New Books Network: An Evening with Philip Roth

Conversation with Bernard Avishai, Igor Webb, and Steven Zipperstein

Date: March 13, 2026
Main Theme:
A wide-ranging, deeply thoughtful panel on Philip Roth’s novel Nemesis: its themes of fate, moral courage, Jewish identity, the power of narrative, and the unsparing human questions raised by epidemic, community, and individual responsibility.

Overview

The episode gathers distinguished literary scholars and critics—Bernard Avishai, Igor Webb, and Steven Zipperstein—along with Philip Roth himself, for a public discussion of Roth’s late novel Nemesis. Host Jonathan Brent introduces Roth as “the master of American literature today” and situates the conversation amidst the broader contexts of American Jewish identity and the mission of the YIVO Institute.

Nemesis is analyzed as a parable of remembrance, loss, and the invisible influences of history—focusing particularly on Bucky Cantor, a Newark playground director, whose moral struggles and tragic fate during a 1944 polio epidemic become the springboard for philosophical questions and literary comparisons.

Key Discussion Points

1. Nemesis and Moral Philosophy

Speaker: Jonathan Brent, Bernard Avishai
Timestamps: 00:07 – 16:40

• Nemesis is framed by questions: What is the right thing? What is the good? Does doing good bring happiness?
• Comparison to Koestler’s Arrival and Departure and Camus’ The Plague—but Brent lingers on Koestler, arguing that Nemesis probes whether self-sacrifice is itself morally reliable or can be tainted by grandiosity or guilt.

  “Knowing the tortured source of one's moralism... can help one decide, what should Slavic do? Go to America or join the British army?” (10:37, Brent on Koestler)

• Bucky Cantor’s struggle reflects these dilemmas: should he remain devoted to his charges, or seek happiness and normalcy? Is his sense of duty virtuous, or a psychic burden?
• The narrative complicates judgment by using a retrospective narrator, Arnie, once a disciple who now sees Bucky with skepticism.
• Bucky’s fate is tragic yet ambiguous: perhaps he saved some by fleeing, but unwittingly spread disease elsewhere.

“Now comes the real moral problem… Bucky recovers somewhat. Though his marvelous body is ravaged, he refuses even to see Marsha, holding fast to his seclusion… Is Marcia too prone to an exaggerated sense of duty?”
—Jonathan Brent (15:32)

2. Bucky Cantor’s Rejection of Victimhood

Speaker: Steve Zipperstein
Timestamps: 16:40 – 22:11

• Bucky is neither hero nor martyr—he acts “not to valorize some mysterious design,” but to reject living as a victim.
• The real dignity, Zipperstein argues, is mysterious in its humility, not in overt heroism.
• The story upends familiar expectations: Bucky’s final claim—“What I don’t have, I live without”—is seen as both stoic pride and a reflection on human autonomy.

“The key, I think, is the weight of the word ‘I’. What I don’t have, I live without. Nietzsche could not have pronounced the ‘I’ more proudly or beautifully.”
—Steve Zipperstein (20:07)

3. The “Invisible” in Jewish and American Life

Speaker: Bernard Avishai
Timestamps: 22:11 – 34:02

• Roth’s Jews are treated “as if they weren’t Jews, as normal human beings,” yet Jewishness remains a persistent, often invisible context shaping fate.
• The unseeable—virus, genealogy, inherited ideals—drives the story. Even Bucky’s name is a play on “Eugene/Eugenics;” the narrator Arnie is himself an “inventor” of the Mr. Cantor persona.
• The tension is both about wanting to be “normal” (Arnie, Marsha) and the furious, uncompromising moral imagination (Bucky).
• The novel’s essence is not a choice between ordinary happiness and heroic suffering, but the inextricable coexistence of both.

“The moral choice in Nemesis is not between Arnie’s compromising normality and happiness and Mr. Cantor’s hidden rage… Rather, the novel is an awakening in the reader that the one reality is inextricably bound up with the other.”
—Bernard Avishai (33:23)

4. The Role of Narrative & Intertextuality

Speaker: Igor Webb
Timestamps: 34:02 – 46:28

• Roth’s late work (including Nemesis) is grouped under the heading “Nemeses” and shifts from the comic autonomy of the Zuckerman novels to fatalistic meditations on things one cannot choose.
• Bucky, like Roth’s other protagonists, is caught between being in control (as an athlete, as an adult) and being overwhelmed by duties he did not select.
• The narrative voice itself is scrutinized—Arnie, the narrator, only reveals himself partway through. His voice is that of mid-century Newark, but also of “common sense” that cannot finally comprehend Bucky’s suffering.
• The comparison to Greek tragedy: Like Oedipus, Bucky cannot be excused by lack of intent, and meaning is found or lost not in “common sense,” but in the rigorous singularity of suffering and choice.

“The Bucky, it's the other way around. Had he not renounced Marcia, he would have lost his manhood.”
—Igor Webb (43:49)

5. Community, Aloneness, and Jewishness

Speaker: Steve Zipperstein
Timestamps: 46:28 – 54:37

• Roth is, Zipperstein argues, the modern novelist of both togetherness and inescapable aloneness.
• Community is both nurturing and suffocating, both solace and sentence.
• Jewish communal dynamics—embrace and exclusion, praise and policing—reflect in Roth’s family and Newark environments as well as in literary tradition.
• Roth’s Jewishness is neither purely tribal nor wholly cosmopolitan; it is present as both “splendid prism” and source of pressure.
• Roth’s famous line is quoted:

  “It isn’t what it’s talking about that makes a book Jewish, it’s that the book won’t shut up, the book won’t leave you alone, won’t let up, gets too close.”
  —Philip Roth, Paris Review, cited by Zipperstein (53:44)

6. Panel Q&A and Reflections

Moderator: Bernie Avishai; Panelists
Timestamps: 54:37 – 56:47

• The panel notes the role of pity (“as much in the way of pity as there is of vengeance or fate”) in Nemesis.
• Queries about the etymology of “Nemesis” and the Yiddish word “far-fetched” lead to lighthearted exchanges, balancing the otherwise sober tone.

7. Philip Roth’s Closing Reading

Speaker: Philip Roth
Timestamps: 56:47 – end (~1:03:30)

• Roth reads the final, resonant pages of Nemesis, describing Arnie’s memories of Bucky teaching boys to throw the javelin before the epidemic—an elegiac vision of strength, guidance, and the tragic sense of what is lost.
• The passage centers on Bucky as mentor and athlete, embodying discipline, dignity, and fleeting invincibility.

“He hurled the javelin. You could see each of his muscles bulging when he released it into the air… The instant the javelin took flight from his hand, he began dancing about to recover his balance… Never were we more in awe of anyone. Through him, we boys had left the little story of the neighborhood and entered the historical saga of our ancient gender… Then, like an explosion, he seemed to us invincible.” —Philip Roth reading (1:00:38–1:03:00)

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “Do the preparation, then just let it rip.”
  —Philip Roth, paraphrased by Bernie Avishai (00:07)
• “Jews are members of the human race. Worse than that, I cannot say about them.”
  —Philip Roth, paraphrased (07:07)
• “It is not what it’s talking about that makes a book Jewish, it’s that the book won’t shut up, the book won’t leave you alone, won’t let up, gets too close.”
  —Philip Roth, Paris Review, quoted by Zipperstein (53:44)
• “What I don’t have, I live without.”
  —Bucky Cantor, quoted by Steve Zipperstein (19:18)
• “The moral choice in Nemesis is not between Arnie’s compromising normality and happiness and Mr. Cantor’s hidden rage… Rather, the novel is an awakening in the reader that the one reality is inextricably bound up with the other.”
  —Bernard Avishai (33:23)
• “Had he not renounced Marcia, he would have lost his manhood.”
  —Igor Webb (43:49)
• “Community is something that no credible human being could live with, and whose absence tears, scars without end.”
  —Steve Zipperstein (46:29)

Highlights & Memorable Moments

• Comparisons of Nemesis to Koestler, Camus, and classical tragedy (09:43 – 16:40)
• Debate about whether Bucky’s refusal of happiness is moral cowardice, tragic dignity, or something else (20:07 – 22:11)
• Exploration of invisible influences: virus, tradition, narrative invention (23:43 – 34:02)
• Analysis of Roth’s narrator, the “common sense” world vs. Bucky’s tragic singularity (34:02 – 46:28)
• Roth’s own voice, humor, and pathos as he reads the novel’s final passage, evoking the lost world of youth (56:47 – end)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:07 – Brent opens; introduces panel & YIVO’s mission
• 07:07 – Brent compares Nemesis with Koestler and Camus
• 16:40 – Zipperstein on dignity, fate, the limits of autonomy
• 22:11 – Avishai on Jewish identity and the invisible
• 34:02 – Webb on Roth's classification, plague narratives, the narrator's role
• 46:28 – Zipperstein on community, Jewishness, and literary inheritance
• 54:36 – Panel Q&A: pity, fate, “Nemesis”
• 56:47 – Philip Roth reads the ending of Nemesis

Final Thoughts

The panel engages Nemesis not just as a parable of fate and guilt, but as a profound meditation on how history, narrative, culture, and personal ideals shape lives. Bucky remains a figure of tragic autonomy, marked by the desire to do right, but ultimately defeated by the limitations of both body and circumstance. The reading by Roth is a fitting, elegiac close: a vision of youthful strength, the power of example, and the inexorable passage to loss.