Philosophy and Literature

Abstract:

What is the pertinence for Roth’s The Dying Animal, Everyman, and “Novotny’s Pain” of the existential outlooks of Heidegger and Sartre? What, moreover, are the implications for Roth’s fiction of Heidegger’s mortuary conception of Dasein in the unification of past, present, and future, as opposed to Sartre’s conceiving of consciousness as nothingness, or lively possibility? And why do Roth’s narratives favor Sartrean possibility over the deterministic claim to “possibilization” in Heidegger’s “resolute” cognizance of death? Such are the questions I address, with attention to the interplay of philosophy and aesthetics in Roth’s narrative artistry, and in related reference to “Novotny’s Pain.”