Nemesis

By Philip Roth

Set in a Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak, Nemesis is a wrenching examination of the forces of circumstance on our lives.

Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky’s playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts Cantor’s passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9780547504506

Philip Roth

PHILIP ROTH (1933–2018) won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1997. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner and Saul Bellow, among others. He twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians’ prize for “the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004” and the W.H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year, making Roth the first writer in the forty-six-year history of the prize to win it twice. In 2005 Roth became the third living American writer to have his works published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. In 2011 he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House, and was later named the fourth recipient of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2012 he won Spain’s highest honor, the Prince of Asturias Award, and in 2013 he received France’s highest honor, Commander of the Legion of Honor.

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Copyright © 2010 by Philip Roth

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Roth, Philip.

Nemesis / Philip Roth.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-547-31835-6

I. Title.

PS3568.0855N46 2010

813'.54—dc22 2010026217

Cover design by Milton Glaser

Author photograph © Nancy Crampton

eISBN 978-0-547-50450-6

v3.1118

I’ll Be Seeing You, written by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, © 1938 (Renewed 1966, 1994) THE NEW IRVING KAHAL MUSIC (ASCAP)/Administered by BUG MUSIC and FAIN MUSIC CO. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

For H. L.

Acknowledgments

Sources from which I’ve drawn information include The Throws Manual, by George D. Dunn, Jr., and Kevin McGill; The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade; Teaching Springboard Diving, by Anne Ross Fairbanks; Camp Management and Recreational Programs for Summer Camps, by H. W. Gibson; Dirt and Disease, by Naomi Rogers; Polio’s Legacy, by Edmund J. Sass; A Paralyzing Fear, by Nina Gilden Seavey, Jane S. Smith, and Paul Wagner; Polio Voices, by Julie Silver and Daniel Wilson; and A Manufactured Wilderness, by Abigail Van Slyck. Particularly useful was The Book of Woodcraft, by Ernest Thompson Seton, from which I have liberally drawn on pages 209–214, and Manual of the Woodcraft Indians, also by Seton, from which I have quoted on pages 146–147.

1

Equatorial Newark

THE FIRST CASE of polio that summer came early in June, right after Memorial Day, in a poor Italian neighborhood crosstown from where we lived. Over in the city’s southwestern corner, in the Jewish Weequahic section, we heard nothing about it, nor did we hear anything about the next dozen cases scattered singly throughout Newark in nearly every neighborhood but ours. Only by the Fourth of July, when there were already forty cases reported in the city, did an article appear on the front page of the evening paper, titled Health Chief Puts Parents on Polio Alert, in which Dr. William Kittell, superintendent of the Board of Health, was quoted as cautioning parents to monitor their children closely and to contact a physician if a child exhibited symptoms such as headache, sore throat, nausea, stiff neck, joint pain, or fever. Though Dr. Kittell acknowledged that forty polio cases was more than twice as many as normally reported this early in the polio season, he wanted it clearly understood that the city of 429,000 was by no means suffering from what could be characterized as an epidemic of poliomyelitis. This summer as every summer, there was reason for concern and for the proper hygienic precautions to be taken, but there was as yet no cause for the sort of alarm that had been displayed by parents, justifiably enough, twenty-eight years earlier, during the largest outbreak of the disease ever reported—the 1916 polio epidemic in the northeastern United States, when there had been more than 27,000 cases, with 6,000 deaths. In Newark there had been 1,360 cases and 363 deaths.

Now even in a year with an average number of cases, when the chances of contracting polio were much reduced from what they’d been back in 1916, a paralytic disease that left a youngster permanently disabled and deformed or unable to breathe outside a cylindrical metal respirator tank known as an iron lung—or that could lead from paralysis of the respiratory muscles to death—caused the parents in our neighborhood considerable apprehension and marred the peace of mind of children who were free of school for the summer months and able to play outdoors all day and into the long twilit evenings. Concern for the dire consequences of falling seriously ill from polio was compounded by the fact that no medicine existed to treat the disease and no vaccine to produce immunity. Polio—or infantile paralysis, as it was called when the disease was thought to infect mainly toddlers—could befall anyone, for no apparent reason. Though children up to sixteen were usually the sufferers, adults too could become severely infected, as had the current president of the United States.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, polio’s most renowned victim, had contracted the disease as a vigorous man of thirty-nine and subsequently had to be supported when he walked and, even then, had to wear heavy steel-and-leather braces from his hips to his feet to enable him to stand. The charitable institution that FDR founded while he was in the White House, the March of Dimes, raised money for research and for financial assistance to the families of the stricken; though partial or even full recovery was possible, it was often only after months or years of expensive hospital therapy and rehabilitation. During the annual fund drive, America’s young donated their dimes at school to help in the fight against the disease, they dropped their dimes into collection cans passed around by ushers in movie theaters, and posters announcing You Can Help, Too! and Help Fight Polio! appeared on the walls of stores and offices and in the corridors of schools across the country, posters of children in wheelchairs—a pretty little girl wearing leg braces shyly sucking her thumb, a clean-cut little boy with leg braces heroically smiling with hope—posters that made the possibility of getting the disease seem all the more frighteningly real to otherwise healthy children.

Summers were steamy in low-lying Newark, and because the city was partially ringed by extensive wetlands—a major source of malaria back when that, too, was an unstoppable disease—there were swarms of mosquitoes to be swatted and slapped away whenever we sat on beach chairs in the alleys and driveways at night, seeking refuge out of doors from our sweltering flats, where there was nothing but a cold shower and ice water to mitigate the hellish heat. This was before the advent of home air conditioning, when a small black electric fan, set on a table to stir up a breeze indoors, offered little relief once the temperature reached the high nineties, as it did repeatedly that summer for stretches of a week or ten days. Outdoors, people lit citronella candles and sprayed with cans of the insecticide Flit to keep at bay the mosquitoes and flies that were known to have carried malaria, yellow fever, and typhoid fever and were believed by many, beginning with Newark’s Mayor Drummond, who launched a citywide Swat the Fly campaign, to carry polio. When a fly or a mosquito managed to penetrate the screens of a family’s flat or fly in through an open door, the insect would be doggedly hunted down with fly swatter and Flit out of fear that by alighting with its germ-laden legs on one of the household’s sleeping children it would infect the youngster with polio. Since nobody then knew the source of the contagion, it was possible to grow suspicious of almost anything, including the bony alley cats that invaded our backyard garbage cans and the haggard stray dogs that slinked hungrily around the houses and defecated all over the sidewalk and street and the pigeons that cooed in the gables of the houses and dirtied front stoops with their chalky droppings. In the first month of the outbreak—before it was acknowledged as an epidemic by the Board of Health—the sanitation department set about systematically to exterminate the city’s huge population of alley cats, even though no one knew whether they had any more to do with polio than domesticated house cats.

What people did know was that the disease was highly contagious and might be passed to the healthy by mere physical proximity to those already infected. For this reason, as the number of cases steadily mounted in the city—and communal fear with it—many children in our neighborhood found themselves prohibited by their parents from using the big public pool at Olympic Park in nearby Irvington, forbidden to go to the local air-cooled movie theaters, and forbidden to take the bus downtown or to travel Down Neck to Wilson Avenue to see our minor league team, the Newark Bears, play baseball at Ruppert Stadium. We were warned not to use public toilets or public drinking fountains or to swig a drink out of someone else’s soda-pop bottle or to get a chill or to play with strangers or to borrow books from the public library or to talk on a public pay phone or to buy food from a street vendor or to eat until we had cleaned our hands thoroughly with soap and water. We were to wash all fruit and vegetables before we ate them, and we were to keep our distance from anyone who looked sick or complained of any of polio’s telltale symptoms.

Escaping the city’s heat entirely and being sent off to a summer camp in the mountains or the countryside was considered a child’s best protection against catching polio. So too was spending the summer some sixty miles away at the Jersey Shore. A family who could afford it rented a bedroom with kitchen privileges in a rooming house in Bradley Beach, a strip of sand, boardwalk, and cottages a mile long that had already been popular for several decades among North Jersey Jews. There the mother and the children would go to the beach to breathe in the fresh, fortifying ocean air all week long and be joined on weekends and vacations by the father. Of course, cases of polio were known to crop up in summer camps as they did in the shore’s seaside towns, but because they were nothing like as numerous as those reported back in Newark, it was widely believed that, whereas city surroundings, with their unclean pavements and stagnant air, facilitated contagion, settling within sight or sound of the sea or off in the country or up in the mountains afforded as good a guarantee as there was of evading the disease.

So the privileged lucky ones disappeared from the city for the summer while the rest of us remained behind to do exactly what we shouldn’t, given that overexertion was suspected of being yet another possible cause of polio: we played inning after inning and game after game of softball on the baking asphalt of the school playground, running around all day in the extreme heat, drinking thirstily from the forbidden water fountain, between innings seated on a bench crushed up against one another, clutching in our laps the well-worn, grimy mitts we used out in the field to mop the sweat off our foreheads and to keep it from running into our eyes—clowning and carrying on in our soaking polo shirts and our smelly sneakers, unmindful of how our imprudence might be dooming any one of us to lifelong incarceration in an iron lung and the realization of the body’s most dreadful fears.

Only a dozen or so girls ever appeared at the playground, mainly kids of eight or nine who could usually be seen jumping rope where far center field dropped off into a narrow school street closed to traffic. When the girls weren’t jumping rope they used the street for hopscotch and running-bases and playing jacks or for happily bouncing a pink rubber ball at their feet all day long. Sometimes when the girls jumping rope played double dutch, twirling two ropes in opposite directions, one of the boys would rush up unbidden and, elbowing aside the girl who was about to jump, leap in and mockingly start bellowing the girls’ favorite jumping song while deliberately entangling himself in their flying ropes. H, my name is Hippopotamus—! The girls would holler at him Stop it! Stop it! and call out for help from the playground director, who had only to shout from wherever he was on the playground to the troublemaker (most days it was the same boy), Cut it out, Myron! Leave the girls alone or you’re going home! With that, the uproar subsided. Soon the jump ropes were once again snappily turning in the air and the chanting taken up anew by one jumper after another:

A, my name is Agnes

And my husband’s name is Alphonse,

We come from Alabama

And we bring back apples!

B, my name is Bev

And my husband’s name is Bill,

We come from Bermuda

And we bring back beets!

C, my name is . . .

With their childish voices, the girls encamped at the far edge of the playground improvised their way from A to Z and back again, alliterating the nouns at the end of the line, sometimes preposterously, each time around. Leaping and darting about with excitement—except when Myron Kopferman and his like would apishly interfere—they exhibited astounding energy; unless they were summoned by the playground director to retreat to the shade of the school because of the heat, they didn’t vacate that street from the Friday in June when the spring term ended to the Tuesday after Labor Day when the fall term began and they could jump rope only after school and at recess.

The playground director that year was Bucky Cantor, who, because of poor vision that necessitated his wearing thick eyeglasses, was one of the few young men around who wasn’t off fighting in the war. During the previous school year, Mr. Cantor had become the new phys ed teacher at Chancellor Avenue School and so already knew many of us who habituated the playground from the gym classes he taught. He was twenty-three that summer, a graduate of South Side, Newark’s mixed-race, mixed-religion high school, and Panzer College of Physical Education and Hygiene in East Orange. He stood slightly under five feet five inches tall, and though he was a superior athlete and strong competitor, his height, combined with his poor vision, had prevented him from playing college-level football, baseball, or basketball and restricted his intercollegiate sports activity to throwing the javelin and lifting weights. Atop his compact body was a good-sized head formed of emphatically slanting and sloping components: wide pronounced cheekbones, a steep forehead, an angular jaw, and a long straight nose with a prominent bridge that lent his profile the sharpness of a silhouette engraved on a coin. His full lips were as well defined as his muscles, and his complexion was tawny year-round. Since adolescence he had worn his hair in a military-style crewcut. You particularly noticed his ears with that haircut, not because they were unduly large, which they were not, not necessarily because they were joined so closely to his head, but because, seen from the side, they were shaped much like the ace of spades in a pack of cards, or the wings on the winged feet of mythology, with topmost tips that weren’t rounded off, as most ears are, but came nearly to a point. Before his grandfather dubbed him Bucky, he was known briefly as Ace to his childhood street pals, a nickname inspired not merely by his precocious excellence at sports but by the uncommon configuration of those ears.

Altogether the oblique planes of his face gave the smoky gray eyes back of his glasses—eyes long and narrow like an Asian’s—a deeply pocketed look, as though they were not so much set as cratered in the skull. The voice emerging from this precisely delineated face was, unexpectedly, rather high-pitched, but that did not diminish the force of his appearance. His was the cast-iron, wear-resistant, strikingly bold face of a sturdy young man you could rely on.

ONE AFTERNOON early in July, two cars full of Italians from East Side High, boys anywhere from fifteen to eighteen, drove in and parked at the top of the residential street back of the school, where the playground was situated. East Side was in the Ironbound section, the industrial slum that had reported the most cases of polio in the city so far. As soon as Mr. Cantor saw them pull up, he dropped his mitt on the field—he was playing third base in one of our pickup games—and trotted over to where the ten strangers had emptied out of the two cars. His athletic, pigeon-toed trot was already being imitated by the playground kids, as was his purposeful way of lightly lifting himself as he moved on the balls of his feet, and the slight sway, when he walked, of his substantial shoulders. For some of the boys his entire bearing had become theirs both on and off the playing field.

What do you fellows want here? Mr. Cantor said.

We’re spreadin’ polio, one of the Italians replied. He was the one who’d come swaggering out of the cars first. Ain’t that right? he said, turning to preen for the cohorts backing him up, who appeared right off to Mr. Cantor to be only too eager to begin a brawl.

You look more like you’re spreadin’ trouble, Mr. Cantor told him. Why don’t you head out of here?

No, no, the Italian guy insisted, not till we spread some polio. We got it and you don’t, so we thought we’d drive up and spread a little around. All the while he talked, he rocked back and forth on his heels to indicate how tough he was. The brazen ease of his thumbs tucked into the front two loops of his trousers served no less than his gaze to register his contempt.

I’m playground director here, Mr. Cantor said, pointing back over his shoulder toward

Reviews for Nemesis

[linda.a. · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bucky Cantor is strong and muscular, a physical education teacher. During the very hot summer of 1944 he is also a committed and enthusiastic playground director of a summer activities programme for boys. Set in Weequahic, the mainly Jewish suburb of Newark, New Jersey, this novella explores the effects of a serious polio epidemic, both on the community and, specifically, on Bucky. He is a rather naïve, idealistic 23 year old, who feels both devastated and ashamed that poor eyesight has disqualified him from joining-up with his friends to fight in Europe. However, he is determined to make up for this by doing his job well, and by keeping “his” boys safe, but his beliefs in himself, in fairness and in God are all challenged when children begin to fall ill, become paralysed, and even die. No matter how hard he “battles” against both his conscience and the epidemic, he feels doomed to failure.I found this a very moving and compassionate story, which captured all the sense of panic and fear which gripped the community, and portrayed all the displaced anger which people are inclined to express when feeling utterly powerless. Bucky’s personal struggles with his own ambivalent feelings – his conscience, his sense of duty, his instinct for self-preservation – are examined in depth, and very vividly described. I felt totally engaged with his over-whelming and painful feelings about a profound sense of loss of innocence and belief. I liked the way the author used the story to draw parallels between those who were away fighting for their country, and those who were left behind to fight a different battle.Roth’s spare, effective prose, and his almost forensically detailed descriptions of the physical features of his characters create instantly vivid images, as do his descriptions of the locations he describes. His switch from telling Bucky’s story in a third person narrative for most of the novel, to having it told in the first person, for the final forty two pages and nearly thirty years later, by one of the boys who survived, was a very moving, effective and successful literary device.Of the four books in his “Nemeses” series, I think this is by far the best - possibly reading it as the world lives with the fear of Covid19 contributed to my capacity for empathy!

[karenodden · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Roth's shorter novels, this one is timely. In his usual spare, clear prose, Roth explores the uncertainty, fear, anger, and blame that results from a polio epidemic striking Brooklyn in 1944, with all the uncertainty and fear of WWII as a dark echo and backdrop. The novel is focalized primarily through earnest, twenty-three-year-old Cantor, who, even after it's all over, cannot clearly assess his role in it and who bleakly ponders the unanswerable question: how can a benevolent god allow such things to happen? My favorite Roth novel (of those I've read) is THE HUMAN STAIN, but this one felt pertinent and raw.

[joeteo1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this book in the middle of the summer while being isolated at home during the CoVID19 pandemic made it particularly poignant. The fear and complex emotions that come to the surface during an infectious disease outbreak do not seem to change over time- just the disease. In many ways Polio was an even more fearsome disease than CoVID19. Polio outbreaks came in the summer and predominantly afflicted children. The disease also seemed to strike the strongest in the group. The story provides a candid demonstration of how the spread of Polio could bring out fear, dread and a sense of helplessness. The relevance of the story has never been stronger.

[nwieme-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written but depressing. Learned things, but meh. Read it for my book discussion group. Not something I would recommend.

[jigarpatel-6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A polio epidemic devastates a Newark community during a searing 1944 summer. A 20-something playground director struggles to overcome the guilt of his situation: his friends fit enough to volunteer for the war effort; his girlfriend insistent he abandon his responsibilities to join her at a Jewish summer camp; his wards suffering the debilitating impact of an intractable disease. Typical for Roth, Jewish culture and (dis)belief in God play a part, but thankfully it's not core to what is essentially a tragedy.Highly recommended, but not as much as Indignation, the last of the "Nemeses" series.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Often held up as the best example of latter-day Roth, and with good reason. It poses interesting moral questions,against a backdrop of sweltering heat beautifully rendered by the author. Very accessible and an easy recommendation.

[a_forester-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A truly admirable writer who gets you hooked on the building suspense, the characters, the complexity of the struggle between good and evil, and the psychology of the mind in rationalising one's actions or inactions. This is what I read fiction for. Challenging, thoughtful and enlightening. The skills with which this writer brings scenes to mind, has you identifying with them and thinking hard about them long after you've finished the book make him a permanent part of my pantheon of writing heroes.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Not entirely sure what to make of this, if I'm honest. Bucky Cantor is an athletic young man who finds himself not in Europe, fighting alongside his friends, but stuck in New York in the hot summer of '44. He's working as a PE teacher and is playground supervisor of a playground in the Jewish quarter. In the summer the polio returns to the city. At least initially, it does not impact on the boys in Bucky's playground, but then it hits and hits hard. Children fall ill and some die. Bucky is unable to rationalise what is happening, he can't understand a God that can kill children in this way, yet can't accept that it has a non-human or divine cause. Bucky's girlfriend is in a summer camp in the hills and freshair. After a couple of days of burgeoning epidemic taking more of the children and fewer parents allowing them out to congregate in the playground, Bucky quits his job. He takes a role as watersports director at the summer camp. Which is a perfect fit, but does nothing to reconcile him between his duty to the boys and the wishes of Marcia. And all is going along swimmingly until a boy in Bucky's hut falls ill with Polio. Bucky is tortured with fear that he's brought it to the camp, that it is his fault. And so the disintegration begins. As someone for whom polio is a vaccination we had in childhood, I can't grasp the fear. As someone with a scientific turn of mind, I can't appreciate Bucky's failure to grasp the cause of the illness. As an agnostic, I've long since dealt with the divine and find Bucky's conflict in this regard to be somewhat superficial. It seems that his turn of mind has God as something either purely good, or entirely evil. Something entirely fictional might be the rational response. So I found the guilt to be somewhat overwrought and overblown. I get that there's moral, I just don't think it worked as a morality tale.

[idiotgirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Audiobook. Should be a 3.5. I have followed Roth's recent books with interest. He is a few years ahead me on the road to old age and is writing about that experience in a way that fascinates me. This book has a somewhat different take on the concerns of my group and those just ahead of us. This story goes back to the polio epedemics of the 40s and 50s and brings that story near to the present. Fear of polio vaguely haunted my childhood. I came to know those in my age group who had polio (my immediately family and friends in my small town were spared) but I remember all of the drama around the polio vaccines. Going to the county armory for first the shots and then the sugar cubes. So this book was of great interest. What surprised me most about this book was its last chapter. Naturalizes the telling into a first-person narrative by someone living in the story. Takes the story of Bucky into the future of the book. And the undauntable Bucky is daunted. It becomes in its final moments a meditation on what makes folks flexible, able to cope, and what can doom to rigidity, being trapped. I find myself lingering over this book more because of the way it ends, without the happy ending I would have liked.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A story set during the polio outbreak during WWII explores how communities and individuals react in the face of epidemic. It especially explores how one young man's view of God is changed by circumstances of life and the polio outbreak.

[debs4jc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 A young Jewish man fraught with guilt and the horrors of the polio epidemic lie at the heart of this short novel. Bucky Cantor was rejected by the army because of his eyes, yet he is a gifted athlete who oversees the athletic program at an elementary school. During the summer of 1944 the area of New Jersey where he lives and works is hit hard by a polio epidemic. Some of Bucky's pupils are struck with the disease, one or two even die, and Bucky agonizes over whether he should escape the city to go work at the camp where his fiance is working over the summer. Questions about God, who governs the universe and causes things like war and polio, and Bucky's own culpability arise. Years later the reader gets to encounter Bucky and see where the result of all these musings led him. This story packs a powerful punch, and led me to investigate the realities of the polio epidemic. I recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction and philosophical musings.

[danielalgara · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a great book, though, now I am irrationally terrified of contracting poliomyelitis.

[loisb-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My only prior experience with Philip Roth's works was with Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint, both of which I read many years ago and both of which I remember as rather crude. Nemesis was a pleasant surprise. Whether it is due to Roth's maturity as a writer, or my own maturity as a reader, I found Nemesis to be a gripping coming-of-age story. Set in Newark, NJ during the 1944 polio epidemic, it's the story of Bucky Cantor, a phys-ed teacher, summering as a playground instructor. He has found a career, a woman to love, and is on the brink of a wonderful life when tragedy strikes. I definitely recommend this book!

[sbloom42 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Nemesis" is a book in three parts. The first takes place in Newark, NJ during a polio outbreak in the summer of 1944, the second is in a sleep-away camp in the Poconos that same summer, and the third is 27 years later. The story is about Bucky Cantor, who is athletic and verile, and he begins the summer by facing the epidemic head-on with optimism and determination. The descriptions of the epidemic and its effects on a city and on one man's life are brilliant. Bucky ultimately questions his Jewish faith over the idea that God lets bad things happen to good people, and by the end that questioning has unravelled his life. It's an interesting riff on the Greek myth of Nemesis, but it felt disingenuine that Bucky has spent 27 years withering to the point where he's not even the narrator in his own story. I would have rather seen him grow or become destroyed, but the outcome of just existing felled this book for me.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Nemesis" was my first time reading anything by Philip Roth... I enjoyed the book though I'm not sure why it is on the list of 1,001 books to read before you die. The story centers on Bucky Cantor, a playground director when a polio epidemic hits Newark, N.J. I found the story was told well, but somewhat predictable... I could see fairly early on where it was going. That said, I thought Roth did a masterful job at peeling back the layers of Cantor's character.Overall, this was an interesting and quick read.

[applemcg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

with this book, i'm starting to understand roth's narrative sense. here, he unwraps the narrator a chapter at a time.

[suetu_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Summer in the cityBucky Cantor is a mensch—a good man. During the summer of 1944, when the bulk of this brief novel takes place, 24-year-old Bucky is working as the playground director of the Chancellor Avenue Playground in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. It’s the city’s Jewish neighborhood, and that summer it’s been hit brutally hard by a polio epidemic. Kids are scared and parents downright are terrified. Bucky’s own grief and fear are balanced by a sense of duty equal to that of any Gilbert & Sullivan protagonist. Conflict arises when his girlfriend begs him to leave the disease-stricken city and join her as a counselor at a bucolic summer camp in the Poconos. The situation in Newark is volatile. Says the girlfriend’s father, a doctor:“The anti-Semites are saying that it’s because they’re Jews that polio spreads there. Because of all the Jews, that’s why Weequahic is the center of the paralysis and why the Jews should be isolated. Some of them sound as if they think the best way to get rid of the polio epidemic would be to burn down Weequahic with all the Jews in it. There is a lot of bad feeling because of the crazy things people are saying out of their fear. Out of their fear and their hatred. I was born in the city, and I’ve never known anything like this in my life. It’s as if everything everywhere is collapsing.”Meanwhile, the stress of what was happening in Newark and elsewhere around the country was playing out against the backdrop of a country at war. It was a terrible, terrible time.My mother contracted polio a few years after the events depicted in this novel. We’ve discussed this frightening period of her life many times over the years, but strangely, hearing her personal account couldn’t touch the reality of what Mr. Roth has depicted with such immediacy. Reading Nemesis made me feel like I’d taken a time machine back for a visit. It gave me fresh insight into my mother’s experience. And it also served as a reminder of just how forgotten this terrible disease is. In 1944, both scientists and the public were so appallingly ignorant about the cause and transmission of polio it was hard to believe. And yet… I don’t know anything about polio. Despite my mother’s history, I’m not sure I could have told you it was a virus. Is transmission airborne? I have no idea. Polio has never been a part of my lifetime, and after reading this novel, I pray that it never is. More than anything, Nemesis is completely evocative of the time and place in which it is set. As glad as I am to have had a window into the past, I’m even gladder to have moved on from that time.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An attempt at the great American plague novel. If Roth finally discusses something other than girl problems, he does pretty well. An old-fashioned reminiscence with all too relevant problems.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novel is a trip down memory lane for anyone of a certain age. Two wars are being fought at the same time; one is in Europe and the Pacific where World War II is raging and the other is in the Jewish neighborhood of Weequahic, in Newark, New Jersey, where a polio epidemic is raging. Neither war will end well. Is the story ultimately about how we face a crisis and go forward into our future? Is it about control, who does and who does not have it in the face of tragedy? Is it about unfounded, unrealistic guilt and shame? Is it about the Jewish experience or the experience of everyman? Two characters, the narrator and the protagonist, each were afflicted with polio and its after effects, but both face their futures in different ways. One character takes control of his life and masters it; one relinquishes control, wallows in self recrimination, railing at G-d about the life he has been given, somehow always feeling like he has missed out and always wanting more. He is too short, his eyesight is too poor, his background is wanting, and when he was rejected from the armed forces, branded 4F, he was devastated. He is not easily satisfied, and in fact, always finds the negative and disappointment in a given situation, rather than the silver lining. During the summer of 1944, Eugene Cantor is the Director of Playgrounds; he loves his job. He is a Physical Education teacher and he really enjoys being with the children. He wants to mentor them, to help them become strong and principled. He is in love with a teacher from a wonderful family and life is going well for him, even though he feels a bit like he is always behind the eight ball, a bit short changed in the game of life. He was raised by his grandparents; his mother died in childbirth and his father was a thief. He carried the shame of his crime within himself. Did he also carry the guilt for the death of his mother? His grandfather always emphasized hard work, strength of character and always doing the right thing. Although devoted to them both, his grandfather became his role model. Perhaps he also instilled that feeling of guilt within him, that he carried his entire life. Growing up, he always missed the atmosphere of what he considered a normal family, one with both parents offering encouragement and love. Even though he acknowledged the great love his grandparents shared with him, he hungered for what he did not have. This becomes a pattern for him. He always sees the dark side. Does he transfer that feeling of guilt onto every other aspect of his life, always making his burden a bit heavier?The story proceeds along innocently enough, at first, but the pace picks up as you realize the fear the community is living with on a daily basis because of the war and the polio epidemic. Who will get a telegram about their son, whose child will come down with polio? No one knows, and furthermore, no one has any control over either which makes them even more impotent and afraid. There was a good deal of irrational fear as they waited for the next shoe to drop, the next victim to fall, always anticipating the next tragedy.The book is narrated by Arnold Mesnikoff who is more than a decade younger than Eugene. He plays in the playground’s baseball games which Eugene (Bucky Cantor) organizes during that fateful summer of 1944. At the end of the book, the effect of those early dual wars is illuminated by the chance meeting of the two men, about three decades later. Each of them reacted to the events of that summer in their own unique way. The different roads they chose determined the lives they led and the obstacles they faced. Each had to face a challenge. Would they meet it with courage and strength or surrender to a different destiny?Although the book is about a small Jewish enclave in New Jersey, anyone growing up in that time can't help but feel nostalgic. Although it was more than a decade later, I remember the same atmosphere: the air raid drills, air raid siren tests, polio scares, anti-Semitism, rivalry between Jews and Italians. Who doesn't recall the stoops in front of their attached homes, each with a narrow driveway separating them from their nearest neighbor and a postage stamp piece of property with a tree in front, newly planted? It could be a number of other Jewish communities in any urban center, not necessarily Newark. Roth has captured the true spirit and persona of the Jewish families of that time, their expectations, their hopes and their pressures. The relationship between parent and child, adult and minor was one of authority vs. powerlessness. Improper behavior, disobedience, weakness, was cause for guilt and shame, not only heaped upon the wayward one but also upon the entire family.So many in that era lived in just such a house, in just such a neighborhood, hung laundry from the window, attaching it with clothespins to a line attached to a tree, some distance away, which was on a pulley system. (Who doesn’t remember the times the clothes that fell had to be retrieved by running down flights of stairs and then rewashing them by hand?). We hung out at the corner candy store, had ice cream sundaes with abandon, never thinking about calories. Who doesn't remember the shoemaker or the "druggist" who had as much respect as the doctor and whose advice you often sought first, before even calling a doctor? Times may have been different, even more dangerous, with the cold war and diseases with no vaccines, but the people seemed more connected, happier to communicate with each other then. Perhaps it was the invention of Air Conditioners or television that forced people inside and away from the communal gatherings in the street, in order to escape the heat or to simply socialize. Soon windows were closed, doors were shut, people sat alone in their homes, more isolated, entertained by a box with pictures and sound, and they no longer participated with each other to the same extent. They escaped from the real world into a world of fantasy. Perhaps that escape is necessary in the real world, in order to survive and not let life get you down. Is it the ability to find a silver lining inside of every cloud or the doom and gloom, sky is falling attitude that should prevail?Mr. Roth captures the prevailing atmosphere of the times, the terrible fear of the disease for which their was no treatment or cure, not even a known cause that could be blamed, though they tried to find one; the Italians, the Board of Health, and even Mr. Cantor, the Playground Director was accused. He accurately describes the over-anxious Jewish mothers, their over arching need to protect and provide for their families, the culture of learning, the desire for education that is ever-present in the Jewish neighborhoods along with the ever-present shadow always lurking, of anti-Semitism. It was a time for Jews to gather their courage, stand tall and squash their image of meekness; they must face their difficulties, their trials with courage and fortitude, and this means Polio, as well. Ignorance was the main problem. No one knew how to stop the disease just as no one knew how to end the war quickly. There were so many deaths, untimely and unnecessary. Was anyone at fault? Should anyone feel guilty? Should someone be punished? Was everyone blameless? Who or what was the real enemy? Why did some fare better than others? Why did some handle their burdens more satisfactorily? In the end, doesn’t this story have a larger meaning? Couldn’t the community be anywhere and the people be of any race or religion? Wouldn’t any neighborhood have reacted in similar fashion? Or, wouldn’t they? This brief book will make you wonder about all these questions, but it will not give you the answers. Those you must find for yourself.

[stillwaters12 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting, based carefully on truth. Well told. Main character, Mr. Cantor, is a stand-up guy, great coach and boy-friend. He is though a bit narcissistic. He ends relationships and becomes self-hating by the end of the book - depressing.

[joanneweston · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A powerful read, utterly absorbing, emotional and ultimately tragic.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Terrific book! I literally devoured it. NEMESIS is Roth's tribute to the polio plague years of the 1940s and how that dreaded disease scared the hell out of everyone every summer. And his protagonist, Bucky Cantor, will remain, for me, one of his more memorable characters, right up there with Gabe Wallach and Libby Herz from LETTING GO, which has always been one of my all-time favorite Roth novels. For those who remember polio, as well as for those who don't, I recommend this book highly.

[labfs39 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my first book by Philip Roth, and unfortunately it was not an impressive first impression. The plot sounded interesting, about a polio epidemic in New Jersey in 1944 and how the multicultural community responds to the outbreak. Unfortunately, I found the main character, Bucky Cantor, to become increasingly irksome, until I reached a point where I thought he was one of the most unlikable characters I have met in recent years. His transformation over the course of the book is a rapid downhill slide until you want to throttle him. Perhaps Roth intended readers to feel this way and contemplate the fate of the anti-hero, but it didn't work for me.

[audrieclifford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Does it sound heartless to say you enjoyed a story about people getting polio? This book is so well done that you feel like you're melting as the author describes the midsummer city heat. But what a relief when the main character goes to the mountains and breathes the cool, clean air! There's a lot of sorrow in the book, but oh, so much to admire.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Bucky" Cantor is a young physical education teacher who is spending his summer as a playground director in the largely Jewish neighborhood of Weequahic in Newark, New Jersey. It is the summer of 1944, one that would be remembered for its brutal heat and its devastating outbreak of paralytic polio, the worst outbreak to strike the city since 1916. Bucky is distressed that he cannot join his two best friends in the war effort, as his poor eyesight makes him ineligible for the draft. He is a serious and dedicated teacher and mentor to the boys in the playground, who love and respect him unconditionally, as do their parents. Bucky is deeply in love is Marcia Steinberg, the strikingly beautiful daughter of a beloved community physician, who teaches in the same school where he works. She is spending the summer as a counselor in a camp in the Poconos, and she begs him to join her there.Weequahic is seemingly protected from polio, which has begun to make inroads in the surrounding neighborhoods, until two of the playground boys suddenly succumb to the illness. As the epidemic flares with a vengeance, the members of the community panic and point fingers at the city's leadership, the parents of the stricken children, and anyone suspected of bringing the infection into the neighborhood. Bucky is deeply shaken, and questions his own role in the outbreak, and how a merciful God could allow such a pestilence to strike against innocent children.A position for a swimming instructor becomes available at the camp where Marcia is working, and Bucky leaves the disease plagued city to be with Marcia. There it is cool and idyllic, and polio is a distant memory. Bucky, however, is conflicted by his decision to leave the boys and his community, who he feels need him more than ever, but he is also free of the fear that he or the children in the camp will be the next polio victim and is alongside the woman he intends to marry.In Nemesis, Roth does a fine job of portraying the fear and paranoia that resulted from that awful summer of 1944, and the devastating effect of paralytic polio on its survivors and on the families of those who died from the illness. However, the main characters are one dimensional and thinly portrayed, which greatly dilutes the effect of the story. Roth's main theme in the book, the struggle of one man's responsibility toward his community and country and its conflict with personal happiness and fulfillment, is not handled as well as it could have been, and it seemed to this reader that the first 3/4 of the book served as a set up for a discussion of this theme, making for a somewhat disjointed and unsatisfying read. Nemesis is a good book, but it could have been a great one.

[tymfos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1944, there was no vaccine or cure for polio (though treatments existed which helped, to some degree, many who contracted the disease). Indeed, though it was known to be highly contagious, the mechanism of polio's spread was not yet understood. As a result, all manner of theories abounded regarding the risks, leading to a general state of paranoia during outbreaks of the disease. Who/what was to blame for its spread? Flies? The hot dog vendor? A mentally-challenged neighbor? Contaminated library books?This story explores the grim reality of urban life in a polio outbreak. However, it is even more the story of a man's grim battle with his own thoughts -- his fear, his conscience, his doubts, his guilt, and his anger at God -- in the face of a disease he cannot control and a World War in which he was deemed too nearsighted to serve.Bucky Cantor is the neighborhood playground director, and he watches helplessly as his young charges begin to sicken and die of polio. The reality of the situation eats away at him as he ponders the opportunity to escape the inner city for work as a camp counselor in the Pocono Mountains, where his girlfriend Marcia works. What is his duty to his young charges at the playground? Is his playground a killing field of contagion, or an oasis from even more dangerous situations?I listened to the audio version of this book (a Brilliance Audio production) and found some parts compelling, some parts a bit tedious, and some parts mildly curious (such as the description of summer camp life in the 1940's). Then there were the moments that left me with an "oh, no!" on my lips and a sinking feeling in my stomach as I anticipated what manner of disaster loomed ahead. In the end the biggest tragedy is, perhaps, less a matter of germs and twisted limbs, and more a matter of psychology and twisted thoughts -- because sometimes our mental state can stunt our lives more than any physical ailment.

[cwlongshot · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not my favorite Philip Roth - that honor goes to The Plot Against America - but this is an interesting portrayal of life during the polio epidemic in the US. For some reason, the last part of the book seems tacked on and doesn't fit well with the majority of the story, which is why I didn't rate the book higher.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thought this historically imagined tale of a polio outbreak in Newark, New Jersey was outstanding. Polio and its insidious spread is the metaphor for things which make us fear and from which it is difficult to protect oneself. Roth's insight into the workings of the human mind and heart are brilliant. The ultimate questions are what kind of God would create such a disease, what kind of God would allow small children to suffer, die, or move into adulthood permanently maimed? Yet.......there is the beauty of the protahonist's javelin throw......go figure! Great read!

[tac1948 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

mildly interesting

[syossetreaders · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great fictional read about the 1950's polio epidemic and the effect it has on a small community in Newark, New Jersey. Particularly affected is the boy's gym teacher/summer playground supervisor, who makes a choice he later regrets.