Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman is a Jewish novelist in his mid forties. His many novels have met with a great deal of commercial and critical success, and he is best known for making jokes about his own Jewish-American background and family. By the time the novel opens, Nathan has already been married and divorced four times, each time to non-Jewish women. He does not seem to take much seriously; indeed, one could say that Nathan Zuckerman holds nothing sacred. He has a habit of taking detailed notes any time anyone tells him personal or confidential stories, and he seems to prize the compromising or embarrassing stories above all others. Nathan is not a mean or vindictive person. He simply believes anything is fair game for publishing since all stories are really just versions of another, so he is not really betraying a confidence by publishing another's story.

Throughout his...