[In Zuckerman Unbound Roth] doesn't do much with the novel's main theme, which is, or should be, what it's like to be famous. The book veers off from this into some family matters—[Nathan Zuckerman's] fruitless attempt to win back the wife he's walked out on, the death of his father—which give the feeling of not being integral to any true narrative but rather devised to make up the appearance of one. Roth seems to me to be fulfilling an obligation to write another novel, the next one, and to have started with a creative idea, faltered, then filled out the book with some odds and ends of personal experience, perhaps taking care of some unfinished emotional business.
I'm not concerned with whether or not the novel's domestic events are actually part of Roth's autobiography (though there's evidence that they aren't remote from it). The point is that they feel like they are, because they don't feel like they're part of Zuckerman's. The novel's chief theme should be the nature of fame and celebrity; this isn't a fiat on my part but what the book itself advances for part of its way. Indeed, in an important episode Roth inadvertently reveals how he's thrown away the opportunity to make Zuckerman Unbound a better book than it is.
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