Claudia Franziska Brühwiler
Title
Prof. Dr.
Last Name
Brühwiler
First name
Claudia Franziska
Email
claudiafranziska.bruehwiler@unisg.ch
ORCID
Phone
+41712242755
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Item type:Publication, Serving His Tour as "Exasperated Liberal and Indignant Citizen" : Philip Roth as a Public IntellectualThis conference paper will be published in "A Political Companion to Philip Roth," edited by Claudia Franziska Brühwiler and Lee Trepanier, University Press of Kentucky. In his last appearance in Exit Ghost (2007), Philip Roth's writer-protagonist Nathan Zuckerman refuses to take any interest in presidential politics and take the public stage to share his opinion: "I've served my tour as exasperated liberal and indignant citizen […]. I don't wish to register an opinion, I don't want to express myself on ‘the issues'?I don't even want to know what they are. It no longer suits me to know, and what doesn't suit me, I expunge. That's why I live where I do" (36-37). He thereby mirrors his creator's view that, apart from writing books, a writer is just "an ordinary citizen" (Minkmar 2), who enjoys "no greater moral authority than a plumber" (ibid.). But while Zuckerman longs for his withdrawal from the public arena, Roth deplores the public status of writers in the United States and repeatedly contrasts it with the reverence writer-intellectuals still enjoy in some European countries. In spite of this nostalgia, Roth has often played hide-and-seek with those journalists who tried to address him as a public intellectual. Thus one wonders to what extent he did indeed try to assume the role of a public intellectual, as a - thus the direction of most definitions - "critical guardian of humane and universal values" (Kemp 199) who speaks "the truth to power" (Said 25). This paper explores Philip Roth's public engagement and his struggles with the role of more than "an ordinary citizen" who happens to write books. In particular, it sheds light on the ways he interprets his public role differently in the U.S. and abroad, using the geographic distance of his interlocutors to reflect on the political regime he witnesses the closest. Inevitably, this discussion is linked to the way Roth believes literature can shape the people's political thought and opinion.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, "A Human Being Lives Here" : Philip Roth on Scandals and the PresidencyWhether it is the glorified Administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or the object of spite, satire and scorn Richard Nixon, the actual downfall of Bill Clinton or the imagined cruelty of a President Lindbergh, Philip Roth has constantly commented on American Presidents, past and present. He set either out "to destroy the protective armor of ‘dignity' that shields anyone in an office as high and powerful as the Presidency" (Reading Myself and Others, 40) or let Nathan Zuckerman revile those who did not realize that even at the White House we will find only a human being. This paper explores the many Presidencies that inspired Roth's fiction and discusses how Roth's approach can also shape a political scientist's understanding of a Presidency's cultural and societal significance. In particular, it analyses how Roth captures a Presidency's impact on individual lives. Moreover, it discusses Roth's statements on presidential politics in interviews and essays, and how these have been received in the media.Type:conference paper - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Destroying the Armor of "Dignity": Philip Roth on Scandals, Political and Personal(2012-06-21)The American writer Philip Roth (*1933) has experienced the feeling of causing scandals, but he has likewise been inspired by scandals - his own and those of former Presidents. At the beginning of his career, Roth was criticized for his breakthrough novel "Portnoy's Complaint" (1969), wherein he portrayed the (sexual) woes of a young Jewish man. Roth drew inspiration from the outrage his novel caused in the Jewish community, and he satirized future reproaches of misogyny and anti-Semitism at several instances, but particularly forcefully in "Zuckerman Unbound" (1981). In a similar vein, Roth used political scandals as, on the one hand, stories setting the atmosphere and defining central questions of his novels, for instance in "The Human Stain" (2000). On the other hand, Roth likewise satirized politicians and their scandals, notably Richard Nixon, who is the model for the pre-Watergate closet drama "Our Gang" (1971). Finally, Roth also likes to provoke his readers by inventing scandalous political developments, as he did in "The Plot Against America" (2004) and "Nemesis" (2010). This paper explores how Philip Roth's writing is inspired by personal and political scandals, and how he develops imaginary scandals in his counterfactual writings. An analysis of the narrative devices and modes of fictionalization provide insight into the many readings and re-narrations of scandals, as well as into the interplay of fact and fiction. Roth's oeuvre thus allows us to see the impact of scandals from different angles and helps us imagine possible cultural impacts and consequences for society.Type:conference paper