omniscient third person, centering on dentist Henry. His heart medications have rendered him impotent at the age of 39, preventing him from fulfilling his role in an affair with his secretary. This ultimately leads to a fateful decision to undergo a risky bypass operation that claims his life.

In the next part, Judea, the operation has a different outcome. Henry abandons his family to join a radical settler community on the West Bank, and Nathan pays him a visit, enabling him to explore the entire gamut of Jewish stereotypes and caricatures. This is a story that could only be told by a Jewish writer.

The third part, Aloft, which doesn't directly contradict the previous one, finds Nathan on a plane returning from Israel and embroiled in an attempted hijacking.

The fourth part, Gloucestershire, is perhaps the most ingenious but may strike some as a touch too contrived. This time, it is Nathan who suffers from impotence as he becomes involved with another Maria, an unhappily married young English woman residing in another flat of his New York brownstone. Nathan desires to proceed with the bypass operation, while Maria attempts to dissuade him. Midway through this chapter, the narration switches to Henry as he describes Nathan's funeral and a subsequent visit to Nathan's flat, where he discovers and describes a manuscript that coincides with the book itself. Maria also gets her own section, in which she details her reaction to reading the final part.

The final part, Christendom, shows Nathan alive once more and living with a pregnant Maria and her daughter in England. Their happiness is marred by Nathan's reaction to a series of encounters with antisemitism, both blatant and disguised.

Roth's capacity to speak from so many conflicting perspectives is truly remarkable. The book is both challenging and thought-provoking, albeit not always a comfortable read. It is probably a far superior introduction to Roth than The Plot Against America, yet I remain unconvinced that I wish to read more of his works.

Coming from a very white, American world, I know few Jewish people. But because of Roth's fiction, I feel like an expert. He covers his Jewishness from all angles, assuming the roles of antagonist, victim, and casual observer, shredding and reconstructing with abandon.

The "plot" of this book is, on the surface, infuriatingly complex. However, Roth pulls it together, and eventually, one realizes the first story is just one of a handful. The famous Zuckerman, as best I can tell, actually dies in this one but is resurrected at the end.

This novel was prescient. The decision of Trump to "give" Jerusalem to Israel is in the news, and the whole Zionist thing was played out exquisitely as the protagonist attempts to extricate his brother from his zeal and an outpost of true believers in Judea.

Of course, this book is about the submission of goyim women by Jewish men, Roth's familiar trope, but it was much more than that. Roth explores subtle English anti-Semitism and "Christendom" in a full frontal attack.

No matter how secular, the Jewish American cannot escape the past. It is imprinted on his personhood, history, and a very long cultural history. Roth covers this territory with biting prose, brilliantly understanding both sides of every argument, voiced cleverly in this ingenious plot line.

This was written in 1986, but Roth knew then, as is more evident today, that racism (relabeled as tribalism) is alive and well and never really leaves, no matter how egalitarian our politics seem to be.

These enormous themes, and the absolutely brilliant dialogue and prose, make this a 5-star for me – though the structure is unconventional and somewhat disconcerting. It's my favorite of his since I read my first (American Pastoral) so many years ago.

Sequence-wise, I’m catching up with that, and I suspect this is Roth’s strongest period. Once again, the author seems to pervade the characters of his protagonists and bit players, to an extreme extent. Surely this is his most autobiographical to date for me.

In "The Counterlife", Philip Roth takes his postmodern experimentalism to a radical level, flattening history like a steamroller and exploring the possibilities within multiple narratives, with the construction of a Jewish identity - whether personal or historical/national - serving as the mediator. Spanning five parts, the writer creates a carousel of events and characters, the key to understanding which, as critics have already pointed out, lies at the beginning of a paragraph on the very first pages, starting with the words "If/then", "Se/então".

The novel begins with the death of Nathan Zuckerman's brother, Henry, due to a heart operation. This is the starting point, and an element that occurs in different ways several times throughout the novel. Revealing more than this would take away the reader's pleasure of getting lost and finding oneself in the midst of the narrative and structural acrobatics that order the novel. In any case, a word of advice here: when you feel lost, don't give up, keep going because at some point everything will make sense.

The writer plays with the possibilities that seem to stem from a game: if this happens like this, then that will unfold like that. It is an exciting and ambitious novel - although perhaps longer than it really should be - both in form and in its treatment of the politics of Jewish identity construction. The scenes in Israel are particularly strong and courageous. Roth is a very self-aware writer, conscious of his role and the questions his work is capable of raising, so nothing sounds lightweight or gratuitous - quite the opposite.

This novel by Philip Roth pushes much harder against the constraints of the novel form than any of the other Roth works I've read.

The book is firmly anchored around Nathan Zuckerman and his relationship with his estranged brother Henry. However, Roth takes this relationship and rearranges it in each section, creating a delirious, recursive effect.

Philip Roth deftly juggles the concerns of death, rebirth, and escape that many of his Jewish characters grapple with in his fiction. In this particular book, those evasions actually spill out of his familiar New Jersey turf. Suddenly, the characters find themselves in a remote West Bank settlement, then back in Jersey, and then in the bucolic English countryside, trading off on different levels of psychological and geopolitical reality.

And all of this globe-hopping and time-shifting is enhanced by an incredibly playful meta-fictional sensibility that centers entirely around Zuckerman and his own insecurities and observations about the larger world.

This is the most overtly Jewish-centric Roth novel I've encountered. It's also, especially in terms of its structure, among the most original of his works. It's sort of like a Jewish Pale Fire, with its complex and multi-layered narrative.

This is a truly challenging book to rate and review.

The writing is of an extremely high caliber. The dialogue is not only intelligent but also witty, accurately reflecting a perfect understanding of the cadence and pitch of human interactions.

However, it seems that I am simply too dull to fathom where this book intended to guide me as a reader. I painstakingly read the final page three times, hoping against hope that a light bulb would suddenly switch on and everything would become clear, but alas, it did not.

This is a novel within a novel, with the chapters of this secondary book taking precedence over the actual lives of the characters in the initial story.

As a reader, what is the reality that I am supposed to embrace? And what connection does the Jewish angst in the secondary novel have with the seemingly absent Jewish angst in the lives of the primary characters?

I suspect that this book delves into the way we construct and modify our personal and group narratives, but I really need someone to dissect and explain this award-winning story to me.

La metanovela

Judaísmo, sexo, vejez, and literature that delves deep into the self - all of Philip Roth's themes are condensed in this novel. For a die-hard Roth fan friend, "La Contravida" is among her top 5, while for me, it ranks a little lower. For a moment, I felt like I was reading a blend of "Pastoral Americana" and "Operation Shylock."

The plot is difficult to explain as it basically consists of counterfactual biographies of imaginary beings. I think Paul Auster did something similar in "4,3,2,1" when he wrote the stories of "What if...".

The first chapter is brilliant. If one had to show the genius of Roth to someone who had never read him, I would say to start here. After that, it ramps up into delirium and, while it remains brilliant, for me, it starts to lose steam. But after reading some novels and stories that I didn't much like and then starting this one, I felt on solid ground. His style, his themes, the way he treats them, his humor - it all made me feel at home. It made me feel at home while being stuck at home due to quarantine, which is doubly nice.

Only Philip Roth would have the audacity to open and close a novel by talking about a character's penis. This unique approach sets the stage for what is to come - a revealing, dense examination of manhood, identity, and marriage. Roth utilizes his skills in a new and interesting way, taking his readers on a journey of self-discovery and exploration.

The Counterlife is a novel that delves deep into introspection, exploring the possibilities of following different life paths. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego of sorts, brings a wealth of humor and a level of maturity and growth that was not present in the previous Zuckerman books. The section titled "Judea" set in Israel is particularly fascinating, as it explores many of the arguments over Jewish identity and allying with Zionism that are still relevant today.

The novel culminates in a brilliant scene at the end, where Nathan and his new wife, Maria, are dining at a restaurant in London and a patron makes an anti-Semitic remark. Nathan's response leads to an intimate and ultimately depressing conversation about what it means to be Jewish and how his wife simply cannot understand or agree with him. There is so much to ponder in this novel, from its post-modernist, meta section to its exploration of complex themes and ideas. Roth's ability to play with form and introduce new perspectives is truly impressive, and I look forward to reading more of his work.

I'm halfway through but I don't think the tone changes. One of the best Zuckermans, as far as I remember. Then, regardless of Nathan, I believe that in every Roth book - especially if they belong to the enchanting period of the 80s, where this one is situated - one can only learn. The balance of the dialogues, the perfect platform of the translation, the intelligence that every damn sentence throws out and annihilates me for my incompetence, every'small piece': everything pushes me forward compared to the minute before. I finish a Roth book and I feel better, I know that I have listened to dialogues of which I would like to be the interpreter, of a life that all in all I envy a little. These Jews who talk about their things, who analyze freudianly every fainting spell of their unease are spectacular. It's worth taking a day off and spending some hours on the sofa in the company of these displaced people. Anyway, the literature of these last years. With the definite article. --- Then one enters the game of the mirrors of meta-literature, and at the same time I also saw Inception which, although on different planes, brings me back to this book.

Second reading, October 2019. A lot of Judaism, this time I accuse him more; but I don't remember having smiled so much in a Roth book. I'm halfway through as when I wrote the other review and maybe this is exactly the point of the peaks of the funny, sharp, credible, unique dialogues. Sometimes Roth has the incredible ability to create characters so evident, so defined in their nuances, so divinely real. The fourth chapter, Gloucestershire, is a literary tightrope-walking delight. And in the fifth, Christianity, the splendid example of the characters that literally come to life.

Really a fun read.

Great rereading.

I can't help it, but every time a book by Philip Roth falls into my hands, I take a break from my other readings and read the new acquisition. It is a guarantee of literary quality, of depth in the development of characters, of sharp and biting dialogues, of being marvelously incisive and comic. Definitely, for me he is one of the writers with the most powerful prose I know. He is the professor of desire and doesn't leave a puppet without a head. Passionately funny and serious at the same time. Well, these and other wonders can be said about the writer, without much fear of being wrong.

This novel has not been one of my favorites of his, like Portnoy's Complaint, Sabbath's Theater, The Human Stain, those of his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, and some of his other alter ego David Kepesh. And that's although I understand that this is one of his best works. Probably it wasn't to my liking because a good part of the novel is about anti-Semitism, Zionism and Jewish identity, and if I got a little bored it's my fault, because the narrator, in those passages, displays forceful opinions of interest. However, the Philip Roth that I enjoy the most is the one who delves into themes such as sex, desire, lust, fury, indignation, humiliation, crises, criticism of conventionalisms, relationships between parents and children, of couples, of siblings... And the ones I have enjoyed the least (although always admired, for the depth of the themes treated) are the most social and historical. The Counterlife has a bit of both.

Nathan Zuckerman (the metafictional alter ego of Roth, and this novel is the most metafictional of all his, and of complex structure), has a younger brother, Henry, who is in crisis (most of Roth's novels begin with a character who is in the midst of an existential crisis, or on the verge of a nervous breakdown), since the cardiologist informs him that he has a heart problem, and he tries a medicine that suits him very well, and that could considerably prolong his life, however, he has become impotent at thirty-nine, because of the medicine; married and with a mistress, who is also his assistant in the dental practice, Henry is desperate and seriously considers going through the operating room, even despite the great risk of ending up on the slab. This happens hardly in the first chapter, after that everything gets complicated. Henry is the typical exemplary man: successful in his profession, an obedient son, overshadowed and repressed by the father, the ideal husband who doesn't get divorced, and the father who never abandons his children. However, the stress of being such a good person is already so great that, even when he had the opportunity to go with a mistress to Switzerland to make a new life and be happy, the moralizing of the good son (and Jew, moreover) good father and good husband, prevents him; he represses himself in unhappiness and gets a heart disease. Or at least this is what his brother Nathan Zuckerman thinks, an expert in being the opposite of an exemplary man... or at least this is what the fanatics who don't distinguish fiction from reality think of Zuckerman, as we can't affirm that that paper being, fictionalized (Zuckerman), is the real writer, the one outside the pages... And this is one of the central themes when it comes to this alter ego: writing, fiction, authorship and its misunderstandings.

"The thing was much more than the delicious pleasure. It was your drop of theatrical life, your escape, your risk, your small daily insurrection against your overwhelming virtues: to corrupt Wendy for twenty minutes a day and then go back home, in search of the temporary satisfactions of life in a normal family. Wendy's slavish mouth was your ration of senseless fun."