Cosmopolitanism and Tragic Silence 145in negotiating a black identity in the modern era. This perception
of ethnicity dovetails with the more cosmopolitan outlook, popu-
larized in the 1990s, that views ethnicity as a performance and a
negotiation within a peculiar sociohistorical context, and that also
questions its viability as a category for defining human subjectivity.
To understand the tension between these two perceptions of eth-
nicity is therefore to understand the destructive tension that grips
and convulses Coleman Silk, leaving him silent within—and some-
what disconnected from—the times in which he lives. The fact that
Roth deploys the tragic mode to convey this connection between
the individual and the broader sociopolitical context therefore sig-
nals the importance that form plays in the work, with lacunae and
other varieties of “silence” adding to the dramatic impact of these
thematic elements.
Indeed, what bears reiterating about these revelatory instances
in the narrative is the oblique manner of their disclosure: we never
hear Silk in his own words make the connection that Zuckerman
appears to trace between the protagonist’s sustained anger and
a perceived sense of political “guilt.” The insinuation that such a
connection exists, amplified by Zuckerman’s conspicuous spotlight-
ing of Walt’s very different experience of racism, is never fully sub-
stantiated, and this large tract of Silk’s life is left glaringly omitted.
Therefore, questions of how Silk spent the civil-rights years, and
how they might have played on his conscience, come to garner a
deeper sense of urgency. What were the psychological effects of Silk
concealing his “black” ethnic heritage during this period of great
social upheaval that produced the politically correct climate he now
struggles against? Did he keep a low profile and offer only tacit intel-
lectual support? Furthermore, did he consider this silence a betrayal
of the spirit of the civil-rights movement?
Although these questions are not overtly raised, the number of
lacunae in the narrative, particularly those concerning Silk’s psycho-
logical state during the civil-rights era (which is completely elided),
stimulate the reader’s curiosity, prompting the latter to raise them
of their own accord. The fact that there is so little material to con-
struct adequate answers therefore makes the protagonist yet more
mysterious and alluring and gives further credence to Zuckerman’s