Philip Roth

I just did the Audible for American Pastoral a few months ago. I thought it was good. I believe it was recommended to me based on "We Need to Talk About Kevin." I don't think I would have gotten through reading it, but the audible version was pretty good.

"My Life as a Man" is very dark and very funny.

I loved his Grapes.

I've enjoyed what I've read.

He was undoubtedly exceptionally talented, but his insane egomania got in the way of his fiction sometimes. I've read many of his novels, and from them and from everything I've read about him as a person, he was convinced of two things:

1) The second-most important thing in the universe was his dick, and it deserved to have as much pussy as he wanted whenever he wanted it from whomever he wanted it.

2) The most important thing in the universe was the inevitable fact of his mortality. He almost could not believe it would be true that the universe could go on without him, and he railed against his fear of death almost obsessively. This fact was very much related in his mind to #1 above.

His fiction could get awful when he obsessed about these two things , but also it could be almost bizarrely inspired when he obsessed about it too (such as is the case with "Sabbath's Theater," his most offensive book but also one of his best). His last round of novels at the end of his life was almost entirely terrific.

He deeply coveted a Nobel Prize, and it bothered him at the end of his life every year that he didn't win it. (Probably for that reason he deserved in the end [italic]not[/italic] to win it.) He was an absolutely superb stylist, but he was not as original nor as profound a thinker as several of his novelist contemporaries who did win the Nobel Prize: Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and J.M. Coetzee. Mostly it was because they could think more readily and profoundly about bigger issues than Roth did, since he was too often obsessed with writing about himself.

I’ve never read anything of his. No regrets.

[quote] 1) The second-most important thing in the universe was his dick,

Sounds like most men all over the world.

I loved [italic]Goodbye, Columbus[/italic] and [italic]Letting Go[/italic]. Two of my favorite works of fiction of all time.

I wasn't sure I believed in Swede, the protagonist in [italic]American Pastoral[/italic]. I put it down after around a hundred pages and didn't pick it up again for another five years. Mostly, I liked it, I suppose, as another installment in Roth's [italic]Life along Route 22[/italic] series.

There was another book I liked a lot, part of the Zuckerman series, I think, in which the protagonist attends his Weequahic HS reunion. Some of my friends' parents went to HS with him, and he was their closest brush with fame, so I used to hear about him when I was young.

It's my favorite novel of his, followed by "The Human Stain". Do let us know how you like it, OP.

I'm sorry, but he's so over-hyped by pseudo-intellectuals, I've avoided his work like the plague. I'm petty that way--once everyone raves about something I'm no longer interested.

Oh, and he never won a Nobel Prize for Literature.

I read the Anatomy Lesson. I think it was a mistake just jumping into the middle of the Zuckerman cycle like that but what did I know back then? It was the 80s and the Internet didn’t exist yet so I had no way to get context on an author. (I didn’t start reading The New Yorker until the 90s.)

It was strong and remarkable in many ways but I had no desire to read anything else. Another literary obligation ticked off.

Maybe I should read Goodbye Columbus. Is it starkly different from his other work?

He had a "neo-conservative" period that was pretty unreadable. All his sexism and the sadness at seeing what had happened to his childhood world. I'm sure he was hell to live with, esp. in his early to middle years, but he became a mentor to younger writers later on. His later novels were a rare case of a writer getting beyond that kind of childish, old man bitterness. His work seems well on its way toward outliving most of his contemporaries---Updike ceased to be discussed the moment he died (good at character, terrible at plot) and Bellow was quickly forgotten, as well (too much pretense).

So many of his longer novels needed a sterner editor.

I read "Portnoy's Complaint" in my Freud and Literature class. From the aspect of psychoanalysis and mid-20th century Jewish studies it makes for interesting reading, but it didn't leave me with a desire to read anything else by him.

I remember reading a piece about Claire Bloom in the NYT that quoted Gore Vidal as saying to her, "Claire, do not go out with Portnoy."

I thought Goodbye Columbus was a minstrel show version of American Jewish life. And don't get me started on the movie.

I read American Pastoral years ago and have never had any desire to read another Philip Roth novel again.

[quote]Maybe I should read Goodbye Columbus.

How interested are you in post-WWII Jewish-American sociology? I grew up in a New Jersey town that was equal parts Irish, Italian, and Jewish, so it's always been of interest to me. As someone with an Irish background, Italians and Jews were my idea of "diversity." I've always preferred them, in terms of both sexual attraction and food.

I agree that GOODBYE COLUMBUS was a good read and fascinating sociology for those of us not in that world.

It's the only work of his I've ever liked. I found AMERICAN PASTORAL dull, depressing, and pointless. When I finally read PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, I could not believe the level of hype for it. Juvenile and silly: it felt like some Woody Allen skit from his comedy club days, but devoid of any humor. Uggh.

R5, you summed quite concisely up why I quit reading him.

[quote] and Bellow was quickly forgotten, as well (too much pretense).

That's just not true.

Bellow is assigned quite a bit on syllabi at colleges and universities, more so than Roth.

I liked American Pastoral. There are some gorgeous passages in it.

Roth is somewhat overrated.

I've never bothered to read another of his books. Frankly, I find Ron Rash an overall better writer and storyteller.

[italic]American Pastoral[/italic] made for an interesting read. The Swede was far less compelling than his radical Weather Underground daughter though.

Roth's Zuckerberg period is hard to get through. So much navel gazing and inner dialog where nothing happens.

He's got a curious body of work.

"Goodbye, Columbus", which was published in 1959, was an interesting look at the postwar suburbanization and assimilation of American Jews and how that was not happening at an even pace. [TL;DR it's a romance between a Jewish girl from a newly wealthy family in Short Hills, NJ and a working class guy from the old Jewish section of Newark and his culture shock at her life.)

The short stories that appear after the novella are excellent, particularly Defender of the Faith, The Conversion of the Jews, and Eli, The Fanatic, which is all about assimilation and the sort of story gay men can easily read as an allegory for our own community.

No one else had touched on assimilation at that time, at least not in literature, and the fact that Roth was often making wisecracks in his writing, rather than taking Everything Very Seriously like say, Bellow, meant the literary establishment wasn't quite sure how to take him and many in the Jewish community were offended that he seemed to be airing the group's dirty laundry just 14 years after the Shoah.

"Portnoy's Complaint," which was all about masturbation and a Jewish mother who "knew every inch of our five room apartment she same way a guerilla army knows it's territory" was roundly criticized beloved for its ribald prose (still shocking in the late 60s) and beloved for what many felt was an accurate picture of the life of outer borough working class Jews, a group that was rapidly disappearing due to the assimilation described in "Goodbye, Columbus." It's very much a period piece though, and what was shocking in 1969 seems old hat in 2020, though Roth is still very funny in his descriptions of the various people in the main character's life.

Towards the end, there were two books I liked better than "American Pastoral" -- "The Plot Against America" which is an alternative history well done and "Nemesis" which is about the polio epidemic, but returns to the Newark of his childhood.

R23: I mostly agree. The Zuckerman stuff was tiresome and that also was when his politics seemed a bit reactionary. I liked Plot Against America. I also like The Human Stain---critics didn't quite know what to do with it. It hit the theme of assimilation in a different way and I was surprised he didn't get more criticism for writing a "Black novel", except it real isn't. Bellow could do readable novels that were relatable, if you were academic or close to that world stuff--"The Deans December" was one of those. It wasn't liked by critics or the public, but it was easier to get through than a lot of his other stuff.

[quote]Frankly, I find Ron Rash an overall better writer and storyteller.

Another chronicler of life among the Jewish upper middle class in North Jersey?

I would like to put in a vote for his last novella, "Nemesis." Though *about* the terror and paranoia over the Polio epidemic in his Newark neighborhood in his boyhood, it really made me feel the emotions I felt in the earliest summer and subsequent months of the AIDS epidemic. That sense that someone is there in your life and then they are not. How things feel so arbitrary. I found it a beautiful career capstone that might feel even more applicable to life in the US since Covid.

[quote]Another chronicler of life among the Jewish upper middle class in North Jersey?

You may as well just announce to the world that you're illiterate and don't read or know anything about contemporary American literature.

r27: Mary!

Roth only wrote about the Jewish upper middle class in Goodbye. Columbus, R25

And even that was positioned from the POV of an outsider, a working class Jew observing these unfamiliar people.

Most of his work is set in the working class Jewish neighborhood of Newark during the 1940s and 50s, when Roth was growing up there.

[quote] The Human Stain---critics didn't quite know what to do with it. It hit the theme of assimilation in a different way

I haven't attempted this. It seems the movie disappointed everyone. But who is getting assimilated with what?

[quote] Most of his work is set in the working class Jewish neighborhood of Newark during the 1940s and 50s, when Roth was growing up there.

I'm now attempting "I Married a Communist"and the hero from Newark is full of hatred towards Clare Bloom during the 1940s and 50s, bitching that she uses a fake-English accent who hates the working class.

I also enjoyed Nemesis. It was a fine last novel.

I recently finished the long new biography about him, which was pretty interesting.

The Human Stain is my favorite and I also loved the movie, I guess I am in the minority there.

I like him a lot, despite the uneven quality of the writing and the problematic attitudes towards women. I think that, counter intuitively, his Nemesis quartet is a good introducing (The Humbling is skipable for all but completist), but Indignation, Everyman, andIndignation are small gems, both of his style and his recurrent concerns. I agree that, across his work, there are a number you can skip. The Ghost Writer is an almost perfect short novel.

I've had his bitchy Clare Bloom memoir on my bedside table for two weeks. I did 5 pages.

I tried to go further but I think I'll return it to the library.

The Human Stain's my favorite Roth - I thought it was less self-indulgent than American Pastoral. The movie was good too. Wentworth Miller got his first big role (I think) in it playing a young Anthony Hopkins.

The character was based on some art critic whose name I've forgotten who passed as white.

It could never be written today - the Woke would have a heart attack.

I thought "I Married a Communist" was a lifeless sermon. His early work was hilariously absurd.

[quote] "I Married a Communist"

That's the one which I tried and failed.

I thought that my vicariously knowing Clare Bloom might help me get me through the book.

But, even though I was warned that it was 'coruscating and scathing', my inability to relate to the Jewish Newark septuagenarian defeated me.

I’ve done one Austen, one Hemingway and one Fitzgerald.

Two Brontës, Melvilles, Henry James and Joseph Conrads.

Three Prousts, Huxleys, Orwells, and Graham Greenes.

Four Dickens and EM Forsters.

Five Wildes, DH Lawrences, and Somerset Maugham.

Eight Woolfs, Waughs, and Muriel Sparks.

Twelve Shakespeares.

I’ve done half of a Tolstoy, and half of a George Eliot.

I did 5 pages of Roth.

That's really saying something. What do you think you're saying r38?

He should have stuck with short stories - "Defender of the Faith" is really good.

Whatever you do, don't bother with THE HUMBLING. It stinks on ICE!

[quote] What do you think you're saying [R38]?

Perhaps, R39, I'm saying that Roth isn't as interesting all those others listed.

Or perhaps my attention span for literature has wilted over the last 20 year of using digital colored, interactive screens.

Never read any of his books, but loved film "Portnoy's Complaint" when saw it on television (think it was PBS or Movies!).

Ditto for "Goodbye, Columbus"....

Both seemed to me slices of Jewish life that long since have passed, especially on UWS of Manhattan. These were (then) young Jews whose parents maybe came over just before or after WWII from Europe. Old ways of the shtetl weren't for them as they assimilated into the sort of Reformed Jews you see today.