Philip Roth

[Stewart]

Philip Roth (born March 19, 1933, Newark, New Jersey) is an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960's National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint, and has continued to write critically acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels began with The Ghost Writer in 1979, and include the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Goodbye, Columbus (1959)
• Letting Go (1962)
• When She Was Good (1967)
• Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
• Our Gang (1971)
• The Breast (1972)
• The Great American Novel (1973)
• My Life As A Man (1974)
• Reading Myself And Others (1976)
• The Professor Of Desire (1977)
• The Ghost Writer (1979)
• Zuckerman Unbound (1981)
• The Anatomy Lesson (1983)
• The Prague Orgy (1985)
• The Counterlife (1986)
• The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)
• Deception (1990)
• Patrimony: A True Story (1991)
• Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993)
• Sabbath's Theater (1995)
• American Pastoral (1997)
• I Married A Communist (1998)
• The Human Stain (2000)
• The Dying Animal (2001)
• Shop Talk (2001)
• The Plot Against America (2004)
• Everyman (2006)
• Exit Ghost (2007)
• Indignation (2008)
• The Humbling (2009)

RELATED THREADS

• Goodbye, Columbus

RELATED LINKS

• Philip Roth on Wikipedia
• A Guide To Philip Roth
• Philip Roth profile
• Philip Roth Society

[Stewart]

Earlier this year I decided to read through all the Philip Roth books in order, starting with 1959's Goodbye, Columbus, which I really enjoyed. I've been a bit lax in getting to the second one, Letting Go, because, at over six hundred pages, it's his largest book. But I'm building up a back log of reviews for the blog that will allow me to slot it in to my reading soon.

But the old guy seems to be cranking the novels out now, with Indignation out shortly and, appearing on Amazon already, another novel called The Humbling out in May next year. No news on what it's about yet.

[Heteronym]

I love Roth's novels, after reading seven of them I have yet to meet a disappointment. The Anatomy Lesson, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, what an amazing body of work!

Operation Shylock remains one of the funniest novels I've ever read, an absurd romp through fake identities, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, cultural criticism (there's a character in the novel, George Siad, who's a caricature of Edward Said), the responsibility of writers to the world they live in.

For me Roth is the best American writer alive today: he has a beautiful prose, a polished Henry James style, and his characters are all unforgettable.

[Mirabell]

Review of indignation

It?s not hard for the reader to guess what?s happened to Marcus: it?s pretty obvious the moment that he announces that he?s dead and stuck in limbo, where he seems doomed to review the events of his brief life over and over again. The suspense stems more from seeing exactly how Mr. Roth will connect all the dots. There is a suggestion, here and there, that he wants us to read Marcus?s story as a sort of parable about what happens to the individual when his paltry existence is hit head-on by the locomotive of history, but in the end this little novel possesses neither the ambition nor the scope of the author?s big postwar trilogy (?American Pastoral,? ?I Married a Communist? and ?The Human Stain?).
It?s a far more modest undertaking than that: more of a darkly comic exercise in the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies and the folly of thinking that being a hard-working A student will offer any sort of protection from the mad vagaries of fate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/bo...pc&oref=slogin

[sara]

Hi all
I am not sure whether I should open a new thread for this, since I would like to comment especially on one of Roth's books-
if my post is not properly placed here, please feel free to move it

I have already written in my first post here that I am huge Roth fan-
I tried to read Goodbye Columbus about ten years ago, but surprisingly,
I just simply didn't like it then(it seems surprising to me now, because now I am really pretty much into all of his books that I have read, including Goodbye Columbus, which I finally re-read recently ).
I didn't read any of his books for al long time after that, till
The Professor of Desire was issued in greek a couple of years ago-
and that was it-
that was the one book of his that made me fall in love with his writing, and to this date, having read some of his important works (Portnoy's complaint, My life as a man, Sabbath's theater, American Pastoral, Letting Go, The Dying Animal) I have yet to find a single one that I didn't love. (Perhaps I am not so crazy about Sabbath's theater, even though I do see the brilliance of it).

And now to my question (I am sorry for the long prologue..)
I consider American Pastoral one of the best books I've read, one of Roth's finest and one of the most important works of American literature.
There are parts of the book that are just plain mindblowing .


The scene where the Swede meets his daughter after she comes back to Newark is one of the most chilling, strong and shocking things I have ever read- and the fact that it was written by a man that has no children of his own is, in my humble opinion, just another testament to his genious.
Those pages are pure perfection.
However, I had the feeling, as the book came to its closure, that the way the story evolved did not meet up to the "expectations" created by the first two parts of the book.
I loved the whole idea of the dinner party and the conversation about Watergate and all, but I am not sure about the long dialogue between Dawn and her future father in law towards the end
or the very ending (with the fork stabbing).

I can see the point, but I am not really sure that the ending does justice to- or, to put it simply, is good enough for- a book that is a landmark of modern american literature.
(On the contrary, for example, the Professor of Desire had a marvellous, touching ending- the last paragraph of the book is a perfect reference to all of Roth's obsessions about sex and death).

Did anyone else find the ending a little bit disappointing - (especially in comparison to the two other parts of the book)?
Or didn't I just get the way it ends?
Was the dialogue between Dawn and the Swede's father really necessary at that particular point of the book? I am not really convinced of the purpose it served.

Thank you in advance.

[beelzebubbles]

Hello, major Roth-maniac or Philipophile here.

What a voice. It is beautiful even when he says ugly things.

What does the old writer say to Zuckerman in the the Ghostwriter?

Something like...You have a voice, It begins some where around your knees and ends well above your head.

That's Roth. That voice.

[Colette Jones]

Hi beelzebubbles and welcome.

I've read a few Roth book (Everyman, Portnoy's Complaint, The Professor of Desire) and I enjoy them at the time but can't remember much about them a few weeks later. I'm hoping The Ghost Writer will be different in that respect once I get around to reading it.

[David J]

I read American Pastoral about six years ago for an undergraduate essay. It's the only Roth novel I've read but I was very impressed by it. I rememeber how convincing his knowledge is, as if he has really lived and experienced what he describes - especially the part where he takes the girl (one of his daughter's subversive pals) on a guided tour of the glove making factory.

I remember the power and energy of the book. The nightmarish quality of parts.

I dont remember the ending so I cant comment on that but I remember, in the essay, coming to the conclusion that the main message of the book is that history is mysterious and remote - we can't always know why things happen.

[e joseph]

Hi beelzebubbles and welcome.

I've read a few Roth book (Everyman, Portnoy's Complaint, The Professor of Desire) and I enjoy them at the time but can't remember much about them a few weeks later. I'm hoping The Ghost Writer will be different in that respect once I get around to reading it.

I have the same problem - if it can be called that - with Roth. Potnoy's Complaint I have an especially hard time recalling. The Ghost Writer I really really enjoyed though. It's not the freshest thing in my memory, but I know I had a hard time setting it down and followed it up with another Roth book because I hadn't quite enough. Once you get around to reading it, enjoy!

[beelzebubbles]

Hi all
Was the dialogue between Dawn and the Swede's father really necessary at that particular point of the book? I am not really convinced of the purpose it served.

Thank you in advance.

Hi Sara, I read a summary of American Pastoral to remind me of the end scene and I am not sure which dialogue you are talking about. There are two possible dialogues to choose from: the one that take us back in time between Dawn and the old man and the one between the drunken Jesse Orcutt and the old man that ends with the hilarious fork incident.

The dialogue between Dawn and the old tyrant finagling any possible Catholicism out of his son's future progeny by brow beating his fiance certainly gives us insight into the old man's moralistic bent. And I would imagine this would help to instill a resentment in the reader of the father and a sympathy for the drunk, who later forks him.

Roth always skewers the Puritans.

Roth is certainly an avid Anti-Puritan and I think the pie scene and the one you mentioned as well where Merry and the Swede meet in her grotty flat are scenes in which Roth makes his Anti-Puritan statement pretty clear.

The scene between Merry and the Swede has always disturbed me. It definitely has misogynous overtones. When the Swede rips the pantyhose from her face and vomits there, I can't help but hearken back to the scene in which the sexy little blackmailer exposes her vagina and stymies the man. I find the vomiting on the face to be a kind of a delayed reaction to that event. A sort of symbolic pseudo-sexual act of disgust and desire.

But we can't ignore the fact that Roth has made his murderous monster a Jain (of all things). Now whatever Jains are in the real world, in a Rothian world, they are high handed moralists as is the old man. So we find in the scene between the father and Dawn a correlation between himself and the monster, Papa Levov being an old school moralist and Puritan and Merry, an extreme and Kafkaesque version of the same.

The pie scene is pure hilarity, but pointed hilarity if you will. More moralizing from Papa Levov, this time on the virtues of having some thing on your stomach if you are going to drink like a fish (and I must say in his defense, when you are right you are right). But he takes it to an extreme and infantilizes the woman and she lashes out with the only weapon available.

Roth characters are adolescent in that they are often reacting against infanitlization.

I hope I am not bringing coals to Newcastle with my analysis of your question. I think I will put up a sign, "All Roth questions answered here." If not to the satisfaction of the one who asks the questions, then at least to mine.

[Jan Mbali]

One critic called Portnoy's Complaint "The Gripes of Roth", which besides being a clever pun speaks to the main source of its humour. It homes in with deadly accuracy on everything maddening about having, in particular, a Jewish mother. You would have to have one to truly appreciate the book, but it probably conveys the flavour of to those who do not share this fate.

[beelzebubbles]

One critic called Portnoy's Complaint "The Gripes of Roth", which besides being a clever pun speaks to the main source of its humour. It homes in with deadly accuracy on everything maddening about having, in particular, a Jewish mother. You would have to have one to truly appreciate the book, but it probably conveys the flavour of to those who do not share this fate.

Oh, I don't know about that. I certainly had a Sophie and Alex Portnoy in my life and I was raised a Protestant. I often thought, just make the main characters Presbyterians and they could be my father and my grandmother. When a newspaper interviewer asked Roth's mother something about being a Jewish mother, she said, "all mothers are jewish mothers." See Freud for clarification. It is one telling of this universal family romance.

[Bjorn]

Oh, I don't know about that. I certainly had a Sophie and Alex Portnoy in my life and I was raised a Protestant. I often thought, just make the main characters Presbyterians and they could be my father and my grandmother. When a newspaper interviewer asked Roth's mother something about being a Jewish mother, she said, "all mothers are jewish mothers." See Freud for clarification. It is one telling of this universal family romance.

Heh. Yep. I'm reminded of one review of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, which argued that the novel was unbelievable since Franzen had made his characters of Scandinavian stock and only Jewish mothers could be as... um... mothery as the one in his book.

[ferns_dad]

Great American Novel is not mentioned often, I found it a genuine comic masterpiece

[beelzebubbles]

There are three Roth novels I never finished, two due to a lack of interest and one because I hated it. Our Gang and The Great American Novel were the two that did not hold my interest. But I do remember laughing at the thought of the tiny strike zone of the dwarf batter and how he was walked all the time.

When She Was Good was the one I hated. I found I could not continue reading a book in which the author obviously hated and the main character. I don't have a problem with Roth's monstrous women, in fact Maureen Tarnopol is one of my favorite characters. But this one did not work.

I read somewhere that Tolstoy hated the character of Anna Karenina but realized that he had to pull back emotionally from the character in order to write convincingly of her life. Roth is not able to remove his ire from the process and the book suffered because of it.

[SlowRain]

I just finished The Dying Animal, and it was my first disappointment with Roth. It's not a bad novel, it's just okay. However, since the others I've read were quite good, something that is merely okay comes off as a disappointment.

For the most part, the novel is about the skewed view of relationships that many people now have. Someone above mentioned Roth's obsession with death and sex; well, they're both in this novel as well. Oh, yeah, and breasts. The protagonist loves 'em, and his lover is infatuated with her own. It's really not as simplistic as I make it seem. Roth actually makes a very nice point of it towards the end of the novel.

It's fairly short, which much of Roth's recent work seems to be. I felt it lacked an interesting story. I read it, not because I liked the characters--actually, I loathed David Kepesh--but because I absolutely love Roth's narrative. He has such a captivating style that just pulls me in and mesmerizes me. After reading one of his novels, I feel I fully understand the character because of the rich depth of detail.

Great writing, predictable themes, somewhat disappointing story. Plus, there was a little episode regarding menstruation that turned my stomach.

I recommend American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America all ahead of this one, but especially The Human Stain.

[Daniel del Real]

Oh, yeah, and breasts. The protagonist loves 'em,

Can you blame him?
Damn I just felt like Liam, but going to the other side, with this commentary

I recommend American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America all ahead of this one, but especially The Human Stain.

The Human Stain will definitely be my next trip to Roth's world. Until now he's been good, but nothing spectacular.

[Scott89119]

You want spectacular, try Operation Shylock. Whoofty.

[Heteronym]

I met my first disappointment in Roth after reading The Prague Orgy. Nathan Zuckerman travels to the Czech Republic in search of the unpublishes stories of a Yiddish writer. Sex and totalitarian paranoia abounds, but it never amounted to anything. Roth-lite, I'd say.

Operation Shylock: one of the best and funniest novels I've ever read!

[beelzebubbles]

The Dying Animal is about objectification, about the need to be the object of contemplation for some subject, I or eye, to be apprehended with sympathy, appreciation and ardor. It is about the loss of one's beauty and all that the loss implies. It is about the desire to share a subjective veiw point, the desire for an understanding between separate but sympathetic sensibilities. It is also about the fear of being seen and found wanting.

Maybe readers are not sympathetic to this kind of narcissism/vanity/need/desire in an older man.

Maybe the writer is too honest/pitiless in his portrayal of this need or shows too much pity for a character that is emotionally inaccessible yet sensitive in so many other ways.