dabrasha wrote:PS: Cheers AJ; who we trading Jason Kendall for?

Trading Jason Kendall for no one at all is okay by me!

No more so crayzzeee contract for payings to so "gritty," sometimes hit singles man!

These subtraction, she will become so nice addition!

Ken Macha! You go away too!

Thanks!

Angus Jung wrote:

dabrasha wrote:PS: Cheers AJ; who we trading Jason Kendall for?

Trading Jason Kendall for no one at all is okay by me!

Perhaps we can get Esteban Loiza in on this deal too.

I'm reading Sabbath's Theater right now, and I'm a monkey's uncle if this isn't the most shockingly enjoyable fictional experience I've had in a heck of a while.

Roth cares about his characters more than other authors do. I think his lacerating sarcasm and buffoonery tend to mask that fact at times, but when all of the chips are on the table, Roth treats his characters with respect. Even the women. Especially the women. Drenka is the most lovable and the sanest character in this book, by far.

The shifts in mood are ridiculous. One minute Sabbath is crying on the shoulder of his oldest friend (a "rich, cultured Jew"), and the next his friend walks in on him as he's in the bathroom masturbating to a picture of the friend's teenage daughter! One minute I'm getting a lewd thrill out of reading about Drenka's voracious, inhuman sexcapades, and the next my fucking heart is breaking during the story of how Mickey's marriage with Roseanna decayed from such beautiful beginnings into mutual hatred.

This book is human. I feel like a dyed-in-the-wool human being again when I'm reading this thing. The characters are so fucked-up, their lives are such train wrecks, and yet they live them up every minute, to the max. Roth never stands in judgment over them. He's like Walt Whitman, a man who refuses to make judgments about the world and instead chooses to view it as the endlessly entertaining spectacle it can be once we just open our eyes to it.

Philip Roth is my new favorite novelist. I don't think we've seen anyone of his caliber since Faulkner.

I really love how he pisses everybody off, too.

The Human Stain, I Married A Communist, and The Plot Against America are as good as any novels I've read. Exit Ghost was good. The Dying Animal, not so much. About to start American Pastoral. Guy hit his stride in his sixties.

wes9: N/C

You know, I don't remember being that impressed when I read Roth. I thought Portnoy's Complaint was indulgent and *gasp BORING. I still have a bunch of his books on my shelf that I've accumulated and just never read. I'll dive in after a while I'm sure.

Portnoy's Complaint... meh.

Goodbye Columbus is solid.

American Pastoral is transcendent.

I like the prose but not the dialogue. The Philip Roth character wore me down to the point where I wasn't at all curious about his later novels.

I enjoyed Operation Shylock, an unpopular choice, for the contrast between the pitiful cock-obsessed dual Roths on the one hand, and the political/historical context on the other -- finally, some relief from these sad sacks raging on about their virility! A hint at compelling themes in the world, beyond unfocused sexual anger and baffling resentment of Judaism! He's probably too ornery, but based on that I'm guessing he would do great John McPhee-style literary journalism if he cared to.

NC. One of the greats? Probably not. But not crap, at least.

DNA Concept wrote:I enjoyed Operation Shylock, an unpopular choice, for the contrast between the pitiful cock-obsessed dual Roths on the one hand, and the political/historical context on the other -- finally, some relief from these sad sacks raging on about their virility! A hint at compelling themes in the world, beyond unfocused sexual anger and baffling resentment of Judaism!

This is exactly why I've found his recent novels to be so outstanding -- that they go beyond the solopsistic.