Philip Roth (1933 - 2018)

[Victoria Silverwolf]

With the recent death of Philip Roth, I wondered if anybody has read any of the work of this award-winning, controversial author. I've read a handful, many of them so long ago that I remember almost nothing about them.

I believe I have read Goodbye, Columbus (really a novella, collected with other stories), Letting Go, When She Was Good, Portnoy's Complaint, Our Gang, The Breast, The Great American Novel, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Plot Against America. I can also recall the short story "The Conversion of the Jews."

My favorite may be The Great American Novel, a very funny book about an imaginary baseball league, with things like a Babylonian player named Gil Gamesh. Our Gang was a savage, bitter satire on Nixon. Portnoy's Complaint was also pretty funny (and raunchy), the last lines turning the whole thing into a shaggy dog story. I remember that Goodbye, Columbus was a well written story in the New Yorker style, and that The Breast was about a man turning into a breast, in the style of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. "The Conversion of the Jews" was also on the semi-humorous side, as a young boy threatens to jump from a high roof unless the adults gathered below agree that a Virgin Birth is within God's power.

Although I best recall his works that were comic and/or satiric, I also remember The Plot Against America, probably because I read it most recently. Roth's works sometimes had elements of the fantastic, and in this novel he created a work of alternate history. The premise is that Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940, leading the nation into antisemitism. As a work of speculative fiction, it won the Sideways Award for Alternate History, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Roth won much praise, but was also accused of being a misogynist and a self-hating Jew, charges he denied.

 

[Bick]

Although I best recall his works that were comic and/or satiric, I also remember The Plot Against America, probably because I read it most recently. Roth's works sometimes had elements of the fantastic, and in this novel he created a work of alternate history. The premise is that Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940, leading the nation into antisemitism. As a work of speculative fiction, it won the Sideways Award for Alternate History, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

This is the one Roth book I've read, and I enjoyed it very much. I have American Pastoral on the shelf also, and do intend reading it one day, but too many books, too little time...

 

[Droflet]

Portnoy's Complaint. From memory I thought it was very good and quite funny.

 

[Randy M.]

After reading The Breast by Roth, Seize the Day by Bellow, The Natural by Malamud, and The Long March by Styron, I've come to wonder if that generation of American writers is really for me. The previous generation -- Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway -- were terrific and I enjoy their works, the generation that came to maturity during and after WWII does very little for me. There are exceptions like some of Mailer's non-fic, a bit of Updike, the short stories of Cheever, some of Vonnegut but on the whole, I find they take interesting premises and make them incredibly dense and boring.

Still, that you vouch for Portnoy's Complaint and The Great American Novel, Victoria, does pique my interest.

Randy M.

 

[Hugh]

I read Portnoy's many years ago. I really truly did not know what it was about before reading it. I thought it hilarious at the time.

The only other one I've read, more recently though still 1980s, was Goodbye Columbus, which I really liked. I read it because I'd also liked the film.