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So, I have been lurking on some music forum and because it is almost entirely inhabited by pre-pubescents who know nothing about music, they often do threads like "Where To Start With... Tortoise" or whatever. And then some older dude passes on his (always his) wisdom about said canonical band.
So I was wondering whether we could do the same thing here. Particularly as the 'what have you been reading and watching' thread is approaching 15 bazillion posts, and has become totally ewgusting and is talking about murdering females like it ain't no thang. So what I was wondering is:
Phillip Roth. Is he worth investigating? If so, where to start? I've read Portnoy's Complaint, but not for many years. I'd quite like to read some of the later stuff... the Human Stain? I keep hearing authors I admire mentioning his stuff (not always in a complimentary fashion) and he seems to be quite an important figure on the, uh, literary landscape, and I just wondered why, and where to start, and had you read any of his stuff, and if so, what do you recommend.
posted
A friend read all of his stuff in a short space of time recently, so I'll tap him for a list - Portney's Complaint is all I've read, but the American Facist one recently looked good, and his last book got very good write ups.
I'm not helping, am I?
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posted
I enjoyed The Plot Against America and I Married A Communist recently, and am just about to start The Human Stain. Would recommend either of those two.
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Plot against america is about rich american oligarch's supporting facism in ww2 and keeping US out of the war - about the tone and mood of the states during this - Lindenburg? or someone wins the presidency - it's probably an allegory of post 9/11 US.
Married a communist, not knowing.
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I've just read Everyman, his latest. Genuinely a book to read in a single sitting (I read it in two, late at night then early the following morning) as its cumulative power is quite something.
It's about a guy who, in the first few pages, is being lowered into the ground as his beloved brother and daughter eulogise him but his sons (both grown up and entering middle age) are literally choked by their resentment for him. Gradually the book loops back through the man's life and successive encounters with mortality, until a central, final slide into decrepitude and death.
There's a great scene with a gravedigger and the flashback in which the man is burying his own father is viscerally intense. Depressing as the subject matter might seem, the directness and clarity of the confrontation with the grim reaper comes as - somehow - a massive relief and consolation to the reader.
It's a pretty male book. The two other great novels of male crisis that I've read this year (McCarthy's The Road and St Aubyn's Mother's Milk) make interesting companion pieces. And! It's not about some foul-mouthed old seventy-year-old man banging the fuck out of some dumb teenager, like most of the rest of Roth's books seem to be.
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