Nemesis by Philip Roth

 

"Don't be against yourself. There is enough cruelty in the world as it is."

Set in 1944 Newark, New Jersey in the height of the polio epidemic, Nemesis by Philip Roth could not be more of a timely read. All the paranoia, frustration, and pain currently shrouding our COVID pandemic is present at its heart, but so is the sense of injustice. 

The story focuses on the tragic hero Bucky Cantor; a fresh college graduate who - being too clinically blind to be drafted into WWII - takes a position as a teacher and summer playground superintendent in the city. Impossible to overstate how likable Roth writes his protagonist Bucky. From the onset, you love Bucky almost as much as his students do. His sense of duty lacks all the annoyingness the trait usually relays, Roth is a master at painting the picture of a young man who genuinely cares about the people around him. 

This of course makes it all the more devastating as the worst things imaginable begin to descend on those people. Polio strikes the playground hard, killing children Bucky feels personally responsible for. We watch the strong, dutiful, and likable Bucky begin to rage against the virus, the war, a God who would let it all happen, and ultimately himself. 

The reader spends quite a bit of time in this space with Mr. Cantor, existing inside his head as he tortures himself. Roth casts a striking duality; we're treated to scenes of sickening grief as Bucky witnesses the families of Polio's child victims contend with such a lost, then, while Bucky remains externally composed and rational, we're given torturous internal monologues castigating any universal authority for the irrational unfairness of it all. 

All of which makes Nemesis a concise and beautiful piece of work. Reading it in the wake of our own brutal pandemic isn't comforting - that wouldn't be the right word - but it does offer a sense of interconnectedness with an America from another time; plagued by a deadly virus, prejudice, war, and senseless, irrational death. Nemesis is a tough reminder that we might actually suffer alone, but also that we can take solace in the fact that we always have.  

[Read Richard Brody's breakdown of the similarities between Nemesis and our current moment.]