Cosmopolitanism and Tragic Silence 169he studiously avoids mentioning in “his” narrative. But another
factor that ought to be considered when discussing the character’s
activities in Puerto Rico is the peculiar recent history of the island,
particularly that of its relationship with the United States. Existing
as a quasi colony of the country, Puerto Rico has an unequal polit-
ical relationship with the United States, with no voting rights or
political representation in the imperial center. The potential for pur-
suing and expanding his businesses, unhindered by substantial lev-
els of tax and the pressures of an organized labor force, are therefore
very attractive to the Swede. But between describing the island’s nice
beaches and favorable conditions for catamaraning, these features of
the country’s social makeup are never mentioned in the narrative.
The innocence of his enthusiasm for the island is further brought
into question when he tells us somewhat unceremoniously that “by
the eighties, even Puerto Rico began to grow expensive and every-
body but Newark Maid fled to wherever in the Far East the labor
force was abundant and cheap, to the Philippines first, then Korea
and Taiwan, and now to China” (p. 26). Again, such utterances con-
vey the exploitative nature of the character’s value system by way of
omission, constituting a deliberate strategy by Roth to provoke a
frustrated response on the part of the reader. Such a response involves
connecting premises and concepts that the protagonist and the nar-
rator do not explicitly state, and, to paraphrase Macherey, investigat-
ing “the silence” that speaks through the gaps in the text.^89
Adding to the neoimperialist bent of Levov’s free-market prac-
tices, the protagonist appears eager to stress its overarching universal
orientation and to inform us that it is a value system that is open
to all, and with the potential to benefit everyone, irrespective of
provenance, ethnicity, or gender. Such lofty, apparently cosmopoli-
tan sentiments are violently undercut by the attacks of Rita Cohen.
Dismissing the creativity and craftsmanship involved, she somewhat
parochially views Levov’s work as nothing but a corrupt, exploitative
excrescence of soul-destroying free-market capitalism, labeling him
an “all-American capitalist criminal,” who is only interested in self
gain (p. 139). Such reductive criticisms are also exhibited by Ringold
in I Married a Communist , who perceives every aspect of life through
a narrow ideological lens. Much to Zuckerman’s dismay, culture