Was the best american author in the last 50 years easily
― nostormo, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 05:55 (six years ago) link
Finally got around to reading a book by him this week (American Pastoral). R.I.P.
― toby, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 05:57 (six years ago) link
Human Stain and Sabath's Theater are his desert island books imo
― nostormo, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 06:23 (six years ago) link
Don't know if he's the best but I can't think of anyone else that writes with such clarity. RIP
― thomasintrouble, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 07:44 (six years ago) link
The Zuckerman stuff is my favorite by far
― calstars, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 11:30 (six years ago) link
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html
― calstars, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 11:31 (six years ago) link
gave my hometown of Noork lit cred
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 14:15 (six years ago) link
Don't like being a dick on threads but ffs "easily"? Come on. There are honestly too many other candidates to list.
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 14:46 (six years ago) link
he sure warned us in the plot against america
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 14:53 (six years ago) link
Went through an attempt at really investigating Roth (and Updike) over the laat few years, kinda gave up after The Human Stain, which I think I found kinda pointless but now barely remember. Did really like The Ghost Writer. xpost The Plot Against America had an ending that made Stephen King look masterful, man that annoyed me at the time
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 14:57 (six years ago) link
Per easily, who else besides Roth would have been a candidate for greatest living American writer of the 20th century? DeLillo, Pynchon, Morrison ... McCarthy?
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:15 (six years ago) link
stephen king rules endings and all. RIP PR!
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:24 (six years ago) link
Not a huge fan of the idea of "greatest". Mary Gaitskill, Ursula Le Guin, Williams Burroughs/Gaddis/Gibson, Samuel Delaney, Thomas Pynchon, Patricia Highsmith, they've all written books/work that affected me far more and so is (to me) "better" than anything Roth ever wrote. In kinda oldfashioned terms of greatness I'd prob say Faulkner, but I obv have a weakness for writers named William. Can't stand stand DeLillo.
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:26 (six years ago) link
“Couldn’t get it up in the state of Israel” will be forever burned into my brain.
― valorous wokelord (silby), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:28 (six years ago) link
Burroughs is dead fyi
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:30 (six years ago) link
so is LeGuin
but otherwise albvivertine otm
...so is highsmith. they said best of the latter C20, not best living
― attica attica (sciatica), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:33 (six years ago) link
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:38 (six years ago) link
Shakey I was still kinda replying to nostormo's opening post, I guess. It's Pynchon now pretty easy for great living US author, tho I expect an RIP thread whenever he comes up
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:39 (six years ago) link
solid list regardless albvivertine
― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:41 (six years ago) link
ah n/m, thanks Ward
shouldn’t have jumped in since I don’t care about the question but I do like albvivertine’s list
― attica attica (sciatica), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:43 (six years ago) link
Yeah I fucked up replying to that question but it was fun to think of who my fav later 20th C writers were. Also, it's nearly 4am, so pls accept my apologies for dopeyness xpost thanks Brad
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:44 (six years ago) link
ilx not a Bellow kind of place (i haven't read him)
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:44 (six years ago) link
I'm not in love w a lot of modern American "literary" novelists so my vote would probably be some contrarian genre pick like Barry Malzberg (if we're sticking to the "living" thing)
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:46 (six years ago) link
altho I would def take Pynchon over Roth (and DeLillo), maybe not Morrison tho
xpost Yeah, I was going to leap in w/ Bellow until I saw the 'living' caveat. Much better writer than Roth, imho.
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:47 (six years ago) link
Bellow peaked quickly. Roth didn't.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:49 (six years ago) link
zuckermania is glitzophrenic landscape you can get lost in for weeks
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:51 (six years ago) link
there are SO many dead 20th century American writers than Roth, that widens the field considerably
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:51 (six years ago) link
better than Roth
erm
xpost Bellow's last book was one of his best!
George Saunders must surely have a good claim to being the most imitated American writer since Barthelme.
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:51 (six years ago) link
Would take Marilynne Robinson over Pynchon.
― Chris L, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:53 (six years ago) link
Ravelstein? Ew.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 15:59 (six years ago) link
I liked Ravelstein (and The Actual, actually) a lot, yeah, re: late Bellow. Marilynne Robinson sounds interesting.
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:02 (six years ago) link
It tells the tale of a friendship between a university professor and a writer, and the complications that animate their erotic and intellectual attachments in the face of impending death
jfc there are few things I hate more than novels about academia and writers
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:07 (six years ago) link
the awful result of writers taking the "write what you know" dictum too literally
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:08 (six years ago) link
I seem to remember a lot of talk in a hotel and the hamhanded way that the Allan Bloom manque discussed his young male lover
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:11 (six years ago) link
Lol oh man I doubt I'd enjoy it on rereading, if that was a description of Ravelstein. Unless it's about their relationships with their at least vaguely similarly-aged partners, I never ever want to read about older professor types getting with women ever again. Esp Roth's endless "Hey she let me fuck her ass how great am I" crap, man that got tiresome
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:14 (six years ago) link
My short obit.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:16 (six years ago) link
V good.
― albvivertine, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:26 (six years ago) link
Your obit is so pithy and true
https://i.imgur.com/5NE1RJ7.jpg
― Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:31 (six years ago) link
American Pastoral and Everyman are fantastic, I've read maybe half a dozen of his books and I prefer the later work. Everyman in particular is just brutal. RIP
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:46 (six years ago) link
btw I think we read "The Conversion of the Jews" in... eighth grade? Maybe tenth.
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:47 (six years ago) link
anyway i've only read everything in the Goodbye Columbus volume and Portnoy's Complaint, all at least 30 years ago. Is American Pastoral a reasonable next stop?
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:51 (six years ago) link
I tend to steer people to The Ghost Writer: it's short and contains most of what he'll do later.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:52 (six years ago) link
yeah The Ghost Writer is great. American Pastoral is his epic. Everyman is really short though, basically a novella. any of those three.
― flappy bird, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 16:58 (six years ago) link
Patrimony sounds interesting. I haven't read any Roth - may give that a shot.
― jmm, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 17:02 (six years ago) link
as someone who’s only read The Plot Against America I disagree with Alfred’s recommendation, it was fine but I don’t feel like I got a sense of what makes this guy so compelling to many readers
― attica attica (sciatica), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 17:21 (six years ago) link
or I would caution others against making that their first Roth, is maybe a better way to put it
― attica attica (sciatica), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 17:22 (six years ago) link
That piece isn't terrible, actually!
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:39 (six years ago) link
but when you mentioned NRO I wondered if their newest intern, a former student of mine last year and well-read, had written it.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:40 (six years ago) link
The sexual politics of Bellow-Roth-Updike and others (John Barth!) as expressed in a lot of their fiction is obv p problematic - but through time, this writing has acquired the status of almost documentary text, a record of past attitudes and follies.
I like that, although I think many would say that we are too close, or still living with the consequences of this stuff, and that in some corners of the world those attitudes have hardened, for us to approach these books like that.
My first reaction was to laugh at how he died a few weeks after the Nobel announced they wouldn't be awarding it this year because of a sexual assault scandal.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:43 (six years ago) link
Deconstructing Harry is kinda Rothian
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:44 (six years ago) link
nah, it's just a bad, silly film
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:54 (six years ago) link
it's a great, silly film
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 21:56 (six years ago) link
given the obvious sf tilt of that list, weird that neither Joanna Russ or Kate Wilhelm is on it
it kinda reads like they made a quick pass by the remaindered table before putting it together. not meant qualitatively, just as a matter of exposure
some very good writers, more I’m curious to check out, not many I’d go to for boner rage
― attica attica (sciatica), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 22:04 (six years ago) link
often I am in the library saying to myself "now what can I read that will satisfy my appetite for boner rage"
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 22:05 (six years ago) link
that's why they revoked my library card :(
― Number None, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 22:07 (six years ago) link
4 3 mos in '65 I thought I was dating #PhillipRoth. That's the name the man who became my 1st lover gave me. & as in Goodbye, Columbus, I went 2 Margaret Sanger 4 birth control. Imagine my surprise when I saw the real Roth's pic & it wasn't the man I was dating. RIP Phillip Roth— Adrienne Barbeau (@abarbeau) May 23, 2018
― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 23:28 (six years ago) link
exquisite
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 23 May 2018 23:35 (six years ago) link
I think Roth was the first great quintessentially immigrant american novelist.
― carles danger maus (s.clover), Wednesday, 23 May 2018 23:54 (six years ago) link
lipsytes nyt opinion article is good imo
Mr. Roth’s body of work is one 20th-century American man’s hole. There are many similar divots and ditches in the literary landscape, but we’ll keep peering into Mr. Roth’s because so few have dug and illuminated with such verve, wit, fearlessness and emotional acuity.
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 24 May 2018 02:07 (six years ago) link
dug into the verve, wit, fearlessness, and emotional acuity of his hole.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 24 May 2018 02:09 (six years ago) link
I liked the Zadie Smith piece about Roth in the New Yorker.
"At an unusually tender age, he learned not to write to make people think well of him, nor to display to others, through fiction, the right sort of ideas, so they could think him the right sort of person. “Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest,” he once said. "
― triggercut, Thursday, 24 May 2018 07:11 (six years ago) link
He was the best. RIP.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Thursday, 24 May 2018 07:21 (six years ago) link
Oh all he revealed was old (post I never finished, seems relevant)
― albvivertine, Thursday, 24 May 2018 10:03 (six years ago) link
I assembled my own where-do-I-start list.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 24 May 2018 13:38 (six years ago) link
I have not read The Ghost Writer, but I remember seeing this PBS adaptation starring Mark Linn-Baker as Zuckerman.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087331/fullcredits/
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 24 May 2018 17:13 (six years ago) link
dang I thought the 2010 Polanski movie was a Roth adaptation. great movie though.
― flappy bird, Thursday, 24 May 2018 17:17 (six years ago) link
John Barth!It’s in either a novel or an essay of barth’s where he raises the question of why rape or attempted rape is so disturbingly common in his (comic) fiction and then basically just says “it’s a good question! but there isn’t time to address it here” 😐I have never read Philip Roth but I bought a paperback copy of the breast the other week so I think I’ll read that next
― Elonio Grimesci (wins), Thursday, 24 May 2018 17:28 (six years ago) link
Promising title
― albvivertine, Thursday, 24 May 2018 19:23 (six years ago) link
It’s about a guy who turns into a breast
― Elonio Grimesci (wins), Thursday, 24 May 2018 19:28 (six years ago) link
Promising premise (sorry just being a dick now. Would kinda like to read a novel about how awesome boobs are with no resort to metaphor etc tho)
― albvivertine, Thursday, 24 May 2018 19:58 (six years ago) link
The breast is great and very funny, actually. It’s a riff on The Metamorphosis, obviously.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 25 May 2018 06:19 (six years ago) link
Good list, btw, Alfred. I also love Nemesis, which totally devastated me when I read it a few months ago.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 25 May 2018 06:21 (six years ago) link
Promising premise (sorry just being a dick now.
homage
rip. have read him less than bellow or mailer, more than updike or any of the forbidding postmodernists (except goofy t.p.)
w zuckerman he handled fictionalized autobiography (+ probably sex politics) much less exasperatingly and to much greater reward than bellow w his endless eminent academics or mailer w mailer.
used too many italics imo.
― difficult listening hour, Friday, 25 May 2018 06:37 (six years ago) link
Roth film/TV adaptations, past and future
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5703-will-there-ever-be-a-great-philip-roth-movie
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Friday, 25 May 2018 16:42 (six years ago) link
doesnt even mention barry levinsons 'the humbling'
― johnny crunch, Friday, 25 May 2018 16:46 (six years ago) link
That “minority ethnic community” thing is really something
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 25 May 2018 16:49 (six years ago) link
iirc Adoration was pretty good!
― Simon H., Friday, 25 May 2018 16:51 (six years ago) link
errr Elegy, got my sombre one-word dramas mixed up
― Simon H., Friday, 25 May 2018 16:52 (six years ago) link
Indignation was bad.
― flappy bird, Friday, 25 May 2018 17:00 (six years ago) link
The book or the film? The book was pretty good. Not among his best but not bad either.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 25 May 2018 18:32 (six years ago) link
Some good stuff in here:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/books/philip-roths-best-book.html
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 25 May 2018 20:48 (six years ago) link
The movie! I liked the book a lot.
― flappy bird, Friday, 25 May 2018 21:34 (six years ago) link
Putting the brutal ending of the book at the front of the film totally neutered it imo.
― flappy bird, Friday, 25 May 2018 21:35 (six years ago) link
I'm glad to sense Patrimony come up so often.
― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 25 May 2018 21:35 (six years ago) link
Yeah, Patrimony helped me cope w the reality that my father was dying from cancer when I read it. It’s a total gem.
And oh yeah, I never watched the Indignation movie - so much of the joy of Roth’s work springs from his timing and his exquisite precisison - i have no inclination to watch these books onscreen.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Friday, 25 May 2018 21:48 (six years ago) link
It was actually OK otherwise. But flipping the ending completely ruined it.
― flappy bird, Friday, 25 May 2018 21:57 (six years ago) link
That Roth’s books should have to compete against one another is unfortunate but perhaps an inevitable consequence of readerly love and writerly death.
― attica attica (sciatica), Friday, 25 May 2018 22:04 (six years ago) link
Bernard-Henri Lévy:
Roth’s work speaks, at heart, of his crazy, complete love for America. But it also says how fragile this America is, vulnerable to its own ghosts, in constant freefall. It’s that ambivalence, that anxious love, demanding and sometimes desperate, that distinguished him from the other writers of the American pastoral—Mailer, Malamud, Bellow. And it's that love that gave Roth such a singular place in the landscape of American and world literature. I remember the day I spent with him, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration. We watched the ceremony, live on CNN. I observed him surreptitiously. I listened to his commentary. What struck me was his mix of disgust, malice, and satisfaction, as a novelist, at having predicted and described it all in advance.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, 25 May 2018 22:49 (six years ago) link
The French always like to think everything is about America, lol.
― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Saturday, 26 May 2018 11:10 (six years ago) link
well they're right sometimes
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 26 May 2018 11:40 (six years ago) link
sabbath's theater is fucking disgusting
― flappy bird, Thursday, 18 July 2019 04:15 (five years ago) link
haven't read that yet, it does sound unpleasant. I thought American Pastoral was really moving
― Dan S, Thursday, 18 July 2019 04:41 (five years ago) link
Sabbath's Theater had its dull moments, but when I read it in 2003 its savagery fascinated me. I'm not sure I'd endure it again, though.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 18 July 2019 11:05 (five years ago) link
I wonder when David Simon's "The Plot Against America" will air? They may be shooting it right now. I also wonder if such a creepily otm book will be too unwatchably otm as a TV show.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 18 July 2019 12:19 (five years ago) link
to be clear i meant what i said about sabbath's theater in the most positive way. up there with the america trilogy.
― flappy bird, Thursday, 18 July 2019 16:09 (five years ago) link
can't imagine Plot Against America's shitty ending will play any better on tv
― Simon H., Thursday, 18 July 2019 17:55 (five years ago) link