Product Description
"With the lover everyday life recedes," Roth writes—and exhibiting all his skill as a brilliant observer of human passion, he presents in Deception the tightly enclosed world of adulterous intimacy with a directness that has no equal in American fiction. At the center of Deception are two adulterers in their hiding place. He is a middle-aged American writer named Philip, living in London, and she is an articulate, intelligent, well-educated Englishwoman compromised by a humiliating marriage to which, in her thirties, she is already nervously half-resigned. The book's action consists of conversation—mainly the lovers talking to each other before and after making love. That dialogue—sharp, rich, playful, inquiring, "moving," as Hermione Lee writes, "on a scale of pain from furious bafflement to stoic gaiety"—is nearly all there is to this book, and all there needs to be. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Far from vintage Roth
I'm a big Philip Roth fan. I love his lush prose, the endless sentences that wind their way around an idea and bring the reader effortlessly along. I love how he can recreate a time and place in meticulous detail. I love the sense of history he weaves into his work.

Having said all that, you'll find none of it in "Deception." I haven't read all Roth's work--was this a literary experiment? This book is far form lush, far too much effort to read. I quickly became tired of going back and rereading, trying to figure out who was speaking, who the characters were, even where events were taking place. It did get better after awhile, and the layers of deception revealed at the end were clever indeed. But ultimately I was disappointed. My next step is to get another of Roth's novels that I can really sink my teeth into.

Send it Back...
This was a really bad book by an incredible writer who was trying to do too much with too little. Some have argued that the story, told almost completely in dialogue form is a wonderful demonstration of stretching and using language to its fullest; all I came away with was a jumbled up mess and a feeling that much of my time was wasted. Since this is Philip Roth, one of the 4 or 5 best living writers on the planet, it's easy to be caught up in what he intends to accomplish and the way the title works on multiple levels all the way through the text. Unfortunately, this book is one of those duds that you hope you never have to see a gifted writer produce (Brazil by John Updike is another I can think of).

I really have no idea how people enjoyed this one. You're much better off reading anything, and I mean anything by Roth.

Required reading for the aspiring novelist
This is a novel written entirely in dialog. With
that limitaiton, Roth has to strech the limits of
dialog to the maximum in order to do the other
work of story-telling. There's atemptation to
make the dialog artificially descriptive or
discursive. In other words, this could get really
dull really fast.

For instance: two characters are in a room in
which they have met for a clandestine love affair.
Here's the dialog. . .

"Close you eyes.. . . . Let's see how much
attention you've been paying. Describe this room."

Now a lesser writer might have used this a way to
convey a blunt description. Roth instead allows the
second character to talk about (her?) reactions to
the room itself and her memories of other rooms. In
the course of this ramble, we're dealt bits of detail
that add up to a fairly rich picture of the original
room, and one that, because it's grounded in emotional
reactions, we're not tempted to skim over and forget.

The dialog, being Roth's, also has an unmistakeably
New York Jewish flavor. It is perhaps the most
successful modern rendition of that ethnic-regional
accent. Here's an instance:


"God, you are your father's son, arent't you?"

"Whose should I be instead?"

There is a certain fine ear for logic and a
certain tone-deafness to the sound of relationships
that has to make the knowing observer think about
the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It's a special
kind ouf speech and for this fine-tuning of the
ear- and for Roth's shrewd observations about
novel-writing- this is required reading.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from Kunati Books. ISBN 9781601640005

not as good as others he's written
American Pastoral - wow! i wish that i could write like that.
The Human Stain - wow! again
and then i tried to read Deception and i couldn't finish it - it's like ok i understand that your jewish - i get the picture already!

Not a Roth fan
I don't understand why so many people think Philip Roth is such an important writer, but I keep reading his books in an attempt to find out.In this spirit, I just finished_Deception_, which was recommended by a friend.But I didn't find the answer here.The dialogue in this all-dialogue novel is not at all convincing; the characters are not engaging in any way; and the "plot" (which is not revealed until the end, if indeed it is then) is too clever by half. If you're not already a Roth fan, don't bother; this is not the book that will make you one. ... Read more

Product Description
Now in hismid-thirties, Nathan Zuckerman, a would-be recluse despite his newfound fame as a bestselling author, ventures onto the streets of Manhattan in the final year of the turbulent sixties. Not only is he assumed by his fans to be his own fictional satyr, Gilbert Carnovsky ("Hey, you do all that stuff in that book?"), but he also finds himself the target of admonishers, advisers, and sidewalk literary critics. The recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead an unsettled Zuckerman to wonder if "target" may be more than a figure of speech.

In Zuckerman Unbound—the second volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound—the notorious novelist Nathan Zuckerman retreats from his oldest friends, breaks his marriage to a virtuous woman, and damages, perhaps irreparably, his affectionate connection to his younger brother...and all because of his great good fortune! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Many Great Rants and a Moving Portrayal of Family Ties
Roth tells two overlapping stories in ZUCKERMAN UNBOUND. In the first, he shows author Nathan Zuckerman trying to adjust to wealth and fame after his novel, Carnovsky, becomes a huge best-seller and the idea of Zuckerman as a crazed onanist enters the public domain. To explore the intrusion of celebrity in the bookish Zuckerman's life, Roth creates the amazing character Alvin Pepler, a fan who stalks Zuckerman and shows, through an array of rants, how the fickle public can turn on those it worships. For good reason, Roth calls the last of his three chapters featuring Pepler, "Oswald, Ruby, Et Al."

Meanwhile, the second story captures the family experience and emotional aftermath as Nathan's aged and demanding father dies in Florida. In this case, Roth explores the effect of the father on Nathan and his brother Henry, who lacked the strength to resist their father and became an unhappily married dentist in New Jersey. With this material, Roth shows the twisted anger and cruelty of Henry, who, in a fraternal way, also reacts to Carnovsky and its message of licentious growth. IMHO, the chapter telling this story, "Look Homeward, Angel", offers some of Roth's best and most moving writing.

A fine novel and recommended. And, I look forward to THE ANATOMY LESSON.

Zuckerman Part 2 (4.5 stars)
I might as well cut to the chase, this is a great book.As with Ghost Writer, it was hard for me to read in one or two sittings.Roth packs a lot in a short period of time.

Of course, parts of the book are based on Roth's life but others are not.You could drive yourself nuts trying to figure it out.So, as with the Boyhood, Youth, Summertime series by Coetzee, I simply pretended it was all fiction.Roth makes this a little hard to do because Zuckerman's fourth novel, Carnovsky, makes him rich and famous as did Roth's fourth novel, Portnoy's Complaint.The notoriety of Carnovsky is very similar to that of Portnoy.

Roth perfectly captures a person's move from obscurity to celebrity and the paranoia that develops as well as the need to still be normal.

In the novel, there appears a crazy, brilliant character, Alvin Pepler, a man famous briefly for his appearance on a game show.Zuckerman's interactions with Pepler are funny, confusing and serve to synthesize aspects of Zuckerman's celebrity.

Very interestingly, Pepler shows Zuckerman the start of a book review he wants to submit to a newspaper.It waxes on about the danger of an author's books being too directly based on real life events rather than fiction.Of course, this is undoubtedly how Roth himself is criticized.

Roth is a very good writer and he takes a small slice of time and weaves a very mutlifaceted and interesting piece of work from it.

I enjoyed Zuckerman Unbound.I preferred it to The Ghost Writer though I definitely think you need to read The Ghost Writer prior to Zuckerman Unbound.I have recently started The Anatomy Lesson and would make the same comment.At least the early Zuckerman novels should be read in sequence.

one of Roth's best books!
Roth is a great writer but I have always found his output a bit uneven. Some of his books such as this one are instant classics and others such as this novels sequel, "The Anatomy Lesson" are nothing special.

This book looks at a bookish writer who has achieved overnight notoriety with a Novel on American Jews with lots of Sex in it. This of course is referring to Roth's own breakthrough novel "Portnoy's Complaint" (and if you haven't read that go out and get it now!). The writer in the novel is called Zukerman and this character pops up in other Roth novels sometimes as the main character and sometimes in a bit part. Roth claims he is not based on himself but there are obvious similarities as already noted. Roth examines Zukermans' troubled relationship with his family, his ex, his fame and his wealth. At the same time there is a marvelous character called Alvin Pepler, one of those neurotic manic fast talking neurotic jokers that pop up in Roth's novels and make him such a joy to read. Pepper wants Zukerman's help, Zukerman sees him as a joker and then a bit of a stalker - it all works gloriously well. There is a manic energy in this novel that moves it along nicely but there is a lot of meat here and it is very very funny.

Fame and Pain
Two Great Male Narcissists, as writer David Foster Wallace termed them: Roth and Updike. Their respective famous fictional protagonists: Nathan Zuckerman, author, in the case of Roth, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, businessman, in the case of Updike.

The difference, is that while Updike writes about the American everyman, semi-sexist, middle of the road educated, normal dreams, ambitions, lifestyle; Roth takes for his subject the late 20th Century American beserk, from a quintessentially Jewish angle, in projecting his own concerns as a writer and a human being onto Zuckerman, who lists wildly from one crisis to another as he tries to cope with the fame from his position as one of America's most revered (and reviled) writers.

Zuckerman bound is a 500+ page volume of four Zuckerman novels - The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy. Together they work as a whole, reading them as one novel traces the oscillating arc of Zuckerman's consciousness from eager, striving 20 something writer visiting his hero, writer E.I. Lonoff in New England to the middle aged fictioneer, successful on the back of his novel of Jewish sexual guilt 'Carnovsky' and trying to make sense of his life and its themes. In Zuckerman Unbound, Roth's most clear disquisition on fame, and its fallouts, Zuckerman trying to live a normal life finds himself accosted by cranks, zealots, media junkies and celebrities. He takes a bashing for his percieved self hating Semitism, while his family attack him for betraying their secrets. In the Anatomy Lesson, Zuckerman suffering a mid -career attack of extreme physical pain - the tortured twisted spine, the inability to be comfortable to write single predicate, the wreck of his personal life - decides that a dramatic change of course is required. Training as a Doctor will be the tonic, providing stability and emotional value, something he feels is missing from his life as a man inclined to solitary musings bent over a typewriter. He learns valuable lessons from a mishap which leads him closer to the real centre of the health system than he would have wished.

The Prague Orgy, to conclude the volume, is a short story, 60 or so pages. Zuckerman is forced to review his position as a narcissistic emotional wreck atop the mountain of the biggest, wildest literary scene in the Free World. A visit to Communist Czechoslovakia to try and claim some Yiddish stories for a Czech friend he encounters in New York leads to an encounter with Olga, a vampish libertine sexually charged writer who tries to brow-beat him into marriage, and the Czech authorities, who take a very different view of the nature of freedom and the place of literature than Zuckerman does.

Over the course of the work, the pitch zig-zags furiously from the elegant and exquisite heights of descriptive prose to the oily, grotty gutters of the messed up psyche. It is a very personal breadth of fiction, the life of a writer forced through a fictional filter, often with seemingly minimal distillation process from life to art.

The dominant writers in second half 20th Century America - Roth, Updike, Bellow, have all taken their own lives as their great subject, in one form or another. They are truly narcissists in the magnitude of their ego, and the importance they place on every tiny machination of their soul. When they go (Bellow already, Roth and Updike, but especially Roth, railing against the dying of the light), the whole world, in their view, goes with them. David Foster Wallace makes this point very well in a scathing review of Updike collected in his essay Collection 'Consider the Lobster'. All three are great writers, but will their egos survive through the centuries like Homer's, like Dante's, like Shakespeare's? Or will they be remembered primarily as avid chroniclers of an age, but ultimately swept back, their places in the firmament shuffled along by new writers and new seers and new consciousnesses?

I venture the latter.

Roth's 'Zuckerman Trilogy:' Part 2.
Zuckerman Unbound (1981) resumes the story of Nathan Zuckerman that Philip Roth (1933) initiated in his previous novel, The Ghost Writer (1979). It is the second of nine novels to enlist Zuckerman as Roth's fictional alter ego.Zuckerman also appears as the narrator or protagonist in The Anatomy Lesson (1983), The Prague Orgy (1985), The Counterlife (1986), American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), The Human Stain: A Novel (2000), and Exit Ghost (2007).Set in 1969, Zuckerman Unbound finds Zuckerman, now a bestselling writer in his mid-thirties, twice divorced, separated from his third wife, Laura, and at odds with his younger brother, Henry, adjusting to the fame, wild notoriety, and unwanted attention resulting from his sexual bildungsroman, "Carnovsky" (which critics compare to "Portnoy's Complaint").His readers refuse to differentiate between Zuckerman, the celebrity writer, and Gilbert Carnovsky, his fictional creation.While success has put Zuckerman on the cover of Life magazine, he continues to ride the bus, eat in cheap delis, and walk the sidewalks of Manhattan, where he is constantly approached by both fans and kooks alike.In light of the recent murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., Zuckerman wonders if he, too, is a target, and if he wouldn't be better off living a more reclusive lifestyle.

G. Merritt ... Read more

Product Description
Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, "The Babe Ruth of the Big House," who never hit a home run sober. If you've never heard of them—or of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history—it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

In this ribald, richly imagined, and wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

A side-splitting romp
I'll divulge right away I've never been a huge Roth fan, but this book easily ranks as one of the funniest two or three novels I've ever read.So rich in characterization and detail, so epic in scope, it almost can't be appreciated in full on a first reading.This is actually good news, as even a second trip "around the bases" is sure to produces gales of laughter.A personal favorite, this is definitely one of those books I'd elect to have with me on a desert island. A modern classic.

America's Pastime - Baseball
I bought two copies of The Great American Novel, one to replace the original I had borrowed from an uncle and one which will be a great gift.I wore the original one out with tears of laughter shed during out loud fits on a quiet commercial air flight."The Starting LineUp" did that to me.

Baseball is such a sport of nuances and Roth plays on them delightfully and that's just one aspect of the humor.If you enjoy a very funny read pick this book.If you understand the infield fly rule and enjoy humor you should absolutely treat yourself to this story.

Roth pulling out all the comedic stops
This is Philip Roth's comic tour de force about a baseball team that is forced to play all its games on the road as a concession to WWII demands: its home stadium is needed as an embarkation point for soldiers going off to war. Using America's great national game, with all its mythology and legendary stereotypes (the Ruthian and Walter Johnson-like figures, the oddballs, the rabid fans, the greedy owners), Roth lets all his comic imagination run wild; it's a hilarious novel with no higher purpose thanbeing, well, hilarious. It's Roth announcing to the world, like the larger than life character in the book, pitcher Gil Gamesh, who pitches five shut outs in a row and once threw 77 straight strikes and threw the 78th pitch a ball just to keep the umpire awake, that he is the best, the greatest, capable of any and everything when it comes to comedic writing, no holds barred. Roth has an excellent feel for the game (thanks in part to a careful reading of Lawrence Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times"), and is as funny as Ring Lardner was in his baseball fiction, only wilder. The opening chapter, in which he revels in the sheer joy of using the English language as well as poking fun at Ernest Hemingway and other classic American writers, might be the best part of the book - sheer Rothian magic. This is Roth's funniest book and certainly one of the best baseball novels (though it's rarely cited as such, perhaps because there isn't much of a plot). A wonderful novel.

Pure Baseball Bliss
As a fan of Philip Roth, I approached this book about baseball with mixed emotions.After reading, I can say that this is one of Philip Roth's finest.Despite being forgotten among Roth's better known works, this book exceeded expectations in my view.

"The Great American Novel" is told from the perspective of sportswriter "Word" Smith.Smith brings to light a story omitted from American history, the third baseball league known as the Patroit League.While many of the stories seems eerily similar to real baseball stories, the tales go a step further.Just being introduced to the vagabonds known as the Ruppert Mundys is enough to make the average reader laugh aloud.From murderous pitcher Gil Gamesh to midgets and dwarfs in professional baseball through the communist scandals that ended the league and caused it to be erased from American history, it is difficult not to laugh.These fictional stories seem to parallel too well with this work of fiction.Even in the story of the performance enhancing food known as "Jewish Wheaties", Roth makes an eerie parallel to present baseball.

Baseball fans should should take delight in this book.I can say that it is among the best book I have read in some time.Fans of Philip Roth will enjoy this purely humorous side of his writing as this is his strongest effort in terms of humor.I highly recommend this book.

funniest book I ever read
Since I am a huge baseball fan, I have a peculiar ritual: every year before the season begins, I read The Great American Novel, a satire about baseball, among a lot of other things.This book never fails to make me laugh out loud! The first time you read about Gil Gamesh, the Babylonian pitcher, the Negro Patriot League, Jewish Wheaties, or the Ruppert Mundys, yopu will love this book as much as I do.Over the years, I have recommended this book to everyone I know who is a baseball fan, and every single person tells me that they love this book.I only wish that Philip Roth these days would stick closer to the comedic formulae that made his first books so funny and so great, instead of taking himself so seriously. The same thing happened to Woody Allen and his movies, and it's a shame......... ... Read more

Product Description
When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, in a nationwide radio address, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America towards a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but, upon taking office as the 33rd president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial 'understanding' with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and whose virulent anti-Semitic policies he appeared to accept without difficulty. What then followed in America is the historical setting for this startling new novel by Pulitzer-prize winner Philip Roth, who recounts what it was like for his Newark family - and for a million such families all over the country - during the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when American citizens who happened to be Jews had every reason to expect the worst. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

What if
It is Newark, NJ, 1940.Charles Lindbergh is the Republican nominee.The narrator, Philip Roth, is seven.His brother Sandy is twelve.Work, more than religion, defines their neighborhood.The children are playing a new game, I Declare War.

Lindbergh campaigns in the Spirit of St. Louis.Lindbergh wins.Friends talk of migrating to Canada.Hitler and Lindbergh negotiate something termed the Icelandic Understanding.The Hawaiian Understanding is signed with a representative of the Japanese Imperial Government.Americans are pleased to have no war and no young men fighting.

On a visit to Washington D.C. the family has to leave a hotel where a room had been reserved in advance.The father, Herman, finds himself at the center of a heated discussion in a cafeteria.A cousin goes to Canada to volunteer to fight in the war.He returns, injured, with a leg gone.Philip becomes a sort of valet to his cousin, Alvin.

Herman Roth agonizes over the progress of the war.The mother, Bess, works in a store in an attempt to save some money for a move to Canada if necessary.Ribbentrop visits the United States in 1942.Walter Winchell calls this the end of Lindbergh's honeymoon with the American people.Lindbergh's response is low-key, taciturn, effective.

The family's older son, Sandy, receives an invitation to the White House because he has gained notoriety as an artistic member of the regime's youth organization.Sandy's father, Herman, feels that he should not go.Herman is supposed to to be transferred from the Newark office of his insurance company, Metropolitan, to one in Kentucky.This is to enable the family to participate in a program called Homestead 42.

It is for the reader to discover all of the rest of the changes, reversals of fortune, and anxieties burdening the narrator's family as events unfold.There is a section to the book termed Postscript enabling the author to give information concerning the actual people in his novel.In true postmodern fashion, the family of the narrator and the narrator himself have the same names as the author.It is clear that Philip Roth has improved upon the attempt of Sinclair Lewis in showing what America would have been like under World War II fascism.

Well Mr. Roth may be a Pulitzer Prize winner . .
but, this book certainly didn't seem to me to be worthy of a prize winning author.

I purchased this book thinking that it would be a story about what the US might have been like if Lindbergh had become president in the early 1940s, but the 1st third of the book (and all I could read) was strictly about how this whole process affected the Jews.Now I'm sure that Jews in this country might have been treated differently with Lindbergh as president, but I was really hoping for some other topics to be covered, like how the isolationist policies would affect the US?Would we have found ourselves with no trading partners?If we had a different attitude, would Japan still have bombed Perl Harbor?If we had stayed out of the war, would we have supplied arms to either side of the conflict?

But in the part of the book I read, we focused on a Jewish family and only on that family and how their life was affected.Before I quit reading I started flipping pages and scanning to see if this book was ever going to move on to a different subject and I kept seeing phrases like " the massacre of Russian Jewry", "what their Gentile betters", "for the Jewish insurance agents", "Jew-hating Christian Front", and on and on.So, I decided that this book was not going to be what I had hoped and just stopped reading and moved on.

My star ratings:

One star - couldn't finish the book

Two stars - read the book, but did a lot of skipping or scanning. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection or search out other books by the author

Three stars - enjoyable read. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection. Would judge other books by the author individually.

Four stars - Liked the book. Would keep the book or would look for others by the same author.

Five stars - One of my all time favorites. Will get a copy in hardback to keep and will actively search out others by the same author.

Chilling
This book created in me a fascinating mix of feelings.I did not want to continue reading for a variety of reasons.First of all, the plot did not seem to progress.There just was not that much activity.There was a lot of fear, a lot of suspicions, but very little action.Secondly, it did not feel good to read.It did not rise to the glorious state of joy nor sink into the painful abyss of tragedy.It felt rather like floating through a marsh.Third, I did not particularly relate to or care about any of the characters.Now, hearing that, you may be surprised that I would recommend the book, but I am recommending it for a variety of reasons.I believe that all of the aspects of the book that seem to make the reader immediately want to return it to the shelf are important and purposeful.Roth was writing a book to create the very uncomfortable feelings you will probably experience while reading, which is quite daring for an author.First, the lack of action displays how quietly and subtly changes in our government can occur.The United States may have been immune to physical attacks or hostile coup d'etats, but how does our liberty stand up to a slow and secret shift toward fascism?Second, the lack of strong feelings one way or another reveal in ourselves the ability to be persuaded to believe very different things.Lastly, the ambivalent feelings we have toward the characters also presents a strong point.Are we as Americans willing to stand up and protect people that we do not know and maybe don't even like?It is an interesting book, and I think it ought to be on many reading lists, especially in light of our current political situation.Perhaps there is no risk of the country becoming a Nazi stronghold, but what other fate waits for our nation if we do not pay very close attention to the subtle changes?

entertaining but over the top
The first 75% of the book, describing the rise of President Lindbergh and his relatively mild anti-Semitism, worked for me: it was entertaining yet not completely implausible.The last 25% of the book (in which Vice-President Wheeler, in real life a perfectly respectable Democrat, leads a Nazi coup, inspires anti-Jewish pogroms, and after a week is overthrown as suddenly as he is installed) was a bit too ridiculous to be plausible.

This book makes my hair stand on end.
Let me qualify by first saying I am a huge fan of Roth's. This book is right up there with "The Human Stain" and "American Pastoral," although it has a completely different structure. It's a "what if" story revolving around FDR's loss of a third term to Charles Lindbergh, who runs on a platform that has a single issue - staying out of the war in Europe, which is accelerating because of actions by Hitler. Lindbergh's anti-Semetic agenda is feared by the Jews of Newark, and the book is told from the viewpoint of a pre-adolescent boy living there during this time. It's a chilling account of how government (lead by a popular and compelling President) can subversively take over the hearts and minds of a nation and cause havoc of a chilling nature. I'm not completely finished with the book yet, and I'm counting on Roth to give a satisfying ending. I don't think this is one of Roth's big commercial successes in the long list of his novels, but it should be. ... Read more

Product Description
In Philip Roth’s intimate intellectual encounters with an international and diverse cast of writers, they explore the importance of region, politics and history in their work and trace the imaginative path by which a writer’s highly individualized art is informed by the wider conditions of life.

With Primo Levi, Roth discusses the stubborn core of rationality that helped the Italian chemist-writer survive the demented laboratory of Auschwitz. With Milan Kundera, he analyzes the mix of politics and sexuality that made him the most subversive writer in communist Czechoslovakia. With Edna O’Brien, he explores the circumstances that have forced generations of Irish writers into exile. Elsewhere Roth offers appreciative portraits of two friends—the writer Bernard Malamud and the painter Philip Guston—at the end of their careers, and gives us a masterful assessment of the work of Saul Bellow. Intimate, charming, and crackling with ideas about the interplay between imagination and the writer’s historical situation, Shop Talk is a literary symposium of the highest level, presided over by America’s foremost novelist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Writers are All Strange Creatures!
I first bought this book because I was doing research on Philip Roth. I did find it interesting at times. I thought he should have mentioned that Primo Levi committed suicide later on. I enjoy him with other writers. I think we writers are a strange bunch of creatures. After all, the process of writing can be long, complicated, distracted, frightening, and even procrastinated by the writers themselves. Let's face it, writers like Roth, Levi, Singer, and others are always going to be mysterious to those who don't write. Believe me, it takes years to be good at anything and then you second guess yourself. If you're not your worst critic, than you will still put out stuff to please the audiences. I thought it was fascinating that Roth traveled to Turin to meet with Levi who survived the Holocaust and returned to his Italian home. I thought it was fascinating that he spent time with Malamud and Singer, other Jewish writers. No matter what your ethnicity or religion, writers are all strange creatures, myself included.

A small but excellent Rothian miscellany
Roth writes more about other writers here than he does about himself. He played a significant role in helping Eastern European writers from lands of repression break the silence imposed by the Iron Curtain. Here he talks with two of the best of them, Milan Kundera and Ivan Klima.
He also has conversations with two of the most important writers about the 'Holocaust', Primo Levi and Aharon Applefeld.
There is a short interview with I.B. Singer in which he asks about Bruno Schultz.
Roth is not simply a very careful and considered craftsman, he is one who has learned much from studying the writing of others.
In this work we see his capacity to let 'the other' have the floor.
An outstanding small work, which also tells us something about the tastes and values of one of America's great writers, Philip Roth.

A Useful, But Unremarkable, Collection of Rothiana
"Shop Talk" is a collection of ten previously published interviews, essays and recollections by Philip Roth. The pieces originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. There is nothing really new in this collection, some of the interviews going back nearly thirty years and addressing literary matters that are now of no more than historical interest.

Apart from his own writing, Roth has been involved over the years in publishing the work of Eastern European authors. I think, especially, of the numerous books published by Penguin, with Roth's imprimatur, in the "Writers from the Other Europe" series. I also think of Roth's active support (through PEN and otherwise) of those writers who were, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet monolith, writing under the repression of Eastern Bloc governments. Accordingly, and not surprisingly, the most interesting of the pieces in "Shop Talk" are the contrapuntal interviews with the Czech authors, Ivan Klima (interviewed in 1990) and Milan Kundera (interviewed in 1980). While these two interviews are, alas, somewhat dated, they do provide interesting insights into the literary-historical struggle that marked writing from that country over the past several decades.

"Shop Talk" also contains interviews with the late Primo Levi (from 1986) and Aharon Appelfeld (from 1988) that provide useful, albeit well-known, insights into the biographical peculiarities that have informed their writing. There are also shorter interviews with the late Isaac Bashevis Singer (from 1976) on the topic of Bruno Schulz (another Eastern European writer) and the Irish writer Edna O'Brien.

In addition to the interviews, there are three other pieces. One is a short vignette of Roth's relationship with Bernard Malamud, published shortly after Malamud's death in March of 1986. The second is a similar piece on the artist Philip Guston, who became a friend of Roth's while both lived in Woodstock, New York, in the 1970s. The article contains several whimsical illustrations that Guston gave Roth depicting Roth's character, David Kepesh, the professor who turned into a female breast in Roth's novel "The Breast." Last, there is a discussion of the works of Saul Bellow, the most recent of the pieces in this collection (published in The New Yorker in 2000). It is a discussion that can be fully appreciated only if you've read Bellow's works.

"Shop Talk" is, in short, a useful compendium of previous published pieces, albeit a compendium which provides nothing new. It would have benefited, perhaps, from an introductory essay from Roth to place these pieces in perspective.

A Useful, But Unremarkable, Collection of Rothiana
"Shop Talk" is a collection of ten previously published interviews, essays and recollections by Philip Roth.The pieces originally appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair.There is nothing really new in this collection, some of the interviews going back nearly thirty years and addressing literary matters that are now of no more than historical interest.

Apart from his own writing, Roth has been involved over the years in publishing the work of Eastern European authors.I think, especially, of the numerous books published by Penguin, with Roth's imprimatur, in the "Writers from the Other Europe" series. I also think of Roth's active support (through PEN and otherwise) of those writers who were, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet monolith, writing under the repression of Eastern Bloc governments.Accordingly, and not surprisingly, the most interesting of the pieces in "Shop Talk" are the contrapuntal interviews with the Czech authors, Ivan Klima (interviewed in 1990) and Milan Kundera (interviewed in 1980).While these two interviews are, alas, somewhat dated, they do provide interesting insights into the literary-historical struggle that marked writing from that country over the past several decades.

"Shop Talk" also contains interviews with the late Primo Levi (from 1986) and Aharon Appelfeld (from 1988) that provide useful, albeit well-known, insights into the biographical peculiarities that have informed their writing.There are also shorter interviews with the late Isaac Bashevis Singer (from 1976) on the topic of Bruno Schulz (another Eastern European writer) and the Irish writer Edna O'Brien.

In addition to the interviews, there are three other pieces.One is a short vignette of Roth's relationship with Bernard Malamud, published shortly after Malamud's death in March of 1986.The second is a similar piece on the artist Philip Guston, who became a friend of Roth's while both lived in Woodstock, New York, in the 1970s.The article contains several whimsical illustrations that Guston gave Roth depicting Roth's character, David Kepesh, the professor who turned into a female breast in Roth's novel "The Breast."Last, there is a discussion of the works of Saul Bellow, the most recent of the pieces in this collection (published in The New Yorker in 2000).It is a discussion that can be fully appreciated only if you've read Bellow's works.

"Shop Talk" is, in short, a useful compendium of previous published pieces, albeit a compendium which provides nothing new.It would have benefited, perhaps, from an introductory essay from Roth to place these pieces in perspective. ... Read more

Product Description
Sabbath's Theater is a comic creation of epic proportions, and Mickey Sabbath is its gargantuan hero. Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his long-time mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past. Bereft and grieving, besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.Amazon.com Review
Mickey Sabbath, the hero in Sabbath's Theater, the winner ofthe 1995 National Book Award, makes a concerted effort to be bad. LikeAlexander Portnoy, the famously self-abusing character in Roth's 1969 novelPortnoy's Complaint, Sabbathhas an appetite for "acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism,auto-eroticism and oral coitus." But while Portnoy's antics were usuallycomical and liberating, Sabbath often feels imprisoned by his own acts ofself-indulgence. Though his frantic pursuit of sex is a desperate attempt toabate his anxieties about death, it only serves to obliterate any semblanceof real life he could have had. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (64)

One Paradigm
This book contains one of the best portrayals of addiction there is.On a par with Under the Volcano.Just as Under the Volcano gave nearly as much time to the Consul's release as to his pain in his last day, this book revels in the pleasure that Mickey got in his last days remembered and otherwise - and it's not trivial, but awe-inspiringly transgressive fun.Of course,"addiction" is only one of the paradigms that one might use to analyze the book, but I believe the ferocity of Sabbath's pursuit of his path is unmistakeable.His wife's recovery, portrayed as a shallow - or worse, uninteresting - quest in Mickey's eyes, is a sly commentary on this issue, perhaps.And more often than not, use of the word "addiction" is neither analytical or descriptive.It's a terribly determinative word for a novel, comic or tragic.Nevertheless, it's clear that addiction/allergy is a progressive condition - ultimately fatal to all relationships, including the one between the addict and himself.By never taking the issue on directly or dealing in pat diagnoses, bromidic solutions, easy generalizations and the like, Roth makes the "predictable" downward spiral so much more powerful and inescapably human.

Depth beyond the self-indulgence (4.25*s)
This acclaimed novel by Roth is at times brilliant, provocative, entertaining, insightful, and certainly erotic, but it can also be tedious, repetitious, morose, and self-indulgent. Sixty-four-year-old Mickey Sabbath, a Jewish, unemployed arthritic puppeteer, has come to a point where he realizes that his life has been pretty much pointless and wasted. The death of his older brother Mort in WWII some fifty years prior seemed to unmoor him, leading to a life of drifting and marginal enterprises. The one constant in his life is his obsession with women, where his verbal abilities and aggressiveness have served him well. His Indecent Theater act on the streets of NYC with his finger puppeteering was especially effective in attracting intrigued females.

The sudden end of his long standing, highly gratifying relationship with a married Croatian innkeeper and a fellow sexual adventurer Drenka has precipitated a crisis in his life. In the past, he has rebounded from failures with women. He drove his current wife to drink and into rehab and his first wife simply disappeared. But now as Mickey reflects on all of this history, he begins to really struggle with what the future holds for him.

It may not be easy to journey with Mickey on his path of self-analysis; he is not even especially likeable. But for those who can get past the self-indulgent behavior, there is a lot of depth waiting to be plumbed. It might well take a reread to fully appreciate this book.

Sex and death
Philip Roth, at surely what must be the height of his powers, does not shy away from dealing with the fundamentally depressing, ecstatic and utterly tragic aspects of life here on earth. 'All human life is here' (to quote from the masthead of a sordid UK Sunday tabloid newspaper) but - unlike in the newspaper mentioned, when all was for prurient thrills - here 'all human life' is given its due and accorded reverence or ridicule, as appropriate ...however tragic, difficult to deal with, and horribly real. The descriptions in the final pages of the scenes in which Sabbath and his beloved mistress - dying of cancer in hospital - share recollections of their (some might say, perverse) sexual ecstasies while her body decays and morphine takes over her mind may be hard for some to take. But they are convincing, and they speak of a real love that transcends the physical. Those recollections are what Drenka and Sabbath had to hang on to in the knowledge of her certain death, and they celebrate the life they had together. I don't see anything wrong with that, and the writing moved me to tears.

There have been a few harsh words written in these webpages about this novel. One comment that I completely disagreed with was: 'This book does nothing to diminish the oft-voiced critique that Roth understands men at their worst quite well--and women not at all.' As a woman, having read it twice (and along with other Roth novels) I beg to differ.

I found this novel engrossing, entertaining, intelligent, and deeply moving.

Morris Sabbath, Puppeteer, 64, Dies--Did Nothing for Israel
"Sabbath's Theater" is an enthralling, comical novel that tells the story of Mickey Sabbath, a lecherous, manipulating 64-year-old man. Mickey is a former puppeteer and producer of Sabbath's Indecent Theater in the late 1950s near Columbia University. Using his fingers to get female students' attention and enticing them into allowing him to unbutton their blouse, he succeeds twice; the last one leading to his arrest on indecent exposure charges. His subsequent prosecution ends that enterprise. Following his wife Nikki's disappearance thirty years ago, Mickey relocated to Madamaska Falls in upstate NY. There he marries Roseanne, a recovering alcoholic and to whom he's never nice. Mickey, unemployed for the last thirty years and suffering from arthritis, isn't an easy man to like having an unsurpassed penchant for exaggerating his difficulties. He's a serial adulterer who's afflicted with Eros that even at 64 he has a robust appetite for sex and routinely disregards social conventions regarding sex. Drenka, a Croatian immigrant and like Mickey a serial adulterer, is his mistress of thirteen years. She gives him an ultimatum in the beginning of the novel: they either enter a sexually exclusive relationship or end the relationship. As the reader would later learn Drenka is dying of ovarian cancer, but doesn't tell Mickey right away. Experiencing a tumult caused by the death of his mistress and lacking another partner, Mickey is unhinged even suicidal. He thinks his dead mother's ghost surrounds him wanting to communicate with him. After an argument with Roseanne he drives to NJ where he grew up. On his way there he reminisces about his parents, his older brother Morty who influenced him deeply and was shot down by the Japanese in WWII forever sowing in Mickey antipathy toward the Japanese. Mr. Roth possesses an extraordinary skill for describing the emotions people experience when they face a loss. He illustrates how profoundly Morty's death affected the parents and changed their lives forever. Given the themes in the novel it's likely that one would either love it or hate it. I liked it enough to give it four stars. Philip Roth here, as in his other books involving neurotic heroes seeking transcendence, doesn't disappoint.

Never Again
I have read Philip Roth before and have enjoyed his work.This particular book is ulnlreadable and unworthy in my estimation.

I bought the book on sale and obviously paid too much for it in my estimation.

I did not enjoy the main character and did not enjoy the plot, what there was of it that I could find.

I am happy that others seemed to enjoy the book much better than did I knowing what it takes to write a book.

Sorry, but I will be careful about selecting a future book of his to read.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Mam, and the 'Isms'" ... Read more

Product Description
For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities, leading the critic Harold Bloom to proclaim Roth “our foremost novelist since Faulkner.” Roth’s comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assault on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our time. By special arrangement with the author, The Library of America continues the definitive edition of Roth’s collected works.

This fifth volume of The Library of America’s definitive edition of Philip Roth’s collected works presents four books that exemplify the description of Roth, proposed by British novelist Anthony Burgess, as a writer “who never steps twice into the same river.” The Counterlife (1986) is a novel told from conflicting perspectives about people enacting drastic dreams of renewal and escape. The Facts (1988)—the first of the “Roth Books”—is a novelist’s autobiography in which the author presents his own battles defictionalized and unadorned. In the second Roth book, Deception (1990), a married American named Philip, living in London, and the married Englishwoman who is his mistress meet sporadically in a secret trysting place where the woman eloquently reveals herself to her lover as they talk before and after making love. In the third Roth book, Patrimony (1991), the author watches as his 86-year-old father, Herman Roth, battles a fatal brain tumor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Roth's transformation from literary provocateur to literary master
Library of America's Philip Roth: Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991 collects two novels -- The Counterlife and Deception -- and two nonfictionish books -- The Facts and Patrimony. Roth's earliest work in books like Goodbye, Columbus and Letting Go showcase a gifted apprentice writer grappling with his masters, as far as I can tell mostly Henry James. His first big commercial success is Portnoy's Complaint, in which he abandons clockwork prose for rip-roaring dramatic monologue. To my taste, the books that immediately follow Portnoy -- Our Gang, The Breast, and The Great American Novel -- show a writer with sufficient power to do whatever he wants in the act of squandering his time and talent on farcical stuff that doesn't add up to much. But then something happens. Roth pens Zuckerman Unbound, a trilogy and epilogue of metafictional novels featuring Roth doppelganger Nathan Zuckerman. Roth is still not afraid to transgress, but now it's to more serious ends, and the work still holds up today. Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991 represents the period immediately following Zuckerman Unbound. Here we see the beginning of Roth's transformation from literary provocateur to literary master in The Counterlife, and from aging adolescent to grownup in the nonfiction narratives, particularly in Patrimony, which is a forthright wrestling with his father's death. These books prefigure Roth's greatest achievement, the run of Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain, the first two of which might likely be the most accomplished works of fiction of the century's last twenty-five years. Reading them together and in order for the first time, in addition to being a deeply pleasurable experience, has been an education in how a good writer teaches himself, mid-career and book-by-book, to become a great writer.

A Collection From One of the Major Living Writers
The Modern Library continues its collection of the works of Philip Roth, with four novels, three of which are part of the "Roth books", novelizations of Roth's life. The books reprinted are The Counterlife (1986), The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988), Deception (1990), and Patrimony: A True Story (1991). The last three are the Roth books, with The Facts being Roth's memoir, told through his alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman; "Deception" being a novel of adultery told by "Philip," a writer that writes about a character named Zuckerman; and Patrimony, where Roth tells the story of his father's battle with a brain tumor. Roth is one of the major living writers, and with John Ashbery, is the only living author who's work is being reprinted by the Library of America.

Brilliant 5th volume
This 5th volume of the Library of America's collected works of Philip Roth brings together some of Roth's most fascinating views on what it really means to be a writer, a son, and a famous man in contemporary America. Building on the earlier Zuckerman voice and narrative style, but in no way using them as a crutch, these four books are splendid, and in retrospect, they truly foreshadow the "GD of Letters" that Roth has become these last two decades.

The fifth and latest volume in the outstanding Library of America series
Philip Roth emerged as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century and a man whose talents were to stretch the boundaries of western literature and bring new life into American fiction. Capably edited by Ross Miller (Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Connecticut), "Philip Roth: Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991" is the fifth and latest volume in the outstanding Library of America series showcasing the work of this American literary giant. These writings are taking from the author's mid-career and include 'The Counterlife', a ground-breaking novel which was published in 1986; 'The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography' published in 1988 and represents Roth's professional memoir; 'Deception', a candid noel of adultery published in 1990; and 'Patrimony: A True Story' which, published in 1991, received the National Book Critics Circle Award and is the story of the author observing his 86-year-old father Herman Roth unrelenting struggle against a fatal brain tumor. Published on acid-free paper, "Philip Roth: Novels and Other Narratives 1986-1991" is a critically essential addition to academic and community library American Literature reference collections and 20th Century American Literature supplemental student reading lists. ... Read more

Product Description
At forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a mysterious affliction—pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the pain and nobody can assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain can have been caused by his own books. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers grows into an addiction to vodka, marijuana, and Percodan.

The Anatomy Lesson is a great comedy of illness written in what the English critic Hermione Lee has described as "a manner at once...brash and thoughtful... lyrical and wry, which projects through comic expostulations and confessions...a knowing, humane authority." The third volume of the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman Bound, The Anatomy Lesson provides some of the funniest scenes in all of Roth's fiction as well as some of the fiercest. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

My first book by Roth
I must say, I never got engrossed in the book.I never stop reading books, no matter how uninteresting, but I just couldn't get into it and struggled constantly to figure out what was happening.Seemed to be quite a bit of ranting and raving and non-stop monologues or one-sided conversations about random stuff.Just wasn't impressed, maybe the reader would be better off starting with the first of the Zuckerman series' and working their way down?

Hilarious, Brilliantly Layered, Fascinating
In THE ANATOMY LESSON, Nathan Zuckerman, the author of the notorious best-seller "Carnovksy" suffers from an incapacitating pain in the neck. "The muscle soreness he could manage, the tenderness, the tautness, the spasm, all of that he could take... but not this steadily burning thread of fire that went white-hot with the minutest bob or flick of the head."

Nathan has not written a good page of fiction since the death of his father three years before. Importantly his father considered "Carnovksy" to be thinly disguised ridicule of the Zuckerman family and their first-generation Jewish culture. And, on his deathbed, his father may have called Nathan a bastard. At least, that's what Henry, Nathan's competitive brother, and another family member offended by "Carnovksy", says he heard.

In TAL, Roth explores the connections between Nathan's pain and writer's block, his subject of conflict across generations, and his successful novel, which characters who are not family members describe as opening a fond "floodgate of memories" of Newark before World War II or as "one genial trick after another."

In doing so, Roth shows the self-medicating Nathan becoming enraged with Milton Appel, a distinguished magazine critic who shares Zuckerman's themes while claiming Nathan disparages Jews. Then, Roth shows Nathan unexpectedly recovering his hilarious and licentious Carnovksy-voice as he takes a trip to Chicago, where the Percodan-and-vodka-crazed Nathan presents himself as Milton Appel, a loathsome but brilliant pornographer.

In TAL, poor Nathan worries that he may have lost his subject, with the death of his parents and the disappearance of Jewish Newark. He worries that "the aim of the affliction mightn't be to provide a fresh subject, the anatomy's gift to the vanishing muse." In this pain-dominated world, writing, which Nathan once saw as a "field of gigantic capacities... to engulf and purify life" has become "ten talons clawing at twenty-six letters." Even so, THE ANATOMY LESSON is largely a wild and funny ride, with Nathan ultimately facing the true reach of his gifts.

Highly recommended.

My Favorite Of The Early Zuckerman Novels (4.5 stars)
The third of the Zuckerman novels was my favorite.I found it very, very funny.

Nathan Zuckerman, has pain and a major writer's block.Is the pain unexplainable or does his writing need it.The source is very unclear.He does spend a lot of time in his apartment, on his back, being serviced by one of his four girlfriends who are all very different.

His mother's death has caused guilt.His enormous success has caused guilt.He questions the value of being a writer and thinks about doing something more worthwhile like becoming a doctor.

There's a period of the book where he simply pretends to be a pornographer and publisher of Lickety Split magazine.That whole section is uproariously funny.His whole trip to Chicago is actually very funny.

Mix everything together with his guilt about his portrayal of Jews in his novels and Roth has created a very funny book.

Zuckerman reminded me a lot of Larry David in the TV show "Curb Your Enthusiasm".

I enjoyed The Anatomy Lesson very much but definitely suggest reading The Ghost Writer and Zuckerman Unbound first.the first two books provide a lot of context for this one.

Not as good as the others
This is the third novel in a trilogy Roth wrote (The Ghost Writer and Zukerman Unbound were the first two) and is a bit of a let down. Zukerman is ill and most of the novel flat on his back. Apart from the sections where his lady friends cheer him up by sitting on him (well it is a Roth novel!) most of the book is too introspective and repetitive. If you have read the first two then you might want to read this one but frankly there are many other better Roth novels.

my first Roth book was a delight
This was my first Philip Roth book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I thought the descriptions of the pain that Zuckerman felt were brilliant.
One passage where he describes one of his women cooking him rice pudding because he shredded his stomach with painkillers sticks in my mind.
I loved being inside his head. I also found Zuckerman to be rebellious in a human way. I enjoyed the ride. ... Read more

Product Description
Time Magazine Best American Novel (1993)

In this fiendishly imaginative book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator.

With excruciating suspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a cast of characters that includes Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, an accused war criminal, and an enticing charter member of an organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousness and high comedy, history and nightmare.Amazon.com Review
Philip Roth's very literary novels, most famously Portnoy's Complaint, have alwayshad the feel of confessional autobiography. Operation Shylock boastsnot only a character named Philip Roth, a Jewish-American novelist, but animpostor who is claiming to be him. Roth's impostor causes a furor in Israelby advocating "Diasporism," the polar opposite of Zionism, encouragingIsraelis to return home to eastern Europe. In Israel the real Roth attendsthe trial of a former Nazi, and also observes at a West Bank military courtdealing harshly with young Palestinians. Through stark counterpoint betweendistorted doubles, along with his trademark bawdy humor, Roth comicallyexplores the tensions of his identity as a writer, as a Jew, and as a humanbeing. Operation Shylock won the PEN/Faulkner Award for 1994. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Moishe Pipik impersonates Philip Roth and then some.
"Operation Shylock," Philip Roth's 1993 novel about a Philip Roth look alike in Jerusalem espousing a reverse exodus of the European Jews, is animated with several lively characters. The novel addresses topics as varied as impersonation, Jewish nationalism, Palestinian struggle for freedom, coping with Jewish hatred through Anti-Semites Anonymous, perception of Jews in the world now when they have a country and espionage. All the events outlined in the book take place amid the trial of John Demjanjuk in Israel, a former Cleveland autoworker accused of being Ivan the Terrible and working at Treblinka extermination camp. The main story unfold like this: While recuperating in NY from a minor knee surgery and coping with Halcion-induced break down, Philip Roth (the writer) hears about another Philip Roth, his impersonator (Moishe Pipik), in Jerusalem talking about diasporism of the European Jews back to countries they left in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Pretending to be Philip Roth (the writer), Pipik secures a meeting with influential figures like Walesa, the founder of Solidarity movement in Poland while at the same time making ridiculous statements. Roth is aggrieved. Despite poor health and vulnerable mental state with ongoing hallucinations and against the advice of his wife, Roth heads to Jerusalem to confront Pipik. When they meet he is awed by their uncanny resemblance down to their taste in clothes. But Roth is on the offensive from the beginning threatening Pipik with a lawsuit if he doesn't end the impersonation. Pipik, an American Jew and former Chicago detective who's suffering from cancer about which we learn later, is reluctant to acquiesce arguing if the Jews don't leave Israel there would be another Holocaust this time committed by the Arabs. Roth is incensed when Pipik minimizes the extent of harm done to his reputation by the impersonation and becomes convinced of his shady character. Wanda Jane (Jinx) Possesski is Pipik's girlfriend and a former nurse who accidentally killed a patient by disregarding the doctor's orders to limit opiate pain killers to a patient who appears addicted. Roth, as is his penchant since becoming a famous author, describes her in glowing detail reminding a reader familiar with his oeuvre of his worship of a quintessential shiksa. She's also a recovering anti-Semite claiming she developed hatred of Jews by being exposed to Jewish doctors and is overcoming her condition with Pipik's help by adhering to the tenets of Anti-Semites Anonymous. George Ziad, Roth's friend at the University of Chicago from the 1960s, whom he accidentally meets in Israel, is a Christian-Palestinian nationalist. He works as a university professor and has lived in Ramallah with his family for many years. Now because of the occupation he speaks and breathes the Palestinians' struggle for independence and explains why the Palestinians appear unhinged and hopeless to outsiders. At times he seems paranoid for his lack of convictions that something could happen by happenstance. Lastly, Smilesburger is a Mossad spy chief who believes some European Jews are financing the PLO and that George Ziad is involved with them. He recruits Roth to undertake a covert operation to Europe to find out whether it's true. At the end of the novel, when the operation becomes part of a Roth book, he threatens Roth to remove the last chapter containing details of the operation that could be damaging to Israel. Throughout the novel, the interest in the story is derived from the fact that Roth and Pipik are look likes, are often mistaken for one another and, in such instances, end up impersonating each other. The reader notices and appreciates the author's skill to demonstrate Roth's unhinged state of mind and confusion about the events unfolding around him. Being in Israel, not able to speak Hebrew and regarded with suspicion by the orthodox Jews about his loyalty to Israel, he's right to worry. In the end, the result is a satisfying novel about things people have strong opinions on.

Identity crisis?
I have read elsewhere that when he had finished writing this book, Roth considered it his finest creation and the pinnacle of his career.He was therefore quite dismayed by the lukewarm critical reception it received and by the subsequently poor sales.The poor sales are not so surprising, since this not the type of book that would appeal to mass market readers, but the tepid critical reaction is harder to understand.This may not be Roth's finest creation, but it is certainly a thought-provoking work of considerable daring and imagination.

In the latter part of his career, the theme of identity seems to have played an increasingly important role in Roth's creations.He dealt with this theme brilliantly in "The Counterlife," wherein Roth's creation Nathan Zuckerman seems to have an amorphous identity that he exchanges with, among others, his brother.In "Operation Shylock" Roth teases us even further by naming his principal character Philip Roth and by daring us to guess whether the things that happened in the book actually happened to the author Philip Roth.As if this weren't enough, the book has a second character named Philip Roth, who is an imposter assuming the identity of the "real" Philip Roth.(We never learn who the imposter really is.)This "identity crisis" is interspersed throughout the book with several real life events taking place in 1988, principally the trial of John Demjanjuk, allegedly "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka; the beginnings of the First Intifada; and Roth's genuine interviews with Aharon Appelfeld.There are several important characters who may or may not be real: Roth's Palestinian Arab friend from his college days, George Ziad, who is now an embittered hater of Israel; a Mossad agent named Smilesburger; and a Polish-American nurse, and lover of the imposter, nicknamed "Jinx." (Are we meant to read something into her name?I'm not sure.)

The imposter is promulgating a patently absurd doctrine that he calls Diasporism, which could be defined as the opposite of Zionism: it is the doctrine that Ashkenazic Jews should leave Israel and return to their real homeland, Europe, and especially eastern Europe.He states that he has met with Lech Walesa, who has assured him that he supports this idea and who states that Jews will be welcome in Poland.The author outlines the arguments for Diasporism so well that it is tempting to wonder whether he himself actually supports them.But like much else in this book, we will never know.

To tell much more than this of the plot would involve spoilers, so I will not go further.I will only say that we are left to ponder what is and is not real, not just in this book but in our own lives as well.And I think that this is precisely Roth's intent.I don't think "Operation Shylock" is as good as "The Counterlife," but it is a fascinating, intelligent, and thought-provoking read.Highly recommended.

Operation Shylock by Philip Roth
Operation Shylock is the ultimate modern absurdist novel, a big messy canvas of ideas, neuroses, recriminations, self-doubt, and moral play. It works as an end result of an immense bout of creativity from an author who most likely had been pondering its larger themes throughout his life and, within the bare-bones storyline of the book, finally able to channel all his feelings out. The protagonist here is Philip Roth himself, and we follow him during a chaotic period of time during a trip to Jerusalem. He is being followed by a Diasporist with a striking resemblance to him, and who uses the likeness to piggyback off Roth's fame to give his motivations (the exodus of Jews from Israel and back into Poland) credence with the Palestinians. Roth himself is ambivalent about such a radical thought, and in his quest to get away from the impostor goes down a crazy road of identity (real and fake) and Israeli adventure.

The book is essentially a treatise of ideas and feelings, an insane inner dialogue that Roth is having with himself. The great majority of the time it is incredible reading. Even during the parts where you cannot empathize or connect with what he is saying, there is always his consummate skill as a writer to keep you engaged and impressed. There are a few sections here and there which are rather dry, and the summary makes for quite dense reading, but even these are not imposing enough to take away from the overall strength of the piece. This is one of Roth's masterworks, but I strongly encourage new Roth readers to try one of his countless easier works for their introduction to him.

Great fiction!
I normally don't feel comfortable evaulating fiction because I simply haven't read enough of the classics to have a good handle on it (although I do like reading these Amazon reader reviews and find them helpful).

I decided in the past year to read most of the NY Times best fiction of the past 25 years ("Beloved", the Rabbit novels, McCarthy, DeLillo...see [...] For me, this one is the very best of that group.

Roth's writing is just super crisp and hits the sweet spot of a good story with some action but also evokes lots of major themes.In some sense it is almost too bad that Roth writes so much about Jewish issues and growing up in Newark NJ in his novels, in that those cast a big shadow over the artistry of the writing.Don't let the Jewish themes in this book distract you from the great writing.Israel is actually the perfect template to raise these issues of duality in life and in the world.Operation Shylock is a rare work of fiction that seems to build up throughout the book and doesn't start off too great, remain bland, or only have good patches (ie, DeLillo Underworld's beginning, Updike's predictability, or Beloved's good patches).If you can only read one book on that NY Times list, I would recommend this one.

Double, Double Toil and Trouble
In OPERATION SHYLOCK, the character Philip Roth travels to Israel, where he plans to interview Aharon Applefeld, a gentle writer whose subject is the disappearance of the Jews from Europe and the effect of the Holocaust on survivors. This literary activity is a form of therapy for the character Roth who is not completely recovered from a battle with Halcion, a medication that gave him suicidal thoughts and a sense of mental disintegration. On the verge of this trip, Roth also learns of an impostor Philip Roth in Israel. This impostor espouses a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict--so-called Diasporism--which is the migration of Ashkenazi Jews back to Europe, where they will live without threat of extermination by the Arabs. Concurrent with Roth's trip is the public trial of Ivan the Terrible, a brutal Ukrainian and Nazi guard who drove the Jews into the gas chambers at Treblinka.

Interestingly, Roth explores these parallel story lines-- the near destruction of Philip Roth and his fight for identity; and the near destruction of the Jews and their fight for survival in Israel--through the presentment and analysis of myriad doubles. For example, there is Roth, the emotionally delicate writer who identifies troubling moral issues but not their answers. And, there is Roth the impostor, who boldly seeks the limelight for his wacky ideas. Further, there is Applefeld, a writer who creates art as he explores his terrible childhood in the Holocaust. And, there is Apter, Roth's stunted fearful child-like cousin who never overcame the effects of the war. Then, there is George Ziad, a hysterically angry Palestinian who tries to shape Roth's perspective on Israel. And there is Smilesburger, an agent for the Mossad who seeks to persuade through his knowledge of Chofetz Chaim, a Polish rabbi who was insightful but critical of the Jews. Since OPERATION SHYLOCK is fiction, it's important to state that all the characters forming these and Roth's many other doubles are credible and interesting. At the same time, their diametrical natures open huge issues for Roth to explore, with his characters taking the reader to both sides. It's great work.

Even so, OPERATION SHYLOCK does occasionally feature an element of Roth's writing that can stall his narrative. Defining this quality is Roth, himself, who in the final chapter of SHYLOCK writes: "...instead of being fortified by your victory over him, you self-destructively build into the letter egregious ambiguities that you then exploit to undermine the very equanimity you are out to achieve." Roth, in other words, sometimes seems attracted to a line of writing and reasoning because he is compulsively contrary. But since this is a book of doubles, Roth gives the opposite analysis a few pages later. "To do so ran counter to all the inclinations of one whose independence as a writer, whose counter suggestiveness as a writer, was simply second nature and had contributed as much to his limitations and his miscalculations as to his durability." Certainly, this helps to explain the richness of Roth's amazing oeuvre.

To further validate this contrariness, I point out that OPERATION SHYLOCK refers, in this novel, to an undercover mission that the character Roth undertakes for the Israeli government, describes in a long chapter for this novel, and then expunges at the urging of Smilesburger, the Mossad agent. And this missing chapter is the contrary double of the novel OPERATION SHYLOCK, where Roth explores all his themes at length and in frank and revealing detail.

Fascinating and highly recommended.
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Product Description
For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities. Roth's comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assaults on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our time. By special arrangement with the author, The Library of America now inaugurates the definitive edition of Roth's collected works. This second volume presents four extraordinarily diverse works displaying the range and originality of his fictional art.

When She Was Good (1967) is the trenchant portrait of Lucy Nelson, a young midwestern woman whose perception of her own suffering turns her into a ferocious force, "enemy-ridden and unforgivingly defiant," as Roth would later describe her. A small-town 1940s America of restrictive social pressures and foreclosed opportunities provides the novel's background.

The publication of the hilarious Portnoy's Complaint (1969) was a cultural event that turned Roth into a reluctant celebrity. The confession of a bewildered psychoanalytic patient thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality yet held back by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood, Portnoy unleashed Roth's comic virtuosity and opened new avenues for American fiction.

In Our Gang (1971), described by Anthony Burgess as a "brilliant satire in the real Swift tradition," Roth effects a savage takedown of the administration of Richard Nixon (who figures here as Trick E. Dixon). Written before the revelations of the Watergate scandal, Our Gang continues to resonate as a broad and outraged response to the clownish hypocrisy and moral theatrics of the American political scene.

The Kafkaesque excursion The Breast (1972) introduces David Kepesh in the first volume of a trilogy that continues with The Professor of Desire (1977) and The Dying Animal (2001). The Breast prompted Cynthia Ozick to remark, "One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not What I Ordered
The copy was sent without a jacket--as I was collecting the entire series, this was a disappointment. I returned it but was not refunded the purchase price. Will think twice before ordering again. Buying from a bookstore is better.

When She Was Good is very, very good
If I remember correctly, this book was trashed on the front page of the NY Times Book Review section forty years ago because the reviewer thought a young Jew should not or could not write about small town WASP America. I could not disagree more, both in principle and after reading the novel several years later. I was relieved to find the writer (a man!) would take the trouble to write about a young woman who had marched in her high school band and worked at the Dairy Queen. The book jacket described her as the all-American bitch but I doubt this was Roth's full intention. The ending was beautifully written and so believable it affected my own behavior. Some of the most memorable pages in Roth's prizewinning American Pastoral reminded me of When She Was Good, a book even Roth usually overlooks in talking about his work. Too bad the review may have had a searing effect for a long time.

'Portnoy's Complaint' is the book Roth will live by
'When She was Good' is not very good.
'The Breast' is a bad- taste joke which cannot approach the Kafka or Gogol that are its inspiration.
'Portnoy's Complaint' is Roth's masterpiece. And even if he has shown through subsequent years great staying power, and considerable seriousness, and truly outstanding work ( Parts of 'American Pastoral' and 'Patrimony' for example) this is the one work in which he reveals what he best has to give.
It is arguably one of the funniest books ever written, and deeply poignant one.
It is an American classic and justifies Roth's place in this series.

Redundant for true fans; baffling for his enemies
This would make a great gift. It's an honor for Philip Roth
to be included in this series. He has never written a bad book. Just give him the Noble prize for literature and be done with it. Thanks for a lifetime of serious laughs and the playful insights,Phil.
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Product Description
Like a latter-day Gregor Samsa, Professor David Kepesh wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed. But where Kafka's protagonist turned into a giant beetle, the narrator of Philip Roth's richly conceived fantasy has become a 155-pound female breast. What follows is a deliriously funny yet touching exploration of the full implications of Kepesh's metamorphosis—a daring, heretical book that brings us face to face with the intrinsic strangeness of sex and subjectivity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Roth as Kafka
This is more of a long short story than a novel.It is Roth's take on The Metamorphosis.Worth the read.

Kafka goes Endocrinopathic
Mr. Roth asserts himself into the territory of metamorphosis when his protagonist awakens one morning and discovers that he has become a giant breast.

While the novella is well written and provocative, the hero of the piece tries very hard to use his feminine context to assert himself in a distinctly masculine way. As a result does not manage to transcend the masturbatory, and remains a fetishistic curiosity. We can thank Mr. Roth for creating a literary stepping-stone between Kafka and later books ontransformation, like Euginides' "Middlesex", but not for anything more.

Roth Pays Homage to Kafka.
Best known for Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, American Pastoral, Philip Roth's 1972 novella, The Breast, tells the story of David Kepesh, an intellectual who, much like Kafka's Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis, experiences a physical transformation not into a cockroach, but into a a 155-pound female breast.Ultimately, Roth's minor novel is an insightful meditation on human sexuality.As a breast, Kepesh finds himself conflicted between his rational mind as a literature professor and his sensual desires. The Breast is the first in a brilliant trilogy of Kepesh novels; the other two novels are The Professor of Desire (1997) and The Dying Animal (2001). Roth's Kepesh trilogy attests to his rare genius as a writer.

G. Merritt

Undone
Being a fan of Kafka's work as well as Roth, I was intrigued by this quite bizarre concept.As I read the book it not only reminded me of Kafka's "Metamorphisis", but it also brought to mind Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" with its theme of the loss of self.

This book is designed to be somewhat of a parody of "Metamorphisis", yet it takes Kafka's story from a different angle.While Kafka's story focuses on a general theme of isolation and loneliness, Roth further develops his recurring character Robert Kepesh's sense of sexual frustration.Along the way, Kepesh struggles with whether he really is a breast while being visited by Claire, his father, and a less than sympathetic colleague.With these visits, he tries to accomodate his new status with continuing a normal life.Yet we never seem to grasp the motive or reason for Kepesh's change.

"The Breast" is certainly a strange work in the scope of Philip Roth's writing.Many who enjoy his other works may be repulsed by the image of this book.While it is certainly not a recognized as some of this other writings, I believe it is near the pinnacle of his list of works.

painfully funny--I almost felt that I should be reading this only when my wife wasn't around
The allusions to Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in comparison to this work seem a little easy and not altogether reliable--yes, there is a transformation, but the result of the transformation goes a little more in the way of Gogol's "The Nose," how the aftermath becomes more comical and grounded in social satire, than through the family exploration of Kafka.Roth, no doubt, had some sense of this when he referenced Gogol in the work itself, but I tend to look at this work a light closer to Trumbo's _Johnny Got His Gun_, with the subject matter exploring more of the sexual revolution than war.Trumbo may be a little more heavy-handed, but the lack of limbs in Kepesh when he transforms into a gigantic mammory gland, and his limited perception of and contact with the outside world, make this work more akin to Trumbo with a sprinkling of Gogol.

But one thing is never in doubt--and that this book is FUNNY.Roth has an amazing handle of comedy on the page--a tough craft to master, mind you.This read is very short and quick, but it sure gives you some images to haunt and humor you for a long time.Kepesh's sudden sexual voraciousness and his lapses into hysteria and out-and-out psychosis, all while burbling about as a giant breast in a makeshift bra in a hospital bed, are the very stuff of sexual revolution, the sensual and boundlessness of desire overtaking the stuffy life of the mind that Kepesh had allowed himself to fall into.A breast that cries and screams and develops a desire for women to use its nipple for their pleasure?I would be surprised if no graphic novelist has considered making this work visual--that would be either a failure of imagination, or simply a certain amount of illiteracy.

_The Breast_ is an early work from a man who has found the most admirable essence of the American spirit--somewhat crude, almost perverse, but readily able to ponder life's deeper issues and nobility.A good read that easily lends itself to more exploration of this master.
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Product Description
Letting Go is Roth's first full-length novel, published just after Goodbye, Columbus, when he was twenty-nine. Set in 1950s Chicago, New York, and Iowa city, Letting Go presents as brilliant a fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century America defined by social and ethical constraints and by moral compulsions conspicuously different from those of today.

Newly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother's recent death, freed from old attachments and hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach is drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate student in literature, and to Libby, Paul's moody, intense wife. Gabe's desire to be connected to the ordered "world of feeling" that he finds in books is first tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes' struggles with responsible adulthood and then by his own eager love affairs. Driven by the desire to live seriously and act generously, Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable woman who, according to critic James Atlas, is masterfully portrayed with "depth and resonance."

The complex liason between Gabe and Martha and Gabe's moral enthusiasm for the trials of others are at the heart of this tragically comic work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

A fine classic for any audio lending library
LETTING GO receives Luke Daniels' fine professional voice adds fire and life to this account, Roth's first full-length novel published just after Goodbye, Columbus when he was twenty-nine. It provides a story of mid-America's changing morals and tells of a newly discharged Korean War vet freed from duty and reeling from his mother's recent death. A fine classic for any audio lending library.

The second read was better than the first ....
I went back and read Goodbye Columbus, then Letting Go on purpose and just loved Letting Go even more the second time around.Roth was showing flashes of his magic with his short stories, but his first novel was masterful.Oh, those poor shiksas ...

The second read was better than the first ....

Existential Novel of the 1950s
This vast novel of urban Jewish academic life in the mid-1950s (first published in 1961) is a dark, brooding meditation on birth, death, family, and the inescapable angst of life.Our "hero" Gabe Wallach and Paul and Libby Herz, the married couple his life is entwined with, are at first graduate students in literature in Iowa and then young faculty members at the University of Chicago.Gabe reluctantly and bafflingly becomes more and more involved in the depressing and difficult lives of Paul and Libby.In many ways this is an existentialist novel and reflects the basic ideas of existentialism, which was so popular in the 1950s.Gabe, and the others, are constantly faced with choices, some trivial seeming, others momentous, and must confront their freedom and their inability to ground their choices or even understand their choices.

Among the momentous choices are Gabe's and Paul's rejection of traditional Jewish religion and life.This is a novel of secular Jewish life and its compromises and difficulties.Gabe's mother has just died, and he is drifting away from his New York dentist father.Paul is Jewish, from Brooklyn, but Libby is a Catholic who converts to Judaism.They met and loved as students at Cornell.Both Paul and Libby are shunned by their families, which leads to tragic consequences.

Gabe and his friends are just beginning to explore the leading edges of the Sexual Revolution and are struggling with issues that today seem rather obsolete.Nevertheless these first glimmerings of women's liberation and sexual freedom caused all sorts of turmoil for those in the avant guard.Roth captures the angst, fear, depression, and exhilaration of those exploratory days.In line with the theme of sexual liberation and the existential angst this can cause, the novel is a sensitive examination of the emotional dangers of abortion.

The plot of this novel is structured around the motivations and disastrous emotional effects of Paul and Libby's decision to abort Libby's unexpected pregnancy.Thus this novel can be considered to be a warning and alarm about having an abortion without fully realizing how wide and deep can be the consequences.In this way Letting Go is somewhat like John Barth's Sabbatical.Both of these novels, I think, could fairly be called "anti-abortion novels" but not overbearing, not political--they are sympathetically and complexly anti-abortion.

Letting Go by Philip Roth is not for those who want a quick and easy, entertaining read.The book is long, slow and at times agonizing.There are seemingly endless pages of dialogue, dialogue that circles and circles and does not seem to get anywhere.It reminds me of those French art movies of the 1950s and early 60s where the characters just talk and talk and talk.But Roth is such a fine writer, has such a good ear for dialogue, and is able to marshal so many details that this novel, for me, was gripping, absorbing, and troubling.I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s (Jewish, urban, academic) and the reality of this novel is almost frightening, uncanny.

The fumbling around of a master-in-the-making
Three-and-a-half stars.As much as I dislike some of what Roth has written, I can't deny that he's one of the greats in American literature."Letting Go" reads as you might expect Roth's first novel to read--that is, it's ambitious, outrageous, and (most of the time) brutally honest.Themes that Roth would go on to expand upon later (Jewish identity, the problems of sex and love and marriage, the desire to find meaning in great works of literature) are evident here in spades.But it also reads like a *first* novel--meaning, Roth was still finding his footing and not without a few fumbles.

The book is ambitious, no question--too ambitious, I think.It's as though Roth is trying to consolidate the entire human condition into one novel, which though admirable, is impossible to do.He's grappling with mature themes and questions, but the result is one of dilution.He paints his characters and issues in broad strokes; no particular theme or question gets its full due, despite the book's staggering length.Roth clearly learned his lesson with "Letting Go"--his subsequent novels were much more pointed and concise.

Other drawbacks:the male characters, as is typical of most Roth novels, are drawn far more convincingly than the females, who are too often portrayed as screeching, manic-depressive nags; Roth wanders too often from his narrative course (which accounts for the 630 pages)--for example, the shocking event that transpires in Part 5 is a blatant plot device that screams of insecurity on Roth's part and does nothing to shed light on his characters; and the overall dreariness of the characters and their nihilistic views of life often inspires, not empathy, but eye-rolling.

The strongest aspects of "Letting Go" are the strongest aspects of Roth as a writer:some of the sharpest dialogue out there; some beautifully rendered details and scenes; a genuine seriousness that pervades the work; and a fine portrayal of early-mid-life disenchantment.Most impressive is Roth's ability to show a 1950s America that is about to undergo a radical moral and social change.For a number of reasons, this book reminds me of "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike; but despite its flaws, I like "Letting Go" a lot more.

This book should have been 200 pages shorter, but that's beside the point.What Roth has done for American literature in the 40 years since "Letting Go" was published more than makes up for his early fumbles and shortcomings--and, in fact, renders them rather fascinating.

My favorite all-time novel
Your favorite book isn't necessarily the greatest book you've ever read: it's just the one that speaks most directly and resonately for you.This is my all-time favotite, and I've read all of Roth.I love the characters, the structure, even the typeface and lay-out design.I first read this book in its old orange mass-market paperback edition way back in the late 80s, in celebration of my leaving graduate school in order to go write my first novel--a novel, I'll go ahead and admit, influenced sharply by "Goodbye, Columbus," which I had also recently read and adored--and for the next couple of years, as I toiled away at that novel, I kept picking up my beat-up copy of "Letting Go" and reading it at random, the way people used to read the Bible: I'd stroke the binding, smell the paper, re-read the notes I scribbled in the inside of the jacket.Later, when I was too poor to do so, I shelled out $65 for a mint-condition first edition of the Random House hardcover edition, complete with a flawless book jacket.After my kids and my wife, that's what I'm grabbing when my house catches on fire.I revere Roth as much as I want to argue with him--he's not the greatest confrontational writer of our time for nothing--and yet this one I remove from that great corpus and insert directly into the fabric of my own life. ... Read more

Product Description
In this funny and chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, and the subject is the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness" is a terrible disease.

When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process. With his unerring portraits of Lucy and her hapless, childlike husband, Roy, Roth has created an uncompromising work of fictional realism, a vision of provincial American piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once pitiless and compassionate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Domestic Dispute
Those of us that have seen a friend or family member in a bad marital situation may want to look away when they read this book."When She Was Good" is almost too realistic at times, which can make it uncomfortable to read.It is a sad and painful story, yet it is hard to dismiss as a bad story.

Lucy, the main character of the story, grows up in a home with an abusive alcoholic mother.Seemingly on top of the world, she becomes pregnant during her freshman year of college by Roy.Roy is a somewhat doltish man who has just returned from two years of military service.Convincing Roy to "do the right thing" and marry her seems to begin the downfall of her character.Once contemplating becoming a nun, Lucy has become a controlling wife.In a strange twist of fate, Lucy evolves into all that she loathed in her father in the respect that her own child finds her intolerable and her husband leaves her.The situation mirrors her father being run out of her mother's house.

Lucy is a deeply flawed character that readers will have difficultly liking.Lucy is initially a very moral charcter but has difficuly seeing her faults and eventual backslide.Because Roy and his family are even more vilainous, readers may have difficulty identifying with anybody in the story.Only when Lucy reaches her breaking point does the reader begin to feel sympathy.But knowing Lucy created her own problems, some readers may still have trouble feeling sorry for her.

I really have had trouble deciding if I like this book.I am a fan of many of Roth's other works, yet I find some of his books to be uncomfortably personal and intruding.This is a credit to Roth as a writer even if some readers may not like the feeling of his writing.

when she was good
I had wanted to read a book by Philip Roth for a while, and I must say I was disappointed!
The characters were real and interesting, but the plot was sloooooooooow, to the point of being boring!
I do enjoy psychological books,but this was too vague for my liking...
Mary Larsen and Sue Miller, here I come... you are the best of that genre!!

Philip Roth's latter-day realism
Although I've read almost all of Philip Roth's books, this is the first pre-"Portnoy" novel I've tackled.Very strange to think this book was written by the same man.Although there are occasional glimmers of what was to come in Roth's later novels, in its spare style and stark realism, "When She Was Good" feels like the work of some latter-day Sinclair Lewis or Dreiser.

Which is a problem for me, because I don't ordinarily enjoy novels of the "realist" camp.Too often, the writer sets out with an agenda or point to prove and everything--setting, plot, character--is bent to the author's whim, making the novel itself feel like a sham.To some extent, that is the case here.It seems we are to sympathize with "good", honest, duped Lucy Nelson--surrounded by a cast of miserable grotesques, she is the only one who sees through the phoniness to arrive at the truth.And indeed, there is no one (I repeat: NO ONE) in this novel, save Lucy, who is likeable (one may pity them, but it's impossible to LIKE them).Problem is--I didn't like Lucy, either.She's too psychotic to be believable, too cold to be endearing, too inconsistent to be relatable.At one point she pats herself on the back for "saving" her son's life (even though she would have aborted the child had she found a doctor willing to do so)--she plays the role of martyr, but is really nothing of the sort.Lucy is a toy in Roth's hands, easily manipulated, and she never comes across as the three-dimensional character she needs to be to carry the novel.This is less the fault of Roth's writing as it is his realist-agenda.This is novel-writing by-the-numbers and while it's good as far as realist novels go (better than Lewis, I'd say, not as good as Dreiser), it can never really be a great novel.

This may be the last realist novel ever written, in fact.The "school" seemed to have died out by the '60s, and perhaps that's why Roth sets his novel in the '40s.Still, it feels at times like a literary relic.It's a fascinating read for fans of Roth's later work; but if Roth had never gone on to become famous with "Portnoy," this book would quickly have gone out-of-print and been completely forgotten.

Slow to get my interest, but the ending made up for it.
When I started reading this, I almost gave up on it.It seemed a little slow and fairly dull.But once I got into the book, it started to get more interesting, perhaps I just missed the subtlety at the beginning.I absoultely loved the evolution of the main charater, and how she tried to maintain control, even as things were falling apart.The irony of it was so bitter, and the ending was tragic.When I closed the book I felt emotionally drained.

Effects Of An Alcoholic Father
The beginning of the book is very slow moving and at times confusing. It does progress into a more enjoyable read. The ending is an astounding and sad.

Lucy seems only strong when confronting her parents. The effects of her alcoholic and abusive father can be seen in her younger life and her marriage. What he suggests she does to take care of one of her problems during college only shows how an alcoholic never has the means for the important things in life but always has the means for their booze. ... Read more

Product Description
The author examines the life and experiences of his father as the latter comes to terms with a diagnosed brain tumour. Full of love and dread, Roth accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, marvelling at his long, stubborn engagement with life. In "Patrimony", Roth's father is surrounded by a gang of vivid Jewish elders: Lil, Herman's last and much maligned love; his room-mate Bill who can hear the Marine Band he used to play with in World War I being played inside his teeth; the Auschwitz memoirist Walter with his surprising manuscript...and always at the centre of it all, Herman, defiant, enraged, desolated, at the end of his life still striving to prevail. "Patrimony" is dominated by Herman's tough integrity, but is also an intensely painful story, as Roth has to decide whether or not to have the tumour operated on, and whether or not to terminate his father's life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

a true story
The novel was very moving and very well written I think P. Roth is a gifted writer.

The Bard of Newark!
Philip Roth might be one of America's greatest contemporary writers and authors. Here, it's autobiographical about his father at 86 years old. It's a loving tale about how he deals with his aging father's illness and death. While he writes with humor, great wit, and a brilliance in understanding how a parent's loss can affect an adult child, this book gets more relevant as we get older with parents. While Roth, a successful author, writes about his relationship with his father, brother Sandy, nephews- Seth and Jonathan, we learn how he lived his life. Roth writes a lot about his hometown of Newark, New Jersey but he gives credit to his father whom he calls the Bard of Newark who knows every street corner and inch of the city. He should write a book called Matrimony about his relationship with his mother and with women. I love Roth and think he's a genius. ... Read more

Product Description
In quest of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, the American novelist Nathan Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s. There, in a nation straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism, he discovers a literary predicament, marked by institutionalized oppression, that is rather different from his own. He also discovers, among the oppressed writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, an appealingly perverse kind of heroism.

The Prague Orgy, consisting of entries from protagonist Nathan Zuckerman's notebooks recording his sojourn among these outcast artists, completes the trilogy and epilogue Zuckerman bound. It provides a startling ending to Roth's intricately designed magnum opus on the unforeseen consequences of art.

This Vintage edition is the first paperback publication of the epilogue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Funny Little Diversion
This is a brief addendum to the first three Zuckerman novels.It's a funny diversion about Zuckerman's mid 70s visit to Prague.

I don't think it really added much to the overall story of the earlier books.

It was funny and very Rothlike in tone.

It's very, very short.

I liked it.

I recommend reading as an addendum to the earlier three novels.On it's own, it doesn't make that much sense.

Dialogue alone is worth the price
Look, it's Roth ... the dialogue alone is worth the cost.Fun stuff, as always.The only drawback is you'll only wish it were a much longer rift.

Roth's 'Zuckerman Trilogy:' Epilogue.
The Prague Orgy (1984) is the epilogue to Philip Roth's (1933) Zuckerman trilogy:The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), and The Anatomy Lesson (1983).It is the fourth of nine novels to enlist Zuckerman as Roth's fictional alter ego.He reappears in Roth's later novels: The Counterlife (1986), American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), The Human Stain: A Novel (2000), and Exit Ghost (2007).The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), and The Anatomy Lesson (1983).

Written in the form of behinf-the-Iron-Curtain journal entries, The Prague Orgy follows Zuckerman's journey to Soviet-occupied Prague in the 1970s in search of an unpublished manuscript written by a Yiddish martyr (Zdenek Sisovsky).The novella chronicles the struggle of demoralized artists under totalitarian Communism, a society in which artistic expression and intellectual freedom are always at odds with institutionalized oppression.

The Prague Orgy is not a good starting point for readers new to Roth, but should be considered required reading in Roth's Zuckerman series.

G. Merritt

a concise satyrical report from Prague of the 1970s, as it could be seen by an American writer
The small novel, or rather novella,The Prague Orgy" can be treated as an appendix to the trilogy about the Jewish-American writer Nathan Zuckerman. This slim volume is the example of the real wave of the novels appearing in the 1980s by American authors, who described the Eastern European countries under the communist regime, most often based on the personal experience from their travels.

Nathan Zuckerman, already a renowned writer, finds himself in Prague under Soviet occupation in the mid-1970s. He has a mission to recovers the manuscripts of the short stories written by the father of a Czech emigre writer.

The book is given as excerpts from Nathan's diary, starting with the meeting with the Czech writer, Zdenek Sisovsky, and his lover, a tragic actress Eva Kalinova, in New York, and continuing with the relation of his trip to Prague. The reader is presented with an amazing array of intellectuals, demoralized by the system. The enormous number of delightfully colorful characters and their stories, skilfully woven into the concise text is perhaps the major achievement of The Prague Orgy", which gives is a stand on its own, athough it has more of the gems to be uncovered by an attentive reader. There are numerous literary allusions, jokes and irony - the whole book is more like a pastiche in Roth's unforgettable style. I can imagine that when the book appeared, it was one of the shocking reports from behind the Iron Curtain, which, additionally, had to be taken with a grain of salt (I wonder what were Roth's real impressions...). Nowadays it still reads well.

Although The Prague Orgy" is a complete work in itself, it is recommended to know other novels about Nathan Zuckerman before reading it, to fully understand the character of Zuckerman and his attitude.

For Devoted Fans....
Many of the reviews of this piece are especially harsh.This shouldn't be considered a stand-alone novel.(It's little more than a short story, really.)It is just another episode in the ongoing saga of Nathan Zuckerman.

This story is taken from the journals of Nathan Zuckerman.He goes to communist Prague in order to retrieve some Yiddish short stories.That's about all there is to it.Contrary to the title, there's not even an orgy involved.

So, for Roth (and Zuckerman) fans - yes, you should read it.Yet, even the most ardent admirer will find Harold Bloom's glowing blurb to be a bit of an overstatement.


... Read more

Product Description
As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself "a rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize how prophetic this motto will be—or how damning. For as Philip Roth follows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vast wilderness of erotic possibility, from a ménage à trois in London to the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremely intelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemma of pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggle to make a truce between dignity and desire. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Obsessions have their limitations
To be an intellectual character in a Rothian novel is to be consigned to a life of reflection, self-analysis, self-doubt, and periods of unhappiness, all of which seem to be accentuated by being Jewish. David Kepesh, a thirty-something professor of literature, finds himself in a cabin rented for the summer in the Catskills, near his boyhood home, with twenty-something Claire Ovington, a teacher with qualities of wholesomeness, simple beauty, buxomness, openness, and imperturbability. Yet here he is, in a time of stability and happiness in his life, anticipating a time in the not too distant future when sensuality will disappear and total boredom will be all that is left.

By the time Kepesh, a smart Jewish kid, gets to college, he makes it his mission to be sexually forward with numerous coeds, the more innocent the better; his line being "Studious by day, dissolute by night." His success ratio is quite low. But it is during his time in England on a Fulbright grant that he discovers that his unrestrained carnal indulgences with a pair of Swedish girls turn damaging to one of the girls and to his studies. Later, while at Stanford pursuing his doctorate, Kepesh becomes consumed with Helen Baird, an exquisite California beauty who has traveled the Orient as a kept woman. Marrying Helen, despite all the warning signs of which he was well aware, results in both a divorce three years later and a loss of sexual desire for which he pays a New York psychiatrist a lot of money to sort through.

The writing, as in all of Roth's books, is simply unparalleled in its erudition and dialog, although that's not to say that the constant replay of Kepesh's conflicts and agonies doesnot get a bit tedious. Also, his indulgence in free format dialog at times leaves the reader guessing about the speaker's identity. Being a literature professor, Kepesh finds both Chekhov and Kafka pertinent to his dilemmas and visits the birthplace and resting place of Kafka in Prague with Claire. Kepesh has certainly been chastened and has mellowed from his fixations on bodily pleasures by the time he meets Claire, which makes it all the more difficult to understand in a highly intelligent, introspective man a persistence in tendencies towards self-destructiveness. I suppose Kepesh is teaching us something - just not sure what.

Relationships in the modern world
Written in 1977, this is the second book by Philip Roth featuring David Kepesh, here a young man who is starting his career as a literature professor. As he pursues different women in different continents, the question always in his mind is if he should settle for marriage and love or for sex without commitment. A side trip to Prague is not only a homage to Kafka but one of the best passages of the book. By the next installment of Kepesh in the Dying Animal, written almost a quarter century later, he is a man in his sixties, who has chosen to live without a commitment and therefore now feels lonely and vulnerable to young women. Roth's stream of consciousness style is sometimes infuriating but often illuminating about the conflict between love and desire after the sexual revolution. Reading Roth can help you develop a quite realistic understanding of many aspects of the contemporary world, even if you find such aspects quite appalling.

An Intricate and Powerful Narrative
In THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE, Roth intertwines three subjects. These are the academic travails and career of professor David Kepesh; the struggle between the professor's lustful nature and his search for love in marriage; and the simultaneous closeness and distance that exists between the sophisticated professor Kepesh and his parents, who owned a hotel in the Catskills.

For each of these subjects, Roth shows a professor Kepesh who is highly conflicted. As a lustful young Fulbright scholar, for example, Kepesh connects to two Swedish college students. As a ménage a trois, they push the boundaries of sex, expressing a need deep in David. But in doing so, Kepesh loses his academic focus and becomes obsessed with the anguish the ménage inflicts on one partner. Later, Kepesh marries Helen, who is an image of female perfection and an apparent solution to his sexual and marital desires. But Helen is unhappy in mundane marriage and tortures David, makes him impotent, and causes him to behave strangely with his pupils. Ultimately, Kepesh is able to sublimate his intense sexual drive, creating a great-books course where sex is the preoccupation of each author. But such sophistication separates him from his salt-of-the-earth parents. And, it does nothing to accommodate professor Kepesh to the ordinariness of a steady relationship and mature love.

TPOD is an engrossing book but ultimately very sad, with Kepesh identifying dynamics in his life that resemble the literature of Chekov--where characters are quietly unsatisfied--and Kafka--where a blocked and distorted sexuality often energizes the narrative. Says the professor of desire: "And this life I love and have hardly gotten to know! And robbed by whom? It always comes down to myself!"

The Professor of Desire is Philip Roth at His Best
Best known for Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, and his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, American Pastoral, Philip Roth's introspective 1997 novel, The Professor of Desire, tells the story of Jewish intellectual, David Kepesh, a celebrated literature professor. The Professor of Desire is the second in a trilogy of Kepesh novels; the other two novels are The Breast(1972) and The Dying Animal (2001).While he is brilliant when it comes to literature, David Kepesh lacks understanding when it comes to women.

The Professor of Desire not only follows Kepesh's career as an academic, but explores his sexual desires.Kepesh has an obsession for women's breasts, and lusts after female students. His obsession for women annoys them. While studying in London, he is drawn to two Swedish girls, Birgitta and Elisabeth.In California, while teaching literature and writing papers on Chekhov, Kepesh is drawn to a promiscuous woman, Helen.Kepesh then takes a teaching position at New York College, where he teaches Kafka and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, while lusting after his students and fantasizing about Kafka's prostitute.(He thinks of his literature class as "Desire 341.")The Professor of Desire attests to Philip Roth's rare genius as a writer. Highly recommended.

G. Merritt

Coming of Sage
In his earliest works, Roth shows many of the same qualities and themes that made him a successful writer.In "The Professor of Desire", David Kepesh is a gifted young man who hits all the bumps in the road of life.While much of the focus is on Kepesh's love life, his professional and family life are entangled with his love life.At his choice, his romantic relationship become the focus.

Finding love is never easy.As is the case David's first love Helen, early instincts of love are often misguided.Fragmented by the failure of his first marriage, David then finds Claire.With his emotions no longer distracting from his professional life, David is able to be honest with himself.He tracks the life of Kafka in Eastern Europe, meeting the former [mistress] of Kafka which helps to place his own love life in perspective, only to have it confused by a returning Helen.There would seem no better way than to put one's personal crisis aside than to compare it to the great human tragedy of the Holocaust.It is not until the final pages that Roth's literary device makes sense.

In the scope of Roth's work, "The Professor of Desire" is a very raw work that shows the promise of his later career.Like many of Roth's characters, David Kepish's life is spiraling out of control.The overall storytelling and humor make this a great read.The weak ties between the conflicts leave a certain degree of doubt about the author's intent and leave a dissatisfactory payoff. ... Read more

Product Description
A ferocious political satire in the great tradition, Our Gang is Philip Roth’s brilliantly indignant response to the phenomenon of Richard M. Nixon.

In the character of Trick E. Dixon, Roth shows us a man who outdoes the severest cynic, a peace-loving Quaker and believer in the sanctity of human life who doesn’t have a problem with killing unarmed women and children in self-defense. A master politician with an honest sneer, he finds himself battling the Boy Scouts, declaring war on Pro-Pornography Denmark, all the time trusting in the basic indifference of the voting public. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Oldie but a Goodie
Brilliant satire. When Roth gets going like he does in the book, he's pretty hard to top.So, just to outline the basic premise, Tricky Dixon, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Richard Nixon, accuses Curt Flood of corrupting the Boy Scouts, so he declares war on Denmark.Really.Absolutely priceless.

Our Gang, a novel by Philip roth
Sure, it's by far the most dated of Roth's novels, and often over-the-top. Who really needs a Nixon satire at this point? Or even a reminder of some pretty bad times?Well, it turns out that the funny stuff still works - and there's a quite a bit of it, madcap & rollicking. Roth on this kind of roll is always best in class. And the serious stuff - I mean Nixon - really? Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that much of it still connects, that some of the caricatures, only slightly altered, are currently all too with us in the news. A somewhat weaker book by Roth is a prize nonetheless, better than nearly anything else around.

The Story of Tricky Dixon
There are those that have said this story is dated in their reviews.If we changed the names to reflect more contemporary leaders, is it not really just the same story today?While the story itself is a little overdone at points, the satire still brings clear echos of the Nixon Administration.

The idea that "Tricky Dixon" was a power hungry manipulator seems well accepted today.But when this book came out, the idea was still in its embryonic states.Essentially, Tricky manipulates the voting population with a pro-life stance that he takes to an extreme.As the chapter titles might imply, it causes an unexpected demise.Tricky's dastardly tricks along the way to the end seem preposeterous.Yet what is funny is generally not far from the truth.Those same sections run too long with some of the weaker points of humor, the fast pace is certain to keep readers engaged.

Though slight in length, those with knowledge of the Nixon Administration will enjoy this book.Even those with a certain degree of political insight that is less than conservative are likely to enjoy this satire.

The Gang's all here - and gone
Thirty-five years after the initial publication of Philip Roth's scathing satire on Richard Nixon (Trick E. Dixon in the book), one wonders how the book is received and perceived today. Is Nixon, the man and his presidency, still lodged enough in the public consciousness for Roth's hilarious bashings to make sense anymore? Other presidents, including Lincoln and Andrew Jackson among others, have been satirized, but those works have not lasted. My guess is that will probably be the fate of Roth's book, too. It's not a great book and goes on too long to remain potent to the end, but it is funny, and for anyone who's lived through the Nixon years, biting and right on. And it's not just Nixon who gets shafted; there are also John and Robert Charisma (Kennedy), Hubert Hollow (Humphrey), Lyin' B. Johnson, and Rev. Billy Cupcake (Graham), to name just a few, who also are satirized. Perhaps the funniest (and most clever) thing is the Preface that Roth added to editions published starting in 1973 (the so-called Watergate editions) where he apologizes to Nixon for writing the book before "evidence" of Nixon's downfall could possibly be known; Roth's tongue is so deeply lodged in his cheek that it must have been painful. A mere blip on the radar screen of Roth's works, the book is still a rollicking pie-in-the-face to Richard Nixon and his skewed take on the political scene.

Stale Roth
This satire on the Nixon Administration was flat when it was written, and is even flatter today.
The extraordinary talent and inventiveness of Roth on occaision lose themselves in formula- projects like this one
As there are so many rich and good Roth books I would not even waste my time with this one. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (51)

Disappointing...
A very disappointing book from one of my favorite authors. The first act - revolving around the mental anguish and eventual breakdown of a gifted actor who loses his ability to perform - is Mr. Roth at his best. One of the most powerful depictions of mental collapse I've read in fiction. The second act revolves around his attempt to find some definition and escape through a perverse relationship with a jilted and revengeful lesbian woman whom he has known since she was a child. It is here where the work breaks down irreparably; a descent into perversion that takes its time far too leisurely and does little to develop the main protagonist. It is only with the third act that the actor's disturbing escape into fantasy becomes truly heartbreaking. His ultimate response to his trauma seemed destined and unavoidable yet the shock for me was none the less powerful. Perhaps this work should have been a long short story instead of a short novel. Even at a mere 140 pages the story seems way too long with the second act and the beginning of the third act coming across too much as filler.

You are Killing Kindle
I have bought DOZENS of Kindle books from you but now that there is maybe a buck difference between paper and electrons I am going back to print. At least I have a tangible product that I can pass on to another reader. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg

Short, Brutal, Imperfect
Philip Roth is back with the cruel short novel, but unlike the nearly perfect INDIGNATION, this book is cruel and short but not nearly perfect.The first third raises high hopes; in clinical detail, Roth spells out the humiliating loss of confidence in an aging actor and his spiral into depression and loss.But as the tale spins on, it becomes slightly ludicrous (and full of old-man writer sexual fantasies).The last 10 pages are back to brutal incision and clarity, and he almost rescues it with a single sentence that describes the preceding 70 pages in a way that makes them seem worthwhile.Well, almost worthwhile.It's still full of great writing, because Roth's prose is world class, but ultimately even this very short novel wears a little thin.

I hope the rest of his novels are better
Like one other reader here, this was my first foray into Philip Roth. I had read somewhere that like Thomas Pynchon (one of my new favorite authors), he was considered one of the four most important living American writers. I work at a Library, and was shelving The Humbling, which looked short and had a neat cover, and the dust jacket intro seemed promising. I felt I could squeeze ~150 pages into my already overstocked reading list.

I finished reading it yesterday after reading half of it last weekend and being too thoroughly depressed by it to continue. When I was done, I told my wife that I had just read the worst book in my entire life.

Look, maybe I'm not "getting" it. Maybe Roth was meant for someone smarter than me. But I'm not going to take the time needed to read between the lines of this one. If there's anything below the surface of Axler's morbid self-pity and self-centeredness, tell me. The entire novel was one long whine after another.

I doubt I'll ever read Roth again.

The decline of Phillip Roth
I was disappointed in the quality of writing after some memorable books by Roth. The constant, self-centered whining about aging is tiring. ... Read more