Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

Cosmopolitanism and Tragic Silence 171

This is called a piqu é machine, it sews the finest stitch, called piqu é ,

requires far more skill than the other stitches.... This is called a pol-

ishing machine and that is called a stretcher and you are called honey

and I am called Daddy and this is called living and the other is called

dying and this is called madness and this is called mourning and this is

called hell, pure hell, and you have to have strong ties to be able to stick

it out, this is called trying-to-go-on-as-though-nothing-has-happened

and this is called paying-the-full-price-but-in-God’s-name-for-what,

this is called wanting-to-be-dead-and-wanting-to-find-her-and-to-kill-

her-and-to-save-her-from-whatever-she-is-going-through-wherever-on-

earth-she-may-be-at-this-moment, this unbridled outpouring is called

blotting-out-everything and it does not work, I am half insane, the shat-

tering force of that bomb is too great. (p. 130)

As we can see in the excerpt, the first voice in Levov’s conscious-
ness reflects his outward persona (the Johnny Appleseed image) and
represents the strong, paternal businessman who introduces Rita to
the interesting history of the glove-making trade. This is the voice
that is permitted to speak socially—the one he uses to engage with
the world. It comes into direct conflict with the muted but none-
theless potent words we hear Levov repressing inside: the voice of an
emotionally desperate victim who has lost the means of understand-
ing the events in his life. In rendering this psychological discord,
Roth utilizes the visual properties of syntax to refer to the process
of glove stitching and to suggest that the character’s mind is quite
literally “unravelling.”
This tear in Levov’s psyche is never repaired in the novel. If any-
thing, it widens, leading him ostensibly to disavow the principles
that underlie his Johnny Appleseed take on the American dream
and prompting him to close the “home” branch of Newark Maid.
For Levov, the reasons for doing this are manifold. As mentioned
above, the degree of social decay (the increase in violent crime) is
an important factor, but he also cites financial reasons: “Today our
economy is such that people take a job here and if something comes
along for another fifty cents an hour, they’re gone” (p. 127). He
explains that the unreliable and demoralized labor force in Newark
prove financially burdensome because the “labor-intensive [... and]
time-consuming [... work that is demanded means] you have to