3. C o s m o p o l i t a n i s m a n d T r a g i c

Silence in Philip Roth’s

American Trilogy

T

he c e lebr ate d Je w i sh A mer ic a n nove l i s t Ph i l ip R ot h i s l a r g e ly
considered a specialist of the place-based novel, with many
of his works being set in the state of New Jersey, where the
young writer grew up. Most of the stories concern the travails of des-
perate and neurotic Jewish protagonists going through some form
of life crisis, usually in particular moments of national importance.
A number of critics have noted the ways in which Roth establishes
connections between the individual (and the family unit) and larger
national issues, especially in the American Trilogy of novels. Derek
Parker Royal, for example, argues that “in the American Trilogy,
what [... Roth] has done is write the individual subject into the fab-
ric of history.”^1 For Royal, the novels reveal a confrontation between
the individual and his historical circumstances, in which “the forces
of history—American history specifically—threaten to overtake
personal freedom.”^2 Debra Shostak expresses similar ideas in her
Bakhtinian study of Roth when she argues that “history—especially
American history—recurs in Roth’s work of the 1990s with a ven-
geance as the principle that shapes self and other and compels story-
telling.”^3 However, there have also been recent attempts by critics to
approach Roth’s work through a cosmopolitan theoretical lens.
In her reading of the short story, “Eli, the Fanatic,” Hannah
Spector argues that Roth’s presentation of identity as a performance,
as well as his “paradoxical” depictions of Eli’s encounter with the
Other, resonate with cosmopolitan thought.^4 For Spector, the fact
that the characters are physically rooted to a single regional setting