Philip Roth's newest novel, Indignation, takes the reader on a fateful journey that pits a Jewish student against his father, his circumstances, and his war.
Markus Messner begins life and the novel in Newark, New Jersey where his father own a (kosher) butcher's shop and he and his mother help out. Markus is a good kid, and his father is proud of him. Yet, there is something in Markus, in Markus's future, that has his father extremely worried. Markus's father worries about Markus's studying and staying out late and going to Philadelphia to become a pool shark.
Markus stays at home for college, attending Robert Treat, until the paranoia of his father gets the better of him. Markus's new destination is a small college in Ohio, Winesburg, where, resigned to the war that looms high overhead, he enrolls in the ROTC in hopes of graduating out of the front lines. This, like seemingly all of the boy's decisions is laced with fate and a wary predestination that can only be described as Jewish. While at Winesburg, Markus is subjected to overbearing Christian bureaucrats, a trifling homosexual roommate, a Jewish fraternity, and Olivia, his new-found gentile, but not gentle, love. He has trouble adjusting, hearing the saltution, "Hey, Jew!" at the college hangout where he waits tables, and he finally takes on the Dean of Men for forcing him to attend a Christian religious service every Wednesday.
Indignation puts the blame for Markus's final fate on his refusal to hide his Jewishness against the affront of a Christian nation. It is compelling, and expertly written. A reader can easily get lost in Roth's majestic paragraphs that frequently span pages before they relent. It is a short and fast read, but it feels languid in its approach to the language and its subject—an approach that works. By the end of the novel, Roth defeats some of our greatest notions about the plans that God and narrative have for us all. Markus seems to be nothing but a sail cast to the fickle wind. Only one thing remains certain: his father knew all along.
Indignation is written by Philip Roth and published by Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
—2008-11-13 11:05:02
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