Philip Roth RIP
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John Marchioro
May 23, 2018, 12:26:44 AM5/23/18
to not-honyaku-redux
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/23/philip-roth-portnoys-complaint-and-american-pastoral-author-dies-aged-85
I think I have read 6 of his novels and then his first collection of
stories, "Goodbye Columbus".... An interesting writer in many ways.
There will be a post mortem about why he did not win the Nobel Prize.
I think there are two reasons, that his work was probably regarded as
too focused on the Jewish American experience, and that he was
credibly charged with misogyny (read "Sabbath's Theater".... Need I
say more?).
But I also thought there were highs and lows in his work. I read "The
Plot Against America" last year, and while it had some nice passages I
found it pretty outlandish as a piece of alt history.... Not really
very serious, the whole notion that Lindbergh could have defeated FDR
in 1940 by an isolationist campaign.... And then the whole business
about forcible Americanization of Jews through a program that broke
families up and made Jewish children live on farms.... I mean, give me
a break.
Of the Roth books that I have read, I found "The Counterlife" to be
the most interesting as a piece of experimental fiction, and "American
Pastoral" to be the best overall piece of writing..... I was less
impressed with "The Human Stain" (made into a film with Anthony
Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, another film whose DVD I have here but have
never got around to) and "Sabbath's Theater".... I actually found the
latter pretty repugnant.
As for "Portnoy's Complaint".... Well, an early novel, famous for the
stuff about using red veal intended for the family's later dinner meal
that day as an afternoon masturbation tool, but frankly a pretty odd
and uneven novel on the whole, all over the map, jumping around in
time and from topic to topic, and marred by a final chapter in which
the narrator visits Israel, meets a very tough female IDF soldier,
gets drunk, invites her back to his hotel room.... Then tries to rape
her, har har har, all in good fun, and she kicks the shit out of him
and calls him decadent and materialistic and so on (apparently this is
meant to symbolize the New Jewish Ethos that built Israel up and to
contrast it with the weak corrupt rudderless Jews living in NYC and
the like, but to my mind it was just nauseating.... and I am sure most
women reading it reacted even worse that that..... it isn't funny,
except when the narrator gets kicked around by the woman rejecting his
repeated unwanted advances....).
So a mixed bag. There was at one point a shortlist of 5 or 6 potential
Nobel laureates for fiction from the US. John Updike, Philip Roth,
Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy. The first two are now no
longer with us. The last three will probably never win, though I think
DeLillo in particular deserves the prize (one problem is that he has
not followed up his magnum opus "Underworld" with anything of
comparable distinction in the past two decades.... had he written a
couple of major novels in that time, he would almost certainly have
been awarded the Nobel by now).
Instead they gave it to Bob Dylan, who proceeded to thumb his nose at
the whole thing.
There is no justice.
I think I have read 6 of his novels and then his first collection of
stories, "Goodbye Columbus".... An interesting writer in many ways.
There will be a post mortem about why he did not win the Nobel Prize.
I think there are two reasons, that his work was probably regarded as
too focused on the Jewish American experience, and that he was
credibly charged with misogyny (read "Sabbath's Theater".... Need I
say more?).
But I also thought there were highs and lows in his work. I read "The
Plot Against America" last year, and while it had some nice passages I
found it pretty outlandish as a piece of alt history.... Not really
very serious, the whole notion that Lindbergh could have defeated FDR
in 1940 by an isolationist campaign.... And then the whole business
about forcible Americanization of Jews through a program that broke
families up and made Jewish children live on farms.... I mean, give me
a break.
Of the Roth books that I have read, I found "The Counterlife" to be
the most interesting as a piece of experimental fiction, and "American
Pastoral" to be the best overall piece of writing..... I was less
impressed with "The Human Stain" (made into a film with Anthony
Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, another film whose DVD I have here but have
never got around to) and "Sabbath's Theater".... I actually found the
latter pretty repugnant.
As for "Portnoy's Complaint".... Well, an early novel, famous for the
stuff about using red veal intended for the family's later dinner meal
that day as an afternoon masturbation tool, but frankly a pretty odd
and uneven novel on the whole, all over the map, jumping around in
time and from topic to topic, and marred by a final chapter in which
the narrator visits Israel, meets a very tough female IDF soldier,
gets drunk, invites her back to his hotel room.... Then tries to rape
her, har har har, all in good fun, and she kicks the shit out of him
and calls him decadent and materialistic and so on (apparently this is
meant to symbolize the New Jewish Ethos that built Israel up and to
contrast it with the weak corrupt rudderless Jews living in NYC and
the like, but to my mind it was just nauseating.... and I am sure most
women reading it reacted even worse that that..... it isn't funny,
except when the narrator gets kicked around by the woman rejecting his
repeated unwanted advances....).
So a mixed bag. There was at one point a shortlist of 5 or 6 potential
Nobel laureates for fiction from the US. John Updike, Philip Roth,
Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy. The first two are now no
longer with us. The last three will probably never win, though I think
DeLillo in particular deserves the prize (one problem is that he has
not followed up his magnum opus "Underworld" with anything of
comparable distinction in the past two decades.... had he written a
couple of major novels in that time, he would almost certainly have
been awarded the Nobel by now).
Instead they gave it to Bob Dylan, who proceeded to thumb his nose at
the whole thing.
There is no justice.
Matthew Schlecht
May 23, 2018, 6:31:42 PM5/23/18
to not-hony...@googlegroups.com
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 12:26 AM, John Marchioro <jkmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/23/philip-roth-portnoys-complaint-and-american-pastoral-author-dies-aged-85
Seems these literary guys are dropping like flies these days.
While I heard a lot about Roth's novels growing up, and saw the film versions of "Goodbye, Columbus" and "The Human Stain", I've only read (listened to on audio CD) the novels "Indignation" (2008) and "Exit Ghost" (2007). In this latter, which is apparently the last of the Nathan Zuckerman series, our formerly virility-obsessed hero has had a radical prostate operation, and has become incontinent on top of becoming impotent. Sort of an "On Golden Shlong", where he senses at length the distancing of himself from his former self, now living isolated in rural Massachusetts and coming down to NYC for a visit to what is now an alien and hostile environment to him, and how that plays out as he contacts people he knew back when who are also in the deep autumn of their years, and plays at getting to know younger men and women, indulging in fantasies that he knows are physiologically impossible for him now.
It will probably be quite awhile for a white male to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, especially after one was wasted on Bob Dylan, but the names you quoted would be good candidates.
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