Abstract:What might readers infer from the identical titles and related concerns of Sartre's "Pourquoi écrire?" ("Why Write?") and Roth's Why Write?, his collected nonfiction, 1960-2013? Some of the concerns of that volume appear to link the more pervasive synthesis of nothingness and possibility in Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) to Arthur Koestler's advocacy, in Insight and Outlook (1949), of "bisociative" cognition. At stake, for Roth, when reading himself and others, are incisive rejoinders to "insensate readers" who, ignoring the difference between personal identity and imaginative excursion, surrender personal responsibility while denigrating artistic prowess.
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Abstract:Beginning with a survey of the key poets in Philip Roth's personal library—there are over eighty—this essay considers the function, style, and value of poetry in his work. At many of the most intense moments in Roth's fiction, a poetic lyricism dominates, whether it is Mickey Sabbath at the Jersey shore or the final paragraph of The Human Stain (2000). From the start of his career, Roth found a place for poetry—whether in his earliest short stories or in his most successful fiction, notably Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Sabbath's Theater (1995), or American Pastoral (1997), although its function shifted from the explicit sexuality of "Leda and the Swan" in Portnoy's Complaint to the meditative pastoralism of Indian Hill camp in Nemesis (2010). Its presence constantly reflects Roth's literary grounding originating in his undergraduate and graduate readings supplemented by contact with poets at Chicago, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Princeton, and Penn. Specific remarks on individual poems will reflect their use in individual novels with Donne, Milton, and Keats featured.
{"title":"Roth and the Poets","authors":"I. Nadel","doi":"10.1353/prs.2023.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/prs.2023.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Beginning with a survey of the key poets in Philip Roth's personal library—there are over eighty—this essay considers the function, style, and value of poetry in his work. At many of the most intense moments in Roth's fiction, a poetic lyricism dominates, whether it is Mickey Sabbath at the Jersey shore or the final paragraph of The Human Stain (2000). From the start of his career, Roth found a place for poetry—whether in his earliest short stories or in his most successful fiction, notably Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Sabbath's Theater (1995), or American Pastoral (1997), although its function shifted from the explicit sexuality of \"Leda and the Swan\" in Portnoy's Complaint to the meditative pastoralism of Indian Hill camp in Nemesis (2010). Its presence constantly reflects Roth's literary grounding originating in his undergraduate and graduate readings supplemented by contact with poets at Chicago, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Princeton, and Penn. Specific remarks on individual poems will reflect their use in individual novels with Donne, Milton, and Keats featured.","PeriodicalId":37093,"journal":{"name":"Philip Roth Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47821583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/prs.2023.a907256
Aimee Pozorski, Maren Scheurer
Editors’ Note Aimee Pozorski and Maren Scheurer We have lately been thinking about the idea of the backlog—at once an editor’s greatest source of fear and hope. The word itself connotes accumulation, unfinished business, and work that needs to be tended or addressed. And while the connotations are not always positive, for an editor of a peer reviewed journal, a robust backlog can be a rare gift. It means that scholars and readers are invested in keeping the journal going with a submission of their very own. It also assumes trust: trust that the work will be handled by editors with integrity and respect and trust that the journal will continue, long after the peer review process is complete. When we became co-executive editors of Philip Roth Studies now over four years ago, our predecessors, Dr. Debra Shostak and Dr. David Brauner, offered words of wisdom and warning: be mindful of the backlog, they said. The backlog holds the key to the success of the journal. We took this advice to heart and cultivated our backlog as one tends a garden, looking forward to a time when it bears fruit. In the last few years, we have had the pleasure of working with the authors whose work was accepted under Deb and David, and we have had the pleasure of working with authors who came on board after that. We have come to appreciate, even find comfort in, the cyclical nature of editing a peer reviewed journal—seeing an essay come in before sending it out to two anonymous readers, communicating with the authors invaluable feedback from our editorial board, filing accepted work for safe keeping and, over a year later, returning to it again to undertake the process of preparing the essay for publication. This process involves at least three more readings—one for argument, one for paragraph and sentence coherence, and one for copy editing. The process is long and for some, mentally draining. It is also, paradoxically, invigorating and restorative. It ends in something we can all hold in our hands or read online, a production in every sense of the word. The back and forth we undertake with contributors can be dizzying, electrifying, exhausting, and rewarding. We sometimes worry for our authors who undertake this journey with us and may not realize that being added to the backlog is only a first step of many that ultimately ends with a near finalized draft in their inboxes. These drafts contain for us what feels to be the universe, ongoing conversations we engage with each other and with Dr. Jessica Rabin, our associate copy editor, about our positions on such issues as diction, punctuation, and style. We are now at the point in our careers editing Philip Roth Studies where we are mindful that we are building on the backlog for our successors. We are preparing to deliver what we hope are similarly wise remarks for the next team seeking to build [End Page 1] and cultivate our most treasured asset: the store of essays that will keep the journal going long after we step away. T
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/prs.2023.a907265
Silvia Raimondi
Philip Roth e l’Italia Silvia Raimondi (bio) Francesco Samarini. Philip Roth e l’Italia: Storia di un amore incostante. Longo Editore, 2022. 343 pp. 28 € hardback. To understand the ambitiousness of francesco samarini’s project, it is worth starting from the chosen title of his book. Writing about the relation between Philip Roth and Italy means in fact devoting oneself to an extensive and accurate analysis of the writer’s entire narrative oeuvre in search of traces of a link—more or less evident—with the peninsula, by analyzing interviews, letters, and personal or business contacts with overseas publishers. It also means approaching complex archival work, taking as reference published and unpublished documents preserved both in the United States and in Italy. And that is precisely what Samarini does in what is intended to be—and is—a rich and wide-ranging volume of scholarship, also remarkable for its originality, precision, and comprehensiveness in impartially examining the peculiarities of the Italian reception of Roth’s work. Far from being distinguished by the factiousness and superficiality present in some of the numerous articles and critical essays on Philip Roth’s enormous fame in Italy (mostly highlighted by critic Paolo di Paolo in a piece published for L’Espresso), Philip Roth e l’Italia: Storia di un amore incostante functions thus as a non-rhetorical and in-depth study that constitutes “an interesting observatory” (Samarini 7)1 to investigate both the production of the American author and his reception overseas. What therefore particularly emerges from Samarini’s work, and immediately impresses the reader, is the breadth of its analysis—even more evident by looking at the organization of the book itself. After a brief introduction aimed at outlining the areas of research, the main corpus of the volume consists of nine chapters, which range from Roth’s publishing history and his early days to addressing some specific thematic topics, such as the presence of Italy and Italians in his writing. These do not “merely” examine the existing connections between Roth and Italy, but also have the purpose of covering the biography of the American writer, following his life chronologically starting with 1958/1959 (the publication date in America of Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories). Specifically, chapters II through VIII provide exhaustive biographical information, covering relevant aspects of the writer’s personal [End Page 104] and professional life—both in Italy and America. These include Roth’s literary origins (chapter II); the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) and the positive and negative reviews associated with it (chapter III); the consequences of Roth’s public success between 1971 and 1978 (chapter IV); the difficulties he faces between 1979 and 1989 (chapter V, in which the writer’s friendship with Primo Levi is also discussed); his “stagnation” and subsequent “resurrection” following the publication of works such as A
菲利普·罗斯和意大利西尔维娅·雷蒙迪(传记)弗朗西斯科·萨马尼。菲利普·罗斯《意大利》:故事变得更加无常。Longo Editore, 2022。343页，精装本28欧元。要理解弗朗西斯科·萨马利尼计划的雄心壮志，我们有必要从他所选的书名开始。写菲利普·罗斯与意大利之间的关系，实际上意味着致力于对这位作家的整个叙事作品进行广泛而准确的分析，通过分析采访、信件以及与海外出版商的个人或商业往来，寻找与意大利半岛或多或少明显联系的痕迹。这也意味着要着手复杂的档案工作，参考保存在美国和意大利的已发表和未发表的文件。而这正是萨马利尼所做的，他的目的是——也确实是——一部内容丰富、内容广泛的学术著作，在公正地审视意大利人对罗斯作品接受的特殊性方面，他的独创性、精确性和全面性也令人瞩目。关于菲利普·罗斯在意大利的巨大名声(主要是由评论家保罗·迪·保罗在L 'Espresso发表的一篇文章中强调的)的许多文章和评论文章中，菲利普·罗斯和L 'Italia截然不同:因此，作为一种非修辞的、深入的研究，《故事》具有更不稳定的功能，构成了“一个有趣的观察站”(Samarini 7)1，以调查这位美国作家的作品及其在海外的接受情况。因此，萨马利尼的著作中特别突出的，并立即给读者留下深刻印象的是其分析的广度——从书本身的组织结构来看，这一点更加明显。经过旨在概述研究领域的简要介绍，该卷的主要语料库由九章组成，从罗斯的出版历史和他的早期到解决一些具体的主题话题，如意大利和意大利人在他的写作中的存在。这些书不仅“仅仅”考察了罗斯与意大利之间现存的联系，而且还旨在涵盖这位美国作家的传记，按照时间顺序从1958/1959年(《再见，哥伦布和五篇短篇小说》在美国的出版日期)开始讲述他的一生。具体来说，第二章到第八章提供了详尽的传记信息，涵盖了作者在意大利和美国的个人生活和职业生活的相关方面。这些包括罗斯的文学起源(第二章);《波特诺伊的投诉》(1969)的出版以及与之相关的正面和负面评论(第三章);罗斯在1971年至1978年间的公开成功所带来的后果(第四章);1979年至1989年间他所面临的困难(第五章也讨论了作者与普里莫·列维的友谊);在《美国牧歌》(1997)、《垂死的动物》(2001)和《复仇者》(2010)等作品出版后，他的“停滞”和随后的“复活”(第六章和第七章)，直到他去世后的阶段(第八章:“Dopo la scrittura和Dopo la morte: 2012-2020”)。最后几章讨论了罗斯在意大利作家中的接受(第九章)和意大利、意大利人和意大利裔美国人在他的作品中的出现(第十章)等问题。结论(第十一章)之后是一个冗长的附录，按时间顺序完整列出了54份文件，其中大部分未发表(第十二章)。在罗斯研究的全景中，菲利普·罗斯和意大利值得特别突出。它的优点很多。第一个也是最明显的因素是作者将时间路径(追溯罗斯的传记和写作活动)与主题路径结合起来的能力。事实上，正是这两个截然不同的“坐标”的存在，使得即使是最缺乏经验的读者也能跟上罗斯成功的论述，了解有关他的成就、出版问题以及国内外对他作品的接受的基本信息。另一方面，对于专业读者来说，这本书提供了一个机会，可以接触到批评家们通常很少探讨的主题。事实上，除了按时间顺序提供的信息外，本书还旨在追溯罗斯一生中的重要时刻(从他早期的出版物到他的旅行……)
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/prs.2023.a907260
Joseph Ozias
Abstract: Much of the discourse surrounding Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000) either deals with the novel as about America and American self-making or as about Coleman Silk. Little scholarship, however, deals with Zuckerman, the narrator, as a character central to the story; this essay seeks to show that Zuckerman not only invents the personal lives of his characters, but he invents himself, and he does so through his semi-imagined versions of each of the characters. Coleman is who he wishes himself to be, Farley is Zuckerman’s model of how not to live, Delphine is the warning about the very book he writes—the version of himself that lies about who he is—and Faunia acts as his moral compass and guide, perhaps the most important of his creations given how his narrative decisions reflect her sensibilities. Zuckerman’s characterizations of the key players and his suppositions about their interiority, then, result in Zuckerman’s own characterization.
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/prs.2023.a907262
Jacques Berlinerblau
Beware White Male Rothians Jacques Berlinerblau (bio) I am not one to subscribe to crude sociological stereotypes. yet i can’t help but notice that a certain type of person intensely dislikes my recent book The Philip Roth We Don’t Know: Sex, Race, and Autobiography (2021). Save one exception, that pattern has been evident from the peer-review process, through the pre-publication phase (see Zoller 2022; Sutter 2021), right on down to a trio of scathing reviews I will discuss forthwith. White male Rothians, it would seem, are impervious to the charms of my arguments. It is indeed better, as Gary Shteyngart once quipped, to be patronized than to be ignored. As a former book review editor for this very journal, I long ago learned that many fine monographs sit unreviewed because we couldn’t find scholars to assess them (more about that, anon). As such, I thank Professor Steven Kellman (The Forward), Professor Andy Connolly (Voegelin View), and Eric Vanderwall (Philip Roth Studies) for paying attention to this text. But fellas, respectfully, a book review is not a drive-by shooting! All professional scholars give and take their share of serrated criticism. To be an academician is to administer, and be subjected to, the learned snark of countless anonymous Reviewers Number Two. Even novelists, like Nathan Zuckerman in The Anatomy Lesson (1983), endured “the two-thousand-, three-thousand-, five-thousand-word lashing” that rankles for life (78). It’s probably best to suffer such indignities in silence—a truism borne out by Zuckerman’s ill-fated rant delivered to his bewildered tormentor, Milton Appel. In this case, however, I feel strongly—as battered authors are wont to do—that a rebuttal might be both timely and beneficial. Our world is falling down, so why not have a spirited, no-holds-barred conversation about race, sex, autobiography, pedagogy, and even scholarly mores as they pertain to book reviewing? After all, Philip Roth has passed away. His core audience is graying or dead. The market for serious literature, as the master grimly foretold, is dwindling. The humanities as a vocation teeter on the brink of extinction (Berlinerblau, “They’ve Been Scheming”). These troubled times offer scholars and lovers of fiction an opportunity to speak frankly. [End Page 82] If anything good emerges from this exchange, then it will be to arrive at a less sociologically crude definition of the White Male Rothian. ROTH AND RACE My analysis of Roth’s racial portraiture has not been warmly received. I approached my inquiry by collating every single depiction of African and African-American characters in his fiction from the 1952 “Box of Truths” to the 2010 Nemesis. This comprehensive analysis had not been performed before. I believe this is why researchers who had previously studied Roth and race drew conclusions different from my own. The patterns I discovered often surprised me. The patterns, to be frank, often troubled me. Roth’s portraits of his Black character
我并不是一个认同粗俗的社会学刻板印象的人。然而，我不禁注意到，有一类人非常不喜欢我的新书《我们不知道的菲利普·罗斯:性别、种族和自传》(2021)。除了一个例外，这种模式从同行评议过程一直到发表前阶段都很明显(见Zoller 2022;Sutter 2021)，直到我将立即讨论的三篇严厉的评论。罗思安的白人男性似乎对我的论点的魅力无动于衷。正如加里•施泰因加特(Gary Shteyngart)曾经打趣的那样，被人光顾确实比被人忽视要好。作为本报的前书评编辑，我很久以前就了解到，许多优秀的专著没有得到评论，因为我们找不到学者来评估它们(关于这一点，匿名)。因此，我感谢Steven Kellman教授(The Forward)、Andy Connolly教授(Voegelin View)和Eric Vanderwall教授(Philip Roth Studies)对本文的关注。伙计们，恕我直言，书评可不是飞车射击!所有的专业学者都会受到尖锐的批评。作为一名院士，就要管理和接受无数匿名的第二号评论者的学术批评。即使是小说家，比如《解剖课》(1983)中的内森·祖克曼，也要忍受“二千、三千、五千字的鞭笞”，这种鞭笞会让人终生痛苦(78)。也许最好是在沉默中忍受这样的侮辱——祖克曼对他困惑的折磨者米尔顿·阿佩尔不幸的咆哮证明了这一点。然而，在这种情况下，我强烈地感到——就像遭受打击的作家们经常做的那样——反驳可能既及时又有益。我们的世界正在衰落，所以为什么不就种族、性别、自传、教育学，甚至是与书评有关的学术习俗，展开一场充满活力、无拘无束的对话呢?毕竟，菲利普·罗斯已经去世了。他的核心受众已经灰白或死亡。正如这位大师冷酷地预言的那样，严肃文学的市场正在萎缩。人文学科作为一种职业在灭绝的边缘摇摇欲坠(柏林布鲁，“他们一直在策划”)。这些困难时期为学者和小说爱好者提供了一个坦率发言的机会。如果这种交流有什么好处的话，那就是对白人男性罗思安的社会学定义不那么粗糙。罗斯与种族我对罗斯种族形象的分析并没有受到热烈欢迎。为了展开调查，我整理了从1952年的《真相之盒》(Box of Truths)到2010年的《复仇者》(Nemesis)，他的小说中对非洲人和非裔美国人角色的每一个描述。这种全面的分析以前从未进行过。我相信这就是为什么之前研究罗斯和种族的研究人员得出了与我不同的结论。我发现的模式常常令我惊讶。坦率地说，这些模式经常困扰着我。罗斯对黑人人物的刻画常常是毫无品味的，近乎于，有时甚至是越界于种族主义的文学描写。当我与研究种族的学者讨论这一发现时，他们建议谨慎行事。他们建议，针对权威人物的种族不敏感的指控，要么是沉默，要么是一种困惑的漠视。因此，他们建议我仔细记录我的发现，以免我的第一波(也可能是最后一波)审稿人声称我的论点有缺陷、缺乏实质性、不存在等等。我首先在沙龙杂志(Berlinerblau，“菲利普·罗斯”)上发表的一篇出版前摘录中分享了我对罗斯对待种族的分析。它立即遭到了不止布莱克·贝利的谴责。在一条现已删除的推文中，他宣称我的文章，如果没记错的话，是他读过的关于罗斯的最愚蠢的文章。史蒂文·凯尔曼(Steven kellman)——他1980年的《自我产生的小说》是我非常欣赏的一部作品——也不认同这种分析。他声称我引用了“一些公然的种族主义言论，但这些言论都是由偏执狂说出来的，或者看起来是无辜的。”安迪·康诺利(Andy connolly)的《菲利普·罗斯与美国自由主义传统》(Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition, 2017)进一步提出了批评，我在本刊的评论中给出了相当正面的评价。我提请注意以前未注意到的模式……
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Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1353/prs.2023.a907266
Miriam Jaffe, Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker
Human Blues Miriam Jaffe (bio) and Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker (bio) Elisa Albert. Human Blues. New York: Avid Reader Press, 2022. 401 pp. $28.00 hardback. Elisa albert gained her foothold as a jewish american fiction writer when she closed her short story collection with a letter to Philip Roth in which she offered to have his baby (How This Night Is Different, Free Press, 2006). That “baby” is Albert’s creative output, including The Book of Dahlia (Free Press, 2008), which automortographically renders Jewish American family dynamics, and Afterbirth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), in which Albert explores the metaphorical connection between motherhood and authorship. In both of these novels, and in her work as an essayist, Albert channels the spirit of Philip Roth. Her latest novel, Human Blues, displays an array of Rothian attributes in contemplation of motherhood and creativity. The protagonist, Aviva, is a singer-songwriter fanning her emerging fame with controversy: imagine young Zuckerman of The Ghost Writer (1979) and his obsession with E. I. Lonoff—but female and obsessed with Amy Winehouse. And imagine this same Zuckerman, in The Human Stain (2008) and Exit Ghost (2007), incontinent and impotent, grieving the loss of virility at the center of his gender identity. Such is Aviva, but her problem of womanhood is that she is unable to conceive without medical intervention, or perhaps even with it. The novel is written during nine menstrual cycles of Aviva’s ruminations on infertility and motherhood as she faces off with social media posts and other forms of technology directed at women’s (re)productivity. Aviva performs these ruminations. The “performance” associated with celebrity is a metaphor for the roles assigned in various stages of gender and sexual identity: humans experience disappointment and shame when they cannot perform according to societal expectations. Perhaps with a nod to Simon Axler, a Rothian Jewish stage performer, Aviva’s inability to become naturally pregnant is her “humbling” (26). Axler is humbled by the loss of his sexual relevance, and Aviva is humbled by barrenness, which challenges her sense of womanhood. She encounters the fertility industry, which entices women to pay with their savings and minds and bodies for drugs and regulation and mostly harmful therapies. And like many of Roth’s pontificating narrators, who serve to [End Page 108] explore each novel’s polemic, Albert’s narrator scrutinizes the societal assumption that womanhood requires childbearing. Yet Aviva grieves the dispossession of these expectations with a cantankerous bereavement akin to the complex mourning process of another performer: Mickey Sabbath. An early review of Sabbath’s Theater (1995) describes the writing as “anti-moral,” with “plenty of nastiness” and “a narrative that moves, as its emotional temperature dictates” into “perverse confession” (Pritchard). The same could be said of Human Blues, whose female protagonist rages back at
人类蓝调Miriam Jaffe(生物)和Lluvia de Segovia de Kraker(生物)Elisa Albert。人类的蓝调。纽约:Avid Reader出版社，2022。401页，精装本28.00美元。艾丽莎·艾伯特作为一名美国犹太小说作家，在她的短篇小故事集结束语中，她给菲利普·罗斯写了一封信，在信中她提出要生下他的孩子(《今夜如何不同》，自由出版社，2006年)。这个“婴儿”是艾伯特的创造性成果，包括《大丽花之书》(自由出版社，2008年)，该书自动地呈现了犹太美国家庭的动态，以及《后生》(霍顿·米夫林·哈科特，2015年)，其中阿尔伯特探索了母性和作者之间的隐喻联系。在这两部小说和她作为散文家的作品中，艾伯特引导着菲利普·罗斯的精神。她的最新小说《人类的忧郁》(Human Blues)在对母性和创造力的沉思中展现了一系列罗思安式的特质。主人公艾薇娃是一位创作型歌手，她的名声正因争议而不断上升:想象一下《幽灵作家》(1979)中年轻的朱克曼和他对e·i·洛诺夫的迷恋——但他是女性，迷恋艾米·怀恩豪斯。再想象一下，在《人类的印记》(2008)和《退出的幽灵》(2007)中，同样的祖克曼大小便失禁，阳痿，为失去男性气概而悲伤，这是他性别认同的核心。这就是艾薇娃，但她作为女性的问题是，如果没有医疗干预，甚至可能有医疗干预，她就无法怀孕。这部小说是在艾薇娃面对社交媒体帖子和其他形式的针对女性(再)生产力的技术时，她对不孕症和母性的九个月经周期进行反思时写的。Aviva执行这些思考。与名人有关的“表演”是对性别和性身份在不同阶段被分配的角色的一种隐喻:当人们不能按照社会期望表演时，他们会感到失望和羞耻。也许是在向罗锡安犹太舞台演员西蒙·艾克斯勒(Simon Axler)致敬，Aviva无法自然怀孕是她的“耻辱”(26)。艾克斯勒因失去了自己的性关联而感到谦卑，而阿维娃因不孕而感到谦卑，这挑战了她的女性意识。她遇到了生育行业，这个行业诱使女性用自己的积蓄、思想和身体来支付药物、监管和大多有害的治疗。就像罗斯笔下的许多自以为是的叙述者一样，阿尔伯特的叙述者仔细审视了社会对女性需要生育的假设。然而，对于这些期望的丧失，阿杰娃以一种暴躁的丧亲之情感到悲伤，类似于另一位表演者米奇·萨巴斯(Mickey Sabbath)复杂的哀悼过程。对《安息日的剧场》(1995)的早期评论将其描述为“反道德的”，有“大量的肮脏”和“随着情感温度的变化而移动的叙述”进入“反常的忏悔”(普理查德)。《人类蓝调》也是如此，它的女主人公愤怒地回击了对女性的期望，并将她的艺术奉献给了对自己身体自主权的斗争。在重视婴儿生命甚于母亲生命的美国政治文化中，英杰华反对宣传激素治疗奇迹的社交媒体广告，也反对那些在发展中国家通过代孕实现全球收养梦想的广告。阿尔伯特在一个在这个问题上存在严重分歧的国家，承担了女性选择不生孩子的权利。与此同时，当她观察人们如何谈论通过生殖技术孕育的婴儿时，她提出了这样一个问题:为什么只有当人们想要生命的时候，生命的价值才有价值?英杰华也与安息日的不可避免的经历悲伤,每一辆自行车,而不是生活,她遇到死亡:“每个堕落的时期,每个周期,每个分季节:觉醒,希望,腐烂,死亡,,,一次又一次死亡,死亡,死亡”(2)。同样,安息日被过去的鬼魂,他遭受的损失生命的承诺和他的情人Drenka生育能力的体现,当她成为患卵巢癌和死亡。罗斯以压抑的效果逐步建立起这个主题，每一段都揭示了人物思想的新变化，艾伯特借鉴了他的风格，但她……
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