Where would literature be without toxic men and toxic women? Should literature be nothing but fine, upstanding goody-goodies helping senior citizens across the street?
Give me the most toxic masculinity, the most toxic femininity and everything in between. That's the fiction I love reading about: discontents and anti-heroes, people who feel the abject absurdity and cynicism of life on planet earth.
If you want to find moral lessons in your fiction, go read some children's books.
30
I have only sampled a moderate number of comments but my sample suggests that many present day Americans decades younger than I would be happiest if they could contact an author and have that person write a novel in which the main character is a perhaps sanitized version of the person making the request.
Perhaps this is already happening OnLine where people can take a text and reshape it, perhaps using algorithms as Facebook perhaps does.
Roth gave me plenty to think about and that is what matters to me. I remember or think I remember a member of the Swedish Academy saying in a radio interview here many years ago that he did not think much of Roth and ever since then wondered if he was one who saw to it that Roth and Oates never got a Nobel.
I will never know.
Disappointed in Sweden.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
7
He wrote books of fiction. His characters aren’t real. It’s entertainment.
2
This piece starts of with a confusingly vague use of the pronoun "we." "what we might mean when we say it’s “wrong” to like him" Who are we in this case? Nobody I know says it's wrong to like him. What a silly thing to say of any author, from Danielle Steele to Shakespeare. "We" like who we like when it comes to art.
4
If" Toxic Masculinity" is so bad why wallow in it, especially fiction...What about women who read titillating bodice Busters. Are they Toxic femininity?
4
Harvey Weinstein, abuses women, The Times catches on and that means no more stories about men. No more talking about men especially the dreaded white man. We should all go away and hide under rocks or something. In fact we would be doing the world a favor if we all just got together and pulled a Jonestown. This whole Metoo movement will suffer it's own backlash. Not all white men are rapists, and we are not going to just go away.
So have your little movement and keep bashing us. I have work to do.
9
An unnamed woman in an article and some folks in a comments section said they didn't like Phillip Roth?! The male voice is being silenced for good! RESIST, MEN! RESIST! Ere these women's stranglehold on society suffocate you all!
4
The woman in "Portnoy's Complaint" that we know as "The Monkey," is a vehicle for Alex's debasement. Her white trash shiksa-hood, illiteracy and sexual hedonism are reflected in several characters like her, who are the erotica foils to his horny heroes. it is not that the men are gross, but that there are such female characters who function to render the men "unclean.
3
Why would anyone
feel it is "wrong"
to read Philip Roth?
His characters come
to life vividly, the women
reveal truths about
the men, one can
get insight into life
from a male perspective.
Roth did not claim
to be a feminist. I often
wonder how well male authors
"write" women and vice versa.
Philip Roth had great dignity.
His presence on this earth
will be missed. Thank you
for your many articles about
Mr. Roth.
9
What I have always enjoyed most in reading fiction was that I would be exposed to the mindset and emotional states of other people (who were very different from me in most ways).
What little I have read of Roth (and Updike) makes me glad that I was not like them.
5
You write: "Fiction writers often operate in a grand swirl of imagination, experience and language. With the right amount of artifice, it all feels natural. With the right amount of invention (and biography), it all feels true."
But is it true. Do men like Mr. Sabbath exist? I don't know men who are as constantly obsessed with sex as Mr. Roth's characters. Have men read his work and responded, "Yes, that's me." Or has Mr. Roth's flashlight seen a rock that he turned into a phallus?
Just wondering.
5
"I don't know men who are as constantly obsessed with sex as Mr Roth's characters." How many men do you know?
3
If we teach our kids to be brave and think critically and let our artists speak their truth freely, toxicity will not be the issue. I wouldn't have wanted to be his wife, but I am forever grateful for the illuminating gift he shared with his readers.
3
The Times really should have provided a link to Roth's NY Times 2014 Q and A "My life as a Writer" -
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/books/review/my-life-as-a-writer.html
He states that after re-reading all of his own published works to see if he had "wasted his time", he concluded - "I did the best that I could".
4
Wish-washy.
3
Along with Woody Allen, Roth's work has done so much to sustain and advance stereo-types of what a "Jewish man" is.
11
He may have had a wonderful way with words, and may have had a knack for evoking the warped, peri-pubescent experience. But I don't need to be reminded that the self indulgent are currently in charge, and there is nothing I can do about it.
2
I can’t help but tune out whenever I read or hear the phrase toxic masculinity. It’s like a good section of the world have decided it’s okay to condemn men. What a farce.
13
I would suggest that Roth was modest enough to understand that it is not for him, a man, to delve into the depths of the female psyche.
Regarding the accusation of Roth's alleged misogyny allegedly verified by Claire Bloom in her autobiography. I feel there is something in the Claire Bloom's public exposure of their relationship, that she willingly took part in for such a long time, that does not sit well in terms of its evenness and fairness.
It came across as passive-aggressive. Angry at Roth and blaming him for their failed relationship, she clearly and intentionally meant to hurt him publically. Query, did she ever have any real love for him?
There was something immature and mean-spirited in her story that one sees in a lot of in bitter failed relationships. What we never heard from Roth from his perspective was her role in the break. Kudos to him.
4
Mr. Lipsyte, Perhaps you could provide a list of topics which are currently acceptable for exploration (and a black list of those which are not). Tweet that to the world (updated periodically to get the latest mores) and then you will read only that which reinforces your stereotypic view of the world. You will never be uncomfortable and you could live comfortably in your ivory tower. (BTW: how are the you the “chairman” of any writing program anywhere in the world?)
7
Female authors of the same era were exploring their sexuality too with shocking books: See Erica Jong with "Fear of Flying", as well as Judy Blume with "Wifey". What Roth did was not at the expense of the female voice.
6
Just a follow-up to my earlier comment...apparently the tyranny of identity politics knows no bounds. Some people enjoy reading books about people “like themselves”. I noticed this trend in cartoons as a child in the 1980’s...He-Man, G.I. Joe , Jem and the Holograms ( all adults or teenagers) gave way to the Muppet Babies, Ghostbusters Babies, Rug Rats, etc. because presumably children “identified” more with little creations like themselves. But the truth is, the stories told on those “baby” shows were less interesting to me. I’d take a battle with Skeletor or a jam session with Jem over a trip to the museum with an infant Gonzo any day.
Frankly as a white Christian male living jn the Midwest, I have as much in common personally with Philip Roth as I do with Zadie Smith or Rachel Kushner or Toni Morrison. What THEY all have in common is that they are great at telling a story. Can’t we just leave it at that?
5
Someday, politically correct screeds - like this remarkable example - will seem bizarrely quaint. Along with Mr. Lipsyte's declaration of personal virtue, embalmed in his pro forma sneers at heterosexual men, tumescent or otherwise.
In the meantime, Mr. Lipsyte might note that Mr. Roth's novels will likely be read for a very long time, by a very diverse readership.
8
Surely the point is that every writer should write what's on his or her mind. What the culture "needs" will be determined by what the culture chooses to read. If you don't want characters or stories like Roth's, don't read him. Somebody else does, and will.
Must the literary world and lay reader, en masse, determine that certain authors, or certain types of authors, should not be published or read? Countering this argument by alleging that somehow the culture does need Roth, that instead of banishing such thinking we should accommodate it with excuses, is giving in to a priori censorship and thought control.
Literature is a conversation. Nobody listens to everybody, somebody listens to everyone, nobody should be silenced. I don't read Roth. The one time I really tried, it was an untypical Roth novel, and I appreciated its cleverness but chose not to finish it. I'm a gay man. I have no "need" myself for every heterosexual male's sexual fantasies. But there are far more heterosexual males in the world than gay ones. Many do say, and critics routinely imply, that the culture does not "need" the writing of Michael Cunningham or Alan Hollinghurst or Christopher Bram.
Long ago, I learned to thread my way through an entire forest of literature--straight dude lit, chick lit, lesbian erotica--that was of little interest to me, to find the books I wanted and needed. I never dreamed of pronouncing an anathema on all the books I didn't care to read.
7
The many judge the singular. It never ends well.
1
Far from his protagonists’ treatment of women in novels like Sabbath’s Theater and Portnoy’s Complaint, we have Roth's harrowing portrait of the daughter in American Pastoral, and other examples of female characters whom he did not sexualize or render as comedic. His own tastes in fiction, as evidenced by interviews he gave, in which he mentioned contemporary authors he appreciated, also would seem to put a lie to the notion that Roth “was” his two most scabrous characters.
1
What is toxic masculinity, anyway? How do you want men to be? Is there an approved "benign masculinity?" Who makes this designation or approves its traits? For that matter, can we discuss toxic femininity? All women know there is certainly something we could label as such. Toxic masculinity, like other trendy PC phrases and labels, has lost any depth of meaning. Let's throw it on the trash heap.
10
"Is there an approved 'benign masculinity'? Who makes this designation or approves its traits?"
In the matriarchal culture Roth explores (and derides), a man needs the approval of women to be a mensch!
2
Maybe Philip Roth would call it, “phallic pride.” His was one of trying to see the fleshliness in the human, i.e. to observe the truth of Life. After all, that’s where the human has its roots. His source of action is not the brain, but the phallus, the member meant to shaft the nature of death; to put it to use in the dual nature of sex and death so to speak. Of course, this mangled and fictional reality is much better than, none at all; for, to be cut off from the mould of the flesh is the purest form of death. For men in particular, must now and again reintegrate with the earth, express themselves in their masculinity; which, immediately assumes and in a fictional sense, imagines a woman of the most necessary and feminine. Thus, I think Roth makes a women, not object; but pure subject, a necessary subject that must exist in order that its counterpart; man, exists. His is not, “toxic masculinity,” as so described, but one of each needed to complement the other as pure subject and being, each an existence necessary for the other though each; one pole negative and the other, positive...
1
Or, one could explore the duality of homosexuality. Instead of "toxic masculinity", one might find "cosmic bliss".
1
Could the Times please take the lead and maintain a list of acceptable art and blacklisted art?
I fear I may state in error admiration for a member of the blacklist and lose my place in the new society.
10
I like your thinking, Joe. Apparently, very shortly, according to breaking story, we will no longer be able to admire the work of Morgan Freeman. Yikes!
2
Yes, you are all right. Of course, because you are all so elite and educated and so so smart. And so politically correct that we are all left mute. Enough of the angry white sexually obsessed male. It is time for the angry white sexually obsessed woman. Because it is her time. The angry woman who renounces sex for having known an angry white sexually obsessed man. The angry black male, sexually obsessed or not. The angry transexual. The angry woman with the double mastectomy and the stretch marks. How about the angry black woman with the forced genital mutilation? Oh, that was actually written but the lot of you turned a convenient blind eye as she was shunned and censored by the speech gestapo on college campuses. As Roth himself once said, "All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing." My guess is most of you don't know the value of Philip Roth any more than you'd know the value of Annie Ernaux, E.M Cioran, or Michel Houellebecq. Pile them books high, people. I believe the magic temperature is 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
5
Philip Roth's achievement as a writer is bound up with his ineligibility for the Nobel Prize: he made art out of disgraceful, indefensible human realities. So far, so good. "Sabbath's Theater," and his fine debut "Goodbye, Columbus," are the books of his that I own.
Let's add that he benefited hugely from the 'sexual revolution' decades. And on the other hand, he was & will be forever cursed by his old-fashioned division of women into Mother vs. Whores.
1
Mr. Lipsyte misses an important point when he writes"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."
No, we'll keep "peering" and celebrating Roth and male authors because female authors just don't get published, reviewed, or celebrated with the same enthusiasm. There are studies which indicate that both men and women consider a manuscript less good, less worthy if it has a female author.
3
No, we'll keep "peering" and celebrating Roth and male authors because female authors just don't get published, reviewed, or celebrated with the same enthusiasm. There are studies which indicate that both men and women consider a manuscript less good, less worthy if it has a female author.
Good on you. So true. Thank you.
1
My summation of Phillip Roth in a few sentences "If you're not Jewish - you won't care"
The literary world - writers and readers, is and has been heavily populated with Jewish sensibility (Look at a list of hot writers in the Paris review, many, many, many are Jewish who write with and for a Jewish voice - Sana Krasikov et. all).
He had a built in audience in fellow writers, readers, and critics who are Jewish.. They got/get him and his voice. Much like Dylan had a built in audience with like minded cerebral, college educated, quiet guitar strumming music critics and college students in the 60's - they could relate,( and in the case of the critics - they hold they gate keys.) It certainly helped in Roth's case too.
I've always regarded Roth and his rabid fans as an in group thing". I never got into him.
7
The gift of literature is the window into another's mind. Phillip Roth and Henry Miller are must reads for any woman. Their unflinching look at male sexuality is often disturbing but fascinating.
3
How about: if literature were written by a Woman - and were a window into a man's mind? and " Their unflinching look at [female] sexuality is often disturbing but fascinating?"
Sue, sweetheart, Believe me: it would never see the light of day..
1
while talking about toxic masculinity, we may have to also talk about "self-destructive" femininity which may have its own problems that contributes towards the problem.
For Mickey Sabbath, there is Anastasia Steele. For Roth, there is EL James. And scores of women who read, watch, enjoy and identify the subjugation and degradation of their own kind.
Can anyone answer why?
1
Because psychologically, men are groomed to victimize and women are groomed to be victims. As someone who has fought to break free of this mindset, and who inadvertently relapsed into it for a brief period, its seduction is built right into the masculine and feminine model. So, yes, many women embrace their own oppression. I'm so thrilled to see both men and women finally recognizing this dynamic, given that you cannot change your behavior until you understand it.
1
Keep in mind that these women, the ones who enjoy subjugation and degradation of their own kind, are people whom Roth made up. They live in his books. They are his inventions, which tells you a lot about his mind and wishes.
They don't tell you anything about actual women. Nor do I know scores of women enjoy and identify the sub. and deg. of their own kind--maybe some women who have been brought up from childhood in degradation suffer from that. Instead, the women I know are interested to see if the worst they suspect about men are true. Roth verifies their worst suspicions, alas.
Roth encourages nasty beliefs in people who often hide them. Thus, they rejoice at his writing. Similarly, Trump applauds nasty suppressed beliefs such as racism, misogyny, etc. That's why he was elected. I suspect that Roth's open writing about toxic masculinity may have something to do with his "election," kind of like Trump
1
Could it be that viewing, men, and women and artist born at the beginning of the 20th century through a 21st century lens is not very useful if it is Roth you think you are talking about.
2
He can be quite funny (Portnoy's Complaint and My Life as Man). I also like his short stories "Defender of the Faith" and "Conversion of the Jews."
1
I read "The Human Stain", and liked it *except* for the sex parts. Those I didn't really understand. He didn't give me enough to get inside the heads of the characters to understand their motivations.
On other topics of human nature, he did explain the characters. What this says about him as a writer, me as a reader, and our respective understanding of sex, I don't know. I will leave that to fancier literary people.
1
I love Sam Lipsyte's writing and respect his views. It just cracks me up that the same day Jason Bateman mansplains Hollywood to Jessica Walter in order to shield Jeffrey Tambor from accountability for toxic behavior, this chivalrous, if slightly overwrought defense of Roth appears.
3
Roth reminds me, in a sense, of Stanley Kubrick -- another visionary who used the supposed sexual liberation of the 60s as permission to goad his audience into identifying with men who felt free to rape women (A Clockwork Orange) or seduce and molest underage girls (Lolita.)
There is something a little dispiriting, as a woman, in reading work like that, however well-crafted it may be. The work is predicated on denying women's fundamental humanity.
But both of those men are certainly products of their time -- born within 5 years and 10 miles of each other, too old to be Baby Boomers and fundamentally misreading what the 60s were all about. ("Thanks, counter-culture, for allowing me to feel less guilty about groping women! I am no longer repressed!")
You can admire the craft of their work and also find the moral content self-serving and a bit creepy. That's how I feel about both of them.
10
Seems simple…
Half of us want to be seduced but not assaulted - confound and confuse the other half by finding tales of depravity seductive…
No inconsistency…
Not ten percent of TV or movie drama go ten minutes without shooting or stabbing – but nearly all of us step from theater or recliner keeping a firm grip on what’s actually acceptable gun or knife wielding…
Why they’re lined up around the block for Big Dog’s book…Could give a hoot about his so-90’s ideology and infidelity – but still utterly captivated by the rogue…
That lip looks so bitten…
Does this column actually have a point? I kept reading and reading and my eyes glazed over before I found one. I would think that if you've written a novel called "The Ask", you might actually know how to get to the point...
7
He certainly did chronicle a maleness that numbers of us have been the brunt of, whiney men men that couldn't get out of their own way and find a better path for themselves by looking past themselves at he world otheirs. Men who chose pathology to their detriment. God bless him, but frankly I found his petulant and childish self obsessed male characters very tedious reading.
4
"Mickey Sabbath is a relic from the 1960s, when the understandable urge to break free of hypocritical and oppressive sexual mores gave license to some to trample on the rights and dignity of others. One person’s free love might, often enough, have been another’s date rape."
"Date rape"?
By repressed 1960's Jewish mother's boys?
That never happened.
Clearly the false demonization of the 1960's is still going on.
If Philip Roth's character, Mickey Sabbath, did something like that, Roth was fictionalizing wildly for the tastes of 2018's more liberated but politically correct readers.
Portnoy's Complaint was a more accurate depiction of the Jewish male's sexuality. And if there was any "toxicity", it was self-inflicted.
Powerful Americans have always been trying to push their country back to the glory days of the 1950's. But they've pushed so hard, they've driven the US back to the 1930's.
3
It's interesting how this opinion piece reeks inhibition. A friend of mine, a Canadian actress, on reading it, marveled that a young writer should feel it "wrong" to have a place in her heart for Roth. My comment to her went something like this: Yes, it is odd, but, then, the whole art of the 'thought police' is to internalize inhibitions, censorships, qualms, doubts, taboos, stereotypes, prejudices, and guilt - above all, guilt - and, essentially, paralyze perceptions, and make honest introspection, honest access to one's own feelings, and to the feelings of others, difficult if not impossible. It's a side effect of mini-totalitarian ideologies, which like to create mini-zombies. The common name for this method is "political correctness" - and it is a method, imposed conformism, which can have any kind of content - reactionary or progressive - and as such it is perfectly noxious. That said, Roth was a great writer. We humans are messy, contradictory, frequently evil, delightfully imperfect creatures. Roth - like Tolstoy or Stendhal or Austen - showed this in all its splendor.
6
This goes too far--comparing Roth to Tolstoy and Austen???
Stendhal, maybe but leave the greats alone, please.
2
Portnoy pulled the finger from the dike of unspoken secret urges we all have to some degree while containing the potential deluge with laughter. Likewise, Atlas Shrugged hung a painting on the living room wall of the human failings of government. Updike’s work magnified all the little details of alert living that we unconsciously savor as we walk down the street. I liked reading them all. But I now tend toward history as my reveal of the human condition. I would love to create, or find a writer who has created, fiction devoid of stereotypes that really drill into the complexity of developing human relationships, regardless of gender. Women are no more or less complicated than men. We need to understand people.
1
I have an absolute commitment to gender equality, read as many novels by feminist women as those penned by men. And I think Roth was the finest consistent writer of fiction in American literature in the 20th C. Take Sabbath's Theater. You go part of the way to exploring the dark presentation of this character, part. Here is a character who rewards the generosity of a host by searching through their daughters clothes for revealing pictures to stimulate himself. We are trapped with the protagonist as he does this appalling thing. When he is caught we feel personally indicted by his host's claim that he lives in fearful isolation. By the end he is desperately searching for a burial site before his planned suicide. To say the least this is not a positive character. Much like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert we only see the profound evil when we are confined within the mentality of the actor. Some of the comments that are made here note that his female characters don't have the life that his male characters do. This is no surprise, Roth never showed the arrogance that it would take to shine his flashlight into the character of women. He could look within and see how men were capable of anything, but he had that modesty to leave a question mark over his female characters. Nor was Roth an author who shielded his work through a claim of victimization by PC warriors, The Human Stain reflects a tragic misunderstanding but we have the ability to comprehend the protagonist's critics.
11
What constitutes a 'feminest writer'? What happens if you mistakenly start a book by someone who is then deemed to not be a feminist? What if you like the book? Must you give it up?
I would describe a feminist writer as one whose writing indicates that offices, rights and the benefits and burdens of society should not be divided by sex nor gender. Descriptively, a feminist writer reads history to conclude that the life prospects of women have been frustrated due to a failure to live up to this principle. Of course I read fiction penned by women who would not be described as feminists,e.g. Jane Austen, I just did not see that as relevant to my defense of Mr. Roth.
"Dark drives"..."Conflicted joys." These are the stuff of much of the best literature. Updike made a writing career of sexual exploration, and his fans loved it. Neither are female writers immune from the "dark drives and conflicted joys" in their work. Sex is the constant that most of us desire and look for in works of fiction that get closest to explaining the human condition. R.I.P., Philip.
8
The article (and some of the reader comments I've seen) reflect on Roth novels like Sabbath's Theater and Portnoy's Complaint, to the exclusion of ones such as American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. As the latter two show (or will, to anyone who dares to read him in the future), his range was far from limited to exploring "the heterosexual male psyche" or "priapic" or "tumescent" men.
9
Tricky thing is, his acclaim and eminence and the cultural attention he got expands and appears to validate his misogynist values. He lived within his own time and could or would not trancend it, along with several others of his litery cohort, but it’s past time to take stock.
10
I would disagree that Mr. Roth HAD "misogynist values." He EXPLORED misogynist values, and the difference is fundamental to what in his case made for great literature.
4
Blaming Roth for writing about utterly disturbed white American men is like blaming Zola for writing about the ugly reality of the poor during the French industrialization process.
It doesn't make any sense.
Writers aren't supposed to hide reality as it is, they are supposed to think through today's social problems by experimenting with how characters can live their lives in a credible way.
And that allows us, the reader, to enlarge our moral imagination, which in turn makes new ways of thinking, perceiving and living possible.
As Zola himself explained in his essay "The Experimental Novel", a "realist", in literature, clearly does NOT try to depict "reality as it is", if not it wouldn't be art but a documentary. Art explores reality all while opening up new possibilities.
Is that the case when Roth writes about "toxic masculinity" too?
I have to admit that I didn't read him yet (three books of him are waiting to be read, on my bookshelf ...), but if it is, there's no reason to reject the fact that his favorite theme is the toxic conception of manhood that has dominated Western society for so long (and that of course men were/are victims of too).
5
Was Roth a “better” or “more important” writer than Tom Wolfe? The number of “assessments” published in the Times indicates that this paper must think so. Not sure I agree...
2
I don't think he was in the same league as Wolfe. He was working in the world of the "traditional" novel. whereas Wolfe explored the outer realms of our social experience.
4
I find Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full to be two of the most astonishing novels of the last half century. The last Roth novel I read was The Plot Against America which left me thinking “this is a great writer?” But I don’t mean to disparage Roth, it’s just that I wonder why the Times seems to favor Roth in its coverage.
1
Take a deep breath. The liberal arts are still about freedom of expression. One quote from this author’s student does not make a totalitarian trend in academia. Somehow I doubt that this woman will exile you to Siberia over Portnoy’s Complaint. She’ll be too busy working three crummy jobs to pay down her debt.
College students’ beliefs are a work in progress; some of them are quite humorous. I found the young woman’s quote amusing in its innocence. Roth might seem risqué because the idea of someone her dad’s age masturbating with a piece of liver is shocking to her. I remember my disbelief when I learned my parents had sex. I got used to the idea without destroying the liberal arts. She probably will too.
Of course it’s not a crime to enjoy Roth. It’s also not a crime to dislike aspects of
his writing or find his preoccupations boring or irrelevant. He’s way before these student’s time. They don’t have anything more in common with him than I had with the townspeople in The Scarlet Letter. Their universal concerns sounded silly to me. Roth’s might sound as ridiculous to young women as their concerns sound to you. Rejoice! You’re part of the grand continuum of men who don’t understand women. Roth would be proud of you.
Adults have been lamenting “these kids today” since at least 20 BC (Horace.) Let’s save the panic for the genuine totalitarians among us.
P.S. The objection to political correctness fools no one. It’s a euphemism for “liberal ideas I disagree with.”
8
Mr. Roth’s Jewishness is not an asterisk to his identity as a White male—definitely not when a segment of the country violently insists that Jews aren’t even White. It featured prominently in his writing. It was in his voice. If we’re assigning value to marginalization, then Mr. Roth, as a Jew, deserves as much unqualified celebration as a Black man or woman with similar talent and body of work.
6
How about we stop "assigning value to marginalization?" Let's assign value to the valuable!
17
Precisely why, for all the hoopla about him, I never got into him. He is too Jewish. (after your comment I am free to say this lets accept).
He writes "for Jews", it's fair to say, for whom his 'voice' hits home.
Me, being a white Male of Italian American descent cracked his books at various times and knew they weren't for me. Different kind of man. Assessed things differently, walked in different shoes and it didn't interest me.
In fact, most people I know who gush about him or have recommended him are Jewish.
1
"...understandable urge to break free of hypocritical and oppressive sexual mores gave license to some to trample on the rights and dignity of others."
All of that is true. I was 13 when Sam Lipsyte was born, and even as a pubescent I could sense a palpable change in men. Perhaps that was just inchoate testosterone stirrings.
But I paraphrase Norman Mailer who said, "Before the 1960s we all knew about sex, but few of us had it because it was dangerous. Before World War ll, it could kill you."
".... more questions — about what being a man, and a human being, in America might have meant and felt like for some in the past, and what it might mean and feel like in the future."
Men, past and present are the same. Men have always needed to find an identity.
It's the women who have changed. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, women have transcended their sex, and now they are the equals of men. Oh yes, there are such very real things as glass ceilings, lower salaries, and workplace harassment. However, women have an innate option of an identity that men do not. For men, acquiring an identity is essential.
As Bill Maher said last week, "I was an 'incel' as a young man, so I thought I would start a band, or go to medical school to get a girl." An identity is incumbent on men.
Sam, I have fleshed out four masculine archetypes. Perhaps I'll send them to you.
As Saul Bellow said, "What hath Roth got?" And as Dean Martin sang, "....never treat me, like a gentile."
2
"However, women have an innate option of an identity that men do not."
Uh ... what does that actually mean, concretely?
3
Nonsense. Roth's characters acted out against very particular types of women -- shiksas, a crude slur for non-Jewish white women considered sexually available -- as an eternal expression of presumed rebellion against presumed oppression. He played a nasty game and should be given full credit for playing it.
9
In a documentary I remember seeing recently about him, Roth mentions that he felt "bad" or something similar -- can't remember -- when Christmas came each year and his family did not celebrate it. I may be wrong, but I wonder if that deep rooted dislike of those who were "shiksas" came from it? He was lucky to make his living by writing. Very lucky. But I prefer the genius of Alice Munro and Toni Morrison who did deserve the Nobel Prize to his misogyny.
6
I am surprised no post I've read (I've read most) has brought forth the perspective a male Jewish friend of mine had regarding Portnoy's Complaint, that it led to the stereotyping of Jewish men and was therefore a bad book. From that perspective, the problem wasn't that Roth and his protagonist were white, heterosexual or male, but that Roth was a traitor to The Jews.
I thought that book was hilarious. It had seemed to me that Portnoy represented all teenage boys. That Portnoy had issues with his Mom, and with his Jewish ethnicity, and therefore pursued non-Jewish women did have the ring of truth to it. Portnoy sought salvation itself by finding and having sex with a sexy Appalachian lady known as "The Monkey," but he did not find it. Upon reflection, it did seem to me that a lot of Jewish men I knew were following the same trajectory. A lot of non-Jewish men I knew were as well, but they were not prejudiced against Jewish women.
So, my question is, does my friend's sense of specifically Jewish betrayal resonate with you if you are Jewish, or with someone you know who is Jewish?
2
Telling women to stop being "politically correct" in their criticism of Roth's treatment of female characters is no different than telling democrats to enjoy the Trump presidency. Neither is unimpeachable.
Neither is Batali, because you happen to like his food; or Ted Nugent, because you happen to like his music; or Charlie Rose because you happen to like his show; of Franken, because he is a liberal and so are you.
I do not read literature that mirrors attitudes I find repugnant to myself and to other women (or people of color). That doesn't make me a lesser reader. It makes me a wholly different reader, from the other gender that's always saying if we don't like something, to just be quiet about it. No.
I don't watch rape scenes. I don't watch porn. You may enjoy the liberty of doing that, untouched by it. The pendulum is never going to swing in the opposite direction. It swings that way just a little bit, and we end up with a nearly all-male commentary, yelling "political correctness."
Ah, lads, you've had it so easy.
17
Philip Roth, in response to the Bill Clinton years: "I myself dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadaistically like a Christo wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing the legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE.”
1
Toxic masculinity is epitomized in the apparently irrepressible (and arrogantly/flagrantly, ignorant) urge to declare qualitative hierarchies "One of the greatest American novelists of the past several decades (along with Don DeLillo and Toni Morrison)" Please check yourself Mr. Lipsyte.
4
The sanctimonious undercurrent of today's liberal navel gazing is nauseating to this liberal. The idea that social awareness of historic inequality, whether based on gender, sexual orientation, race or any other "ism" means that art is to be bleached of the duality that drives the human spirit is absurd to me. You can ignore men like Roth, who in beautiful prose shone a light on some ugly human traits, but its absurd to think that in doing so we push the scale in the right direction. Anyone who thinks the me too movement validates criticism of Roth's sexually driven protagonists can't see the forest for the trees. Sadly many NYT readers appear to fall into this admittedly easy generalization.
10
... " the straight white male Id in all it's horror ". What in the world does that mean? Good Lord, only straight white males have Ids?
12
Roth was a sexualy malajusted sniveler - and totaly irrevelent.
7
Writers, like other items of fashion, have their day and then are forgotten. James Farrell of Chicago once sold more books than Steinbeck in the 1930s and who even knows what he wrote or who he was now? It'll be the same fate for Philip Roth as society evolves so far past his divisive Jewish-goy worldview as to make his books quite irrelevant and yes, boring.
8
Do yew remember when we started laughing at the term "existentialism." "Patriarchy." will be next, not because it is not a fine word, but because lately, as in this odd reflection it has been attempting to pass itself off as an argument. Philip Roth does not need apologists and he doesn't need fixing.
4
Well, you're right about that. After all, we're not forced to read his, um, "musings."
The term "toxic masculinty" a tired and overplayed attempt by misguided ideologues to pathologize gendered traits they don't even approach an understanding of. Hillary Clinton sipped drinks called "Toxic Masculinity" at the Planned Parenthood Gala while salivating at the prospect of reversing the tides of the imagined "war on women". Women have more opportunnity than they ever had in the history of humanity. Surely time could be better spent reviewing their good work than pouring acid on the obituary of dead men whose art you did not approve of. In the future, when the human body and gendered traits are understood by all of our bionic brains, we will look back at the left's demonization of male creativity and diagnosis this as a pathology akin to witch burning.
10
*sigh*
Let's just address one sentence: "women have more opportunity than they ever had in the history of humanity". Probably true; rather unevenly distributed (i.e., globally). Not an actual counterpoint, given huge historical oppression.
2
Dear Mr. Neo Pacific,
I really think that you should study the unpleasant history of the relative status of men and women in our culture. If you did learn more facts, your comments would be much more useful and convincing.
Ma
1
The "toxic masculinity" meme is offensive. It needs to be retired.
13
no actually it doesn't
1
Don't quite know what to say, Mr. Lipsyte. Does this keep me from writing a response?
No. I'm afraid not.
I would question your remark, "Patriarchy is bad for EVERYONE." What I mean is. . . .
. .. I don't think your bona fide patriarch--and by the way, do you know any? I don't. . . .
. .. your bona fide patriarch has any qualms or doubts about patriarchy.. The system works well for HIM. The smiling, subservient Stepford wife (as it were)--barefoot of course!--approaching the divan, bearing fruits and sweetmeats and. . . ..
. . .lots of other things. LOTS. If you know what I mean.
Bad for them MORALLY, I suppose you meant. Now THAT'S another can of worms. But then (suddenly) a hard, bright light plays over--well--Mr. Portnoy--or Mr. Sabbath--or one, Mr. Philip Roth.
'Cause that leads to another point you made--an exceedingly VALID point.
WHEN. . . .
. .. in my mad flight from "conformity" and "shackles of religious expectation" and this that and the other. . ..
. .. WHEN. . . .
. . .do I turn into a Frankenstein's monster? Need I run over the long long list of eminent persons who (with dizzying suddenness) have PLUMMETED into the depths of infamy and public opprobrium?
Were they too fleeing the shackles of "conformity" and "middle-class hypocrisy" and all the rest of it? And if they were. . .
. .. need we follow them?
I have my doubts, Mr. Lipsyte.
I really do.
2
Had I but world enough and time, I might read more of Roth's novels. But I don't. So if I'm going to read about tumescent dudes, I'll stick with guys like Andrew Marvell. He was terse and had a sense of humor.
7
A strange chic of our times is the obviously less talented using identity politics nostrums to attack those who tower over them.
Nobody outside of that ever-decreasing circle cares.
8
How long will it be before some #MeToo commissars with time on their hands deconstruct Mr. Roth sexual scribes and he too is erased from lit. history.
E.g., "When you make love to a woman you get revenge for all the things that defeated you in life."
From the movie Elegy from Dying Animal
2
For me, Roth's novels sit square in the middle of the mainstream, several levels below "literary." His prose was always surprisingly ordinary. It was never astonishing. Bellow could capture a character with a single sentence, Updike could give you a new way of seeing the ordinary, but Roth's sentences just lead you to the next one. Sometimes they're almost hackneyed. He was better with dialog.
Like others, I think Sabbath's Theater is his best book. It's a portrait of a disgustingly lascivious man, the apotheosis of Roth's obsession with sex, and it seems more honest than anything else he wrote. The puppeteer angle fails to convince (it's there, it seems, simply as a symbol for Sabbath being manipulative, pulling the strings), but the last section, when Sabbath is trying to buy a cemetery plot for himself and revisits his past, is quite poignant.
6
Any sentence beginning "We don't need any more stories about [X]" is thoughtless nonsense, no matter what X is.
8
Since I am neither Jewish nor male, I was not intrigued by Philip Roth. I considered him a narcissistic "guy writer," not my cuppa joe. Goodbye, Roth.
3
You are the epitome of political correctness. You are confusing art with politics. Roth was a genius who described the Male psyche as he saw it.
4
Most "literary" writers abandoned the notion of lifting up humanity a hundred years ago. It became unfashionable with modernism. Roth could have used his talent to present responsible masculinity -- which is what this country needs more than ever. But that wouldn't get him literary status.
4
«We don’t need any more of _____.•
This phrase often feels like a murder even when I fully agree with the pronouncement.
3
Why would someone who's never read Roth choose to weigh in right now? Why would anyone choose this moment to express resentment, prejudice or bitterness? Why cry here about "other valuable voices"? He "got to shout" because of his talent and the originality of his voice, not because he was louder, taller, whiter or priveleged. You can hate the publishing landscape all you want, but if you feel an artist can "suck oxygen" from others, you don't understand the nature of art, or commerce, for that matter. And what does any of this have to do with the man who died yesterday?
9
You give him too much credit. His vision was limited to a fervent, adoring gaze on his belly button and another part of his anatomy.
9
When I imagine a woman writing about males with the same tone of rapacious objectification as we were subjected to for 50 years under the mind-bending thrall of Roth hagiography, I am left at one place only: I know - and many women who write know - that to say something 'mean' or 'nasty' or 'naughty' about males in the manner Roth wrote about females is a recipe for rejection, ridicule and non-publication. The young women writers in the US (it is slightly different elsewhere) who have been very successful are goody-two shoes. They obediently write mean things only about themselves: graphic descriptions of anorexia, or addiction, or promiscuity cloaked in self-shaming apologia for being. They would not dare express any naughty-naughties for fear of offending 'the market,' even if they let slip a covert admission or two about secretly admiring Roth.
39
I am very happy another woman writer wrote about this very very very important issue!
7
Strongly disagree that the successful women writers in the US have been goody-two shoes. Mary Gaitskill, Amy Hempel, and Lorrie Moore write about men in blistering ways. Toni Morrison handles sexuality brilliantly. And the late Grace Paley wrote about desire, love, and failure. As for young women writers with courage, check out Rebecca Curtis, ZZ Packer, Elisa Albert, Miranda July. The list goes on and on.
6
We have a word for the hatred of women, 'misogyny,' a condition many, many men suffer from and make us suffer for. There is no corresponding hatred women towards men. This is because a) men create language that represents their thinking b) men can not conceive of women not revering them and c) women don't suffer the virulent hatred of half the human race the way men do.
Calling it 'toxic masculinity,' 'machismo,' or just plain male-ness doesn't negate the fact that it creates outright hell for all other living beings on the planet.
5
As a woman approaching 70 I remember talking with older women who passed through puberty and marriage without good contraception. Many felt deep, burning anger and much of the rage was aimed at men, especially their husbands, who got them pregnant too often. It is hard today to understand and appreciate this rage and what it did to teens, men, women and families.
Men and women burned for sex much more hotly then because sex was dangerous. Women seldom novelized their sluttish desires. Men did but desire not sluttish but biology thwarted by culture and science. Roth was brilliant at chronicling this bygone era.
7
I remember reading Philip Roth during finals week at university. It was a break from the heavier material I was trying to cram into my noggin. In other words — and I say this with full recognition that he is a far more important writer than I could ever hope to be — I considered his novels to be slightly trashy escapism. That’s the feminist in me talking.
My aversion to “toxic masculinity” in fiction (and film, and television, and music...) has grown through the years. Now that I am creeping up on my seventh decade, I have trouble getting through any writing — whether fiction or not — that reeks of male angst, priapic obsession or misogyny. It’s even worse when I’m listening to a book on Audible (I just don’t want to hear it!), but at least then I can get some satisfaction in telling the author/narrator to zip it (“Alexa, quit Audible!”).
7
Boy that didn’t take long. Speaking ill of the dead is very courageous.
Congrats.
1
Roth's work is disturbing, but not at all unfamiliar to any woman who knows...or lives, with such characters as he depicts.
His work is complex, fascinating, neurotic, and revealing, of him, mostly. I suspect he did a great job of sublimating all of those visceral, nasty urges by writing about them, much as a surgeon, ( according to Herr Freud), sublimated his/her murderous impulses by using talents more humanely.
Don't laugh, we are always fighting to keep our better angels one step ahead of the demon devil.
1
An amazing writer. Why not simply enjoy what he wrote for us?
3
Because a lot of people don't find it enjoyable. It can be deeply creepy and distressing if you don't identify with his protagonists but do identify with their targets.
4
Roth told good stories and had a wonderful command of English. That’s it.
2
"Sabbath's Theater" was the only Roth novel that I stopped reading in the middle. Or before the middle.
1
Roth did not commit crimes or, even, as far as we know, act badly against women. He wrote.
If a person dislikes what he wrote, or wrote about, well—don’t read him.
As for Allen and Polanski—culpability connected with action is dispositive.
2
I’m one of the avid intelligent readers who simply can’t get through a Roth book. I just don’t have the patience to wade through one more solipsistic paean to the self-pitying male ego, no matter how well written. No desire whatsoever to crawl into his characters’ heads, and if I met any of them in real life I don’t think I’d want very much of their company.
Life’s too short to read bad books. Or even well written boring ones.
11
I think, more than his toxically masculine characters, what jars me as a reader is that his female characters are flagrantly underdeveloped. There is an argument to be made about the shallow perspective of the narrator, but many of his marginal male characters are blessed with more internal life than major female characters.
6
I'm always asked whether we are related. The answer is no. But I did have an uncle Philip who once who toured the country with Will Rogers as a mind reader.
5
Well, when something is toxic they bury it, so either way, problem solved.
2
It shocks me that this is even up for discussion. We should just ban his books from libraries and also Picasso's art from museums since neither were the model men that the MeToo movement seems to aspire all men to be. (please note sarcasm).
Point to ponder, if they weren't the men they were, could they have produced the art that they did?
4
I have managed so far to live one year longer than Philip Roth, which I note as perhaps having some bearing on how I view so many comments seeming to come from writers who live and approve of the trigger-warning world of 21st century American universities.
Now to the point: Here in Sweden we need a Swedish Philip Roth to take the dark story of the fall of the Swedish Academy, the elite group that among other things gave the Nobel Prize to Dylan rather to Roth or even Oates, and transform that story into a novel "Even In Sweden". (See URL at bottom, my comment 2 days ago on the "dark story")
Beginning at least as far back as 1994 the Academy was informed by a young Swedish female artist of verbal and sexual harassment at the hands of a man who ran a club where Academy members gathered. Nobody listened. Finally, in 2017 somebody did listen and the long-time behavior of that French man, last name Arnault, was set forth.
Quickly his greatest admirer, Academy member Horace Engdahl came to Arnault's defense, reminding us that he, Engdahl, had proposed that Arnault create a school to teach young Swedish males how to be "gentlemen".
We need that novel to help us understand how Engdahl and Arnault can see harassment of young and not so young women as central to being gentlemen.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/opinion/metoo-batali-charlie-rose-sexu...
I get the feeling that Lypsythe is grandstanding here. To tow the party line that content like Roth's is "toxic" is patently dishonest. The women of the future would do better by being Roth. They might realize that men are men -- and not extensions of themselves and their own idea of what men are supposed to be like. Men in the 21st century are created in a female image -- the inverse of the so-called evil "patriarchy." If we're supposed to be reading fiction in order to live in the body of another vicariously -- the 21st century is in trouble, for making moral demands the sanitize the male psyche, for creating soppy, shamed men who -- ironically -- aren't very sexy.
2
There is an effort afoot to destroy, to eliminate, white male writers in America. Can it be said that plainly? Yes.
If they portray actions and instincts that are socially and personally ignoble, and the literature so derived is revered, are we then guilty of celebrating some of the disgusting things they lay before us? The idea is not to have a discussion but to, literally, close the book on their writings and on them, too. Declaring an end to the era of white males can be fun, empowering to some.
In my own sometimes mangled attempts at short stories and novels, I ask myself if I can have characters who are not just flawed, but who are, in many different ways, repulsive human beings. Am I endorsing their bad conduct, their diseased souls? Dwelling on their faults without direct condemnation gives them "mind space", something no longer desirable or even acceptable.
Without wide and trusting room to show humanity in all of its guts and glory, our celebrated literature will narrow into complete irrelevance. We will become impoverished by our own desire to correct the world from the printed page to the bedroom.
There is great literature waiting out there and some of it just might come from LWMs, living white males, if we allow them to flourish.
5
I'm a fan of Roth's, even though I don't rate him quite as highly as many of his American readers.
Part of the trouble with Roth is that his female characters are unconvincing (as was his supposed black-man-passing-as-Jewish). But then, he usually wrote from a male perspective and I think it's fair to judge writers by what they do best.
To me, Roth's books - especially My Life As A Man - were a revelation of how the attitudes of patriarchy can imprison men as well as women.
Activists who feel 'guilty' about liking a good author may be unaware of how much ammunition he has given them. Or else care too much about saying the right thing. Let's face it, that's just childish.
Thank you for the interesting overview of Phillip Roth’s work.
1
I think the whole idea of telling an artist what he or she should or should not create (or in this case, should or should not write about) is oppressive and absurd.
5
Ah yes, the unceasing obsession with political correctness and identity politics. Everything must now be viewed through this narrow prism of moral absolutism. Even great art like Philip Roth. But alas, political correctness trumps all else, and Roth must be sacrificed to the unyielding doctrine of neoliberalism.
4
As a woman, I never liked Philip Roth, though I appreciated the "technical quality" of his writing. He belonged to a generation of writers who glorified toxic masculinity and created the artistic and literary justification for all the male predators we've seen lately (and the millions still in the shadows). Had he been a few years younger and healthier, I am sure he would have fallen to the #metoo movement. In a way, he was lucky to pass away with his dignity intact and his impressive body of work untainted.
Pop culture and the artistic left are faced with their own hypocrisy for it hails writers like Roth every day, and in the same time claims to care about women's liberation and equal footing with men.
4
I asked my therapist about toxic masculinity last week and she said it's not a valid theory among most psychologists. Just saying.
2
In only two brief crossing-paths with Mr. Roth I was struck by his remarkable instant rapport with a stranger, which was endearing, and his startling irritability, which was not. Which is only to say he was as human as the rest of us. However, unlike the rest of us, he was a genius. Why is it now necessary to deconstruct him as the apotheosis of the horrid patriarchy? Maybe he was. Maybe he didn’t understand women at all. So what? Really, ladies and gentlemen, give it a rest. He was a man of his times. Can we leave the cultural hindsight alone and remember him as that, and as one of the great writers of the 20th century? For the moment, isn’t that enough?
1
Ugh, here we go: let's have another stab at white male masculinity. What will it look like to be human in the future? Whatever the literature of this looks like, it will probably have less to do with skin color and gender than with works that get to the heart of what it is to be a person. Roth's works will last if they tell us something about this (and not just about white, Jewish, affluent male masculinity, despite all the women and people of color, gay or straight, who have found something of themselves in his works--isn't that why he's attained the stature he's attained, or is that based solely on his gender and [lack of] color?). Here's what's missing in all this: the fact that in the Puritanical legacy of this country, the Calvinist mindset we cannot shake is to find a scapegoat for the unease in ourselves and pin it on the witches of our time, who happen to be male and white right now, just as they were women and people of color at another. The trouble is, rather than looking at ourselves, we keep going out and looking for witches, and they don't exist. Maybe there's another way out of our unease with ourselves?
4
This backhanded apology for the hagiography of Roth seems disingenuous. Heaven help us when our responses to art are constrained to what's socially acceptable.
Ironically, such peer pressure contributes mightily to all these celebrations of a writer who's repeatedly being referred to as the definitive voice of a generation. But his work is so focused on a male protagonist's angst about his sexual potency (literally, figuratively, or both) that it seems bizarre to declare he's speaking for a generation that includes females.
His masculinity wasn't toxic, just myopic. That's fine--but let's be honest about that--the voice of a generation, if that voice is comprised of men and women, Roth is not.
2
Three op-ed pieces on Roth on the same day seems a bit much even for an author of his stature. I have to wonder if such real estate will be allocated in the future for prominent authors who are not white males.
2
Roth stayed in his lane and wrote brilliantly about it.
4
I've never subscribed to the theory that exploring male sexuality celebrates it. It's the kind of thinking that leads us to say historians shouldn't write about Stalin. Mickey Sabbath was a specimen well worth exploring, and Sabbath’s Theater is a masterpiece, like a scalpel. And Philip Roth was a genius.
34
Portnoy's Complaint allowed me to break free of the politically correct shackles on my mind. Never, never, never have I laughed so hard reading a book and felt like I was waking up at the same time!
15
You know what else Roth wrote about? Swimming. Being a Jew. Politics. The 20th Century American Experience. I have read several of his books though avoided Portnoy and the guy was nothing short of amazing - a beautiful brilliant observer of humanity and life. I am a woman and a feminist and I don't need to see myself in everything I read - how tedious.
The way Roth obsessed over women and sex was to me funny, and true (resonant of people I know) and very human. Thank you Philip Roth for the many hours of gorgeous beautiful reading you gave me, I love your work.
42
and glove manufacturing, don't forget that
2
Never have I enjoyed readers' comments so much as today on Philip Roth. Thank you, especially to the women willing to grant Roth significance whether or not he has lived up to current expectations of masculinity. As a young man, I found in his early writing something with which to identify; and thereby begin to step out of myself. Thank you Mr. Roth.
6
People develop in relation to their society and their rank within it. Men have held a higher rank than women, and that has driven their relationships with women. If the tables has been flipped, then women would react very much in the same way as men did then(and now to a lesser extent). So, this is a long way of saying that women need to read Roth and view his characters in the context of the social norms of the time in which they were created. If women are in a position of power, then many of Roth's characters can be cautionary tales about the emptiness and corruptive nature of power. Ultimately, Roth writing is about the frailty of the human psyche. If it makes you feel better, change the names of the men to women's names and vice versa.
3
So the solution for misogynistic writing is for women to like it. That's hilarious.
1
Are Science Fiction writers supposed to know everything about rockets? The fact is that writers write about what they want to write about. The good ones can make the filing of taxes seem interesting. I will say that there are scant few writers whose works have borrowed into my psyche like Philip Roth’s has. He just wrote deeper than most. Alice Munro is an equal, Denis Johnson, Cormac McCarthy, DeLillo. But none are as welcoming in tone, in my opinion.
I have a relation - a failed actor in his 70’s - that definitely lives in Mickey Sabbath territory. What Roth was able to do with that character is just head-spinning and he nailed it. A truly fearless writer.
It’s great that people are talking about someone that created a remarkable body of work rather than politics or some other depressing current event that has zero ability to galvanize the human spirit.
8
In the future, in a more racially diverse and hopefully more female friendly America, authors like Roth and Updike will slide into obscurity. Judging from the comments here, which seem to be mostly from men, Roth's writing resonated with them. But for the women and nonwhite readers of the future, not so much.
21
Why the competition. Why have Roth slide into obscurity? It's a wide river, jump in, the water's are now welcoming.
2
Plenty of women love Philip Roth. I'm not sure why anyone feel the need to racialize and gender-identify to the point that your physical characteristics determine your literary tastes, but please don't speak for anyone but yourself.
3
Quite a "politically correct" comment.
I'm an old white gal who is most definitely a feminist.
Roth has long been my favorite writer.
Yes he is a misogynist, and yes he subconsciously (or maybe consciously, although he himself disputed that) hated and feared women. Many complain that
his female characters were underdeveloped. I don't see them as underdeveloped as much as terribly flawed. Almost all of them had awful character traits, they were manipulative liars, con-artists, weaklings and emasculating shrews.
And yet my favorite of his works is Sabbath's Theater, with its horrifyingly vile and misogynistic protagonist.
If you cannot separate the art from the authors's flaws how will you ever be able to appreciate any art at all? You cannot separate an artist from the context of the time and society in which he worked and still be able to understand the work. It's no different than the difficulties teachers have today with Huckleberry Finn because of Twain's use of language from the antebellum South. Twain was an abolitionist, but is portrayed today as a racist.
No one has to like Roth or his work. But no matter how much you dislike him, he will never slip into obscurity.
His rightful place will always be in the pantheon.
2
For Sam Lipsyte - Finally someone besides myself who considers "Sabbath's Theater" Roth's greatest work. However, I don't think Micky Sabbath ever successfully copes with his grief. The whole book is about his inability to process the profound grief of losing his brother (and later, his girlfriend).
6
Every writer has one story in them and they spend a career retelling, reworking, reshaping it until they get it right. Read a bunch of books by a single author and you will see what I mean. A writer’s story belongs to the writer, not the reader. The minute we crack the spine of a book ( and hardcover is the way to go!) we enter into a pact with the writer to listen to the writer’s particular story and unique voice. We may not like them but we can always learn from them. That is the point of literature. I believe Roth’s American Pastoral is a masterwork that will be read for generations. It is the book where his story is ultimately, brilliantly told.
27
I am a lifetime reader in my 60s. Apparently I am missing something important but after completing a number of Roth's works I never felt like I had read a very good book. Updike explored similar male angst but completing one of his works felt to me like I was reading good literature.
12
The 20th century male is leaving town.
The 21st century man has decided to emanate Trumpism and Coercive Control and Abuse in all spheres of American life.
Once upon a time long long ago the earth was filled with matriarchal societies. Someone needed to care for “the next generation”. “Man someone said “no way “and those are the conflicted truths that show up in all sorts of ways in Roth’s memorable novels.
Women and nurturers chose to make sure the earth got populated with our species.
7
"Once upon a time long long ago the earth was filled with matriarchal societies."
Um, no. Evidence please? There is none.
There have been matrilineal societies, where control was vested in the brother/uncle, but not matriarchal ones.
2
Men did not exist in a bubble throughout the 60's and 70's. Let's not forget that we had Erica Jong's Fear of Flying with a protagonist who explored her own sexuality and rule breaking. Mr Roth wrote as a man of his time and he did this well, as did Jong and others. Wouldn't it be fair to say all writers of that era were exploring different aspects of their gender and society.
27
Strong artists - including writers - explore what's there: it isn't often delicate or pretty. Ugly, cartoonish, desperate humanity explored with verve, bursting from the page, as seen from the author's corner.
I don't think his female characters were created out of the same whirlwind of desire and disgust as his men - - but that doesn't reduce his impact or alue.
18
In as much as Roth was able to portray thoughts in his male characters' heads that are credible, he did a service to humanity understanding humanity. I would really like to see a talented female author do a similar treatment of female characters. Even if such authors are creating/dealing with what most of us would call 'somewhat neurotic' characters, we learn a lot from the credible depictions.
5
Anais Nin?
1
Paul - Try Toni Morrison
2
Try Shirley Jackson, Alice Sheldon (who wrote as James Tiptree Jr.), Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Patricia Highsmith.
So many brave brilliant writers, and they could be just as offputting and controversial as Roth.
But they did a lot less navel-gazing.
One thing Sam left out, Sabbath's Theater is most of all a very fun, and very funny, book. Miss that and there's just no hope for you.
11
I'm surprised, between the defensiveness of the article and the criticisms of the late great should-have-won-a-Nobel author in the comments, that this is where we are when the body is barely cold. Perhaps the notion of not speaking ill of the dead is quaint, but it might be tasteful not to rail against a great author for a bit. I may be older and out of touch with the modern discourse about Philip Roth and toxic masculinity, but I know the phrase, "too soon".
21
Fifty years later, and I'm still trying to make sense out of the 1960s. With the pill and Roe v Wade, and "women's liberation," women were supposedly freed. The first people to greet us as we left captivity were Hugh Hefner, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth and a million guys who thought they could be James Bond. Surprising really, that it didn't turn out worse than it did.
129
But it HAS turned out worse:
Divorce rate over 50%, fornication common, males and females unable to get along in the work place w/o ridiculous "#MeToo" expectations, the rise of Jordan Peterson, etc.
1
I think it did turn out worse, because the apology of his being from some repressed, frustrated time period in male-centric reality is straight up nonsense. And like Mailer I think he was part of the powerful push to resist the women's movement as emasculating and usurping. An antidote to the 60s and female-equality, he keeps that myth alive, and it leads directly to #MeToo, with its revelations of the still-prevalent and still-accommodated predatory behavior.
3
Though I have a hard time imagining "worse". As usual, men were right there waiting to profit from women's bodies. So much of the blow back at that time (and even today) from conservative groups was, "So THIS is what women's liberation looks like? No thanks." It was a very weird period, and it's taken a long time for progressives to admit that people like Hugh, Mailer and Roth were exploiting women.
3
Great points, all. Thanks for the review(s) -- There's much to add to the summer reading list.
There was a time when I would have railed against giving a protagonist's voice to a "failed male" -- as I termed such characters then -- when even stupendous real women weren't getting print time at all. (And I do admit to throwing a couple of his books across the room in frustration.)
But the fact that many of us are stirred to passion (either anger or otherwise) by his characters & work is evidence of his mastery. We are moved, because we've encountered these people. And we are frustrated because we remain as unable to affect them in real life as we are the characters in a book. They live despite our wishes, by the power of his pen.
For those who are of the momentary opinion that we don't need to hear more about such men: Call it curriculum for a "Men's Studies" course, and read it anyway. You can enjoy having compartmentalized it appropriately, while still reaping the benefits of a well-tooled story or 2.
19
"Some have argued quite compellingly that we don’t need any more stories about the heterosexual male psyche, no more depictions of male characters, as Mr. Roth explained it in a recent interview, “each as he behaves, aroused, stimulated, hungry in the grip of carnal fervor and facing the array of psychological and ethical quandaries the exigencies of desire present.” There are so many other stories to be told. "
Roth wrote not about "the heterosexual male psyche", he wrote about himself, endlessly, endlessly, and that was it..for him.
30
Back when 19th Century writers spoke of genius (e.g. Emerson.) They said that the genius evoked the everyday particulars of life as a springboard to the transcendent. You knew a genius-- the theory went-- because he wasn't wed to personality, but spoke in a voice that could resonate with all human beings on the planet. Such is the status we still sometimes grant Shakespeare. Roth and his generation didn't aim so high. He tried to give us a glimpse of humanity, but strongly inflected through American life in the 20th Century, and rooted in the regions and ethnic life he knew, and, yes, masculinity's challenges. Today one might ask: "Humanity! what's that?" Instead of aspiring to grasp something general, something even approaching a universal humanity, authors know their best pitch is to identity. Readers today prefer to stare in the mirror or pose for the camera --liking an author like Roth, for some, therefore smacks of the wrong narcissism or misplaced pity. That means you can't like an author unless you can find yourself in him or her, or because you wouldn't mind letting others know of your wish to know their subjectivity better. The path we are on is one of increasing alienation. Roth's complicated reception may be rooted in his particularities, but it is far more an indictment of our flaws than of his own.
33
Many of the comments here seem to be based on the idea that novels shouldn't include human characters who behave badly; instead, novels should have characters who we like and admire, and who are good role models. This would give us boring stories about people who bear no resemblance to real humans. Maybe they're good for illustrations in a civics book, but not real humans, who are complicated, conflicted and confused.
70
A point that should be made, especially in the arts, concerns verisimilitude. According to this logic, actors who portray certain characters in a too convincing manner are actually admitting to innate qualities of that particular character in themselves. Not only innate, but toxic, apparently. This particular form of interpretation, I would argue, is even more toxic than the so-called 'deed.'
11
Like many people reading this- I have to think Mr. Roth is laughing now that people are calling a writer of fiction 'offensive'. If a nuanced portrayal of flawed characters is offensive, you must struggle with the news. Also, are you ok with it if the characters are different? Based on that logic Maura Pfefferman and Avon Barksdale are complex characters, but Tony Soprano and Don Draper are offensive.
Great Art is Great Art- if you don't like it that's ok (some people haven't watched 'The Wire' yet) But if you are offended by it, you need a reality check. A great story can be many things- interesting, exciting, cathartic, sad, inspiring......but offensive isn't one of them.
37
I think something can be offensive and STILL be great. We may find it offensive, and it may have a negative/upsetting impact on us, but in its ability to influence us, trigger us, and make us think, resides its greatness.
15
Maybe, just maybe it wasn't great art, Ryan. Maybe it was ugly and dispiriting and hateful toward women. That needs to be said.
I couldn't agree more- I think it's amazing when something fictional draws out emotion in my (whether positive or negative). Then it's my responsibility to reflect on it and process. But I certainly don't hold the creator in contempt for creating flawed characters that I respond to- I Appreciate it.
2
I find I go to different writers for different things. If I want to read great female characters, I go to someone like Morrison or Joyce Carol Oates or Louise Erdrich or to male writers like James Joyce. But Roth had a very powerful mind and a long memory. From his best books, one could learn some very interesting things about America and what it means to both belong here and never feel entirely welcome here.
36
never read Roth. I did read all the other great American authors. His subject matter never held any interest. David Foster Wallace is my guide to American literature, as our more modern voices. Never got Hemingway, either, "we were toast" ,
"we were on the dock" . Kind of like never seeing an Andy Warhol , but seeing the Mona lisa.
12
The problem isn't whether Roth liked women or not (he did in the teenager's sense of 'like'), or whether he believed in gender equality or not (Tolstoy didn't, and he wrote magnificent women) or whether he treated them well in real life (I think Claire Bloom tells us all we need to know about that in her memoirs.)
The problem is that he didn't understand women, he didn't want to understand them, and he wrote them very badly, on the whole.
Doesn't mean we throw him on the junkpile, but his high eminence and undeniable achievements shouldn't exempt him from criticism, either. I think very often we get so obsessed with 'great' writing that we lose track of what writing really is, and what it's for.
It's for us to understand ourselves better. And 51% of us are women. And there are men who wrote centuries ago who did a better job dealing with the human race in its entirety than he ever did. And there are writers of his generation (men and women) who never got the plaudits he did, but could, at their best, go places he never dreamed of.
He was brilliant in his range, but his range was limited.
289
This seems pretty much fair and balanced. And I don't use that phrase, misused by you know who, ironically. Quite the contrary, this is what actually being fair and balanced in an appraisal looks like. Which is also not to say Sam Lipsyte wasn't fair or balanced, just to say that there is at least one additional point to be added that ought to be heard that Christopher Lyons made quite well. Or so it seems to me.
36
Thank you for this fair comment. This is exactly how I feel about Roth, and you said it much better. A truly great writer can enter minds very unlike his own, and Roth did not manage that feat. Which doesn't mean we don't enjoy his writing.
25
Yes I agree! It’s unusual to read 2 grown-up comments in a row. I think I will stop here. Great article by the wonderfully Sam Lipsyte and I wholeheartedly agree with this Christopher Lyons fella.
1
Gradually, one mode of literary analysis is becoming the only way to read literature and in mainstream criticism the only metric used to decide literature’s quality. The obsessive, line-toeing ubiquity of reading for representation politics and diversity is just getting so boring. It’s bizarre and disheartening that the idea of reading for pleasure has become a moral no go zone (“she knew it was wrong”! oh the transgression of reading Philip Roth! the stakes couldn’t be higher!). But more than that, it is a tremendous bore. I want to read from critics steeped in language and literature using their knowledge to provide unique insights into the work and the world. Sexist man and sexist characters are bad and we need to read non white non men instead—this is not a unique insight. It’s a tweet than has been retweeted 25,000 times.
38
And did you think reading white straight male dominated literature for years and years wasn't boring?
I once saw Mr. Roth, sometime in the mid 1990's, talking with some of the disabled veterans who sold used books on Broadway, just across from Zabars. He was signing books for them, knowing that they could sell them for considerately more than the unsigned ones. I had seen some of his autographed books there before, carefully wrapped in plastic. I realized this wasn't the first time he did this. I had always admired his work. This just added another dimension.
56
It's a lovely gesture, but obviously he enjoyed it at least as much as they did, and of course he knew people were watching.
Perhaps nobody ever more self-consciously played the role of Great Writer than him. In some ways, my favorite novel of his is The Great American Novel, because he actually made fun of his own obsession with immortality. Also baseball.
15
Quite the opposite. It was my sense that he did not want to be noticed. He was dressed plainly, and his eyes never strayed from the men in the book stall and the books he was signing. Roth was not interested in personal fame; he shied away from public personae of Mailer and others he could have easily had.
Whether Roth's persona can truly be ascribed to some of his protagonists and their frailties, I have no idea, but some reader's comments remind me of how Henry Miller was pilloried for his depiction of behavior that today would be enough to have him once again banned, or at least not read by the majority of American fiction readers who reportedly are women. And it would be their loss; Roth and Miller from my point of view had the courage to tell stories of men struggling to be fully human, and they did so with wit, vigor and high intelligence. What more can we expect from any artist?
24
Roth and DeLillo? Nah. Morrison is better, Pynchon even better still, McCarthy the best of all.
7
Which McCarthy? Cormac or Mary? I've read both, and I tend to go with Cormac. I feel Mary saved her best material for her long-running feud with Lillian Hellman.
1
I'd trade them all for Charles Willeford, and he never heard of you either. ;)
I just can't make myself plow through his unpleasant, offensive books.
48
Just race flip this analysis and you immediately see it's flaws. Imagine a defending a racist writer as being an important part of the historical record that we need to preserve because white people suffered, too, under white supremacy. Men may suffer under the hegemony of patriarchy, but when "sex" is inherently defined as "male supremacist," (male-subject, female-object) we're not talking about "sex," but female sexual slavery normalized as sex.
69
"Race flip" a discussion on gender?
With enough reaching, you can put forth whatever equivalency you wish to argue. Credibility is far from a given with this approach, but i suppose that matters less, in these emotionally charged times.
I agree with another commenter that there's an almost a "McCarthyist" fabric blanketing (suffocating) most public intellectual discourse today.
Thank god for private conversation then, I suppose.
16
What is the function of fiction? What is the duty of the artist?
2
"Thank god for private conversation then, I suppose."
Yes, but remember to unplug Alexa, first.
Making apologies for valuing Philip Roth’s art is perverse.
41
No, merely making the apologies is what's perverse
this just makes me tired. philip roth got to shout and so many equally valuable voices have been forced to whisper or just shut up.
66
He got to shout because he was a better author.
4
Who was forced to whisper, and how were they forced, Liz?
5
Shout if you want to. Roth would probably be the first one to tell you not to edit yourself or to whisper your truth.
3
Give me Tom Wolfe any day.
21
I am tired of Roth. Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, etc. are the naked sexual obsession glorified in Roth's characters. Enough.
81
Oh I'm not aware Roth assaulted anyone.
2
The writer is responsible for what people do?
2
Such surprise here. Another angry white guy writes novels defining American psyche gone machismo in typical misogynic fashion. Well, the men like him. As though another woody Allen. Not a fan
41
For the life of me, I never understood why the tumescent man genre appealed to anyone but the tumescent man. It seemed unserious and self-absorbed to the point of being pathetic. A little goes a really long way.
125
The literary equivalent of Woody Allen movies, actually.
2
Once again the editor writes a headline that does not reflect the text of the article—misogyny is just one aspect of the op ed, but it does fit the NYT editorial prescription. How about “Roth Nuanced and Raw Defines A Male Perspective”
16
"Maybe it’s wrong, and it can definitely be ugly, but many of us will keep looking, not so much for answers as for more questions — about what being a man, and a human being, in America might have meant and felt like for some in the past, and what it might mean and feel like in the future."
OK, but why did (and does) this particular question have to suck up all the oxygen from every other writer posing questions about what it means to be human (female, not white, not Jewish, not straight, not a New Yorker, not privileged, etc.)?
20
It's funny - it's been a long time since I tried reading Roth. I wasn't interested in seeing more after 'Portnoy's Complaint,' not because of political objections to his subject matter but simple lack of interest - the way you'd push aside a jigsaw puzzle designed for 3 to 5 year olds. Though I was 14 at the time, I believe my thought was, 'oh - another one of these,' which is the same thing I thought when I picked up John Updike, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, etc. etc. etc. Like most women (and some men), I've spent a ridiculous amount of time over the course of my life analyzing men of this type in various contexts so I would know how to keep them from exploiting me. For that reason, reading about them feels like a reductive chore unless the author brings something to the table beyond just describing them.
113
I think, like a number of other commenters here, you only read Portnoy's Complaint? It's really a shame he got pigeonholed that way. Portnoy's Complaint really had little to do with much of his later work, yet this seems to be the misunderstanding of everyone complaining about his supposed "tumescent male" fiction ... they only read Portnoy's Complaint.
2
There is, of course, this quote--“Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.”
What counts? On everyone's way to becoming a godless Puritan these days, lets keep this in mind: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can do neither, criticize; and those who can do none of the above become Pentecostals.
There are much, much more toxic subjects than Philip Roth's so-called masculinity these day and this article proves it. I doubt the Times will publish this. The department of protectionism is always on patrol, looking for anything too salient to print.
8
Well, Tee Jones, you got in. BTW, i consider teaching to be one of the most noble professions there is. I still remember my first grade teacher, 1941, bringing me a stack of books, telling me I'm at the 5th grade level, and to read all i wanted. And am still doing it. My grandson recently wrestled about taking more business courses so he could get rich, or doing what he really wanted to do. Become a teacher. He has now decided to become a teacher. Good for him. And i hope, good for the world.
20
I suppose my attraction to Roth is tied to my inability to make up my mind about him.
13
In today's obituaries, there is no mention of Claire Bloom, whose bitter memoir underscores the observation of some commenting here that females in his work are either sexual objects or mothers.
31
Thank you, Boomer. You brought to mind the brilliant and anguished writing of D.H. Lawrence in his 'Sons and Lovers'.
1
Every obituary of Roth that I've read has mentioned Claire Bloom. Maybe when she dies, the obituaries of her will make her the center of their concern.
3
A fair observation. About his works of fiction. Hopefully they are not role models. Why do we read fiction?
I think it’s important to keep in mind Henry James’s remark that a writer should be allowed his given, his donnnee. In our time of identity politics run amok, writers are sometimes chastised for writing about subject x rather than topic y. Have we gotten to the point where we condemn Joyce for writing about the doings of an Irishman on June 16 rather than supposedly disenfranchised persons? I hope not. If you don’t like Roth’s topics, as the idiotic Nobel committee apparently doesn’t, then don’t read him. But don’t condemn him for the topics he’s chosen to write about.
32
Joyce wrote about Irishmen (and women) on June 16, 1904 because, among other reasons, most of them at that time would have been very much disenfranchised. Reading Ulysses, it's clear again and again that various forms of disenfranchisement, marginalization, etc. are at the very heart of that book and its male and female characters. The very gesture of naming the book after a famous mythical hero, then writing it about obscure characters modeled on daily reality, is perhaps the most obvious key to understand what he was up to there. Turning established narratives inside out to try get closer to lived truth is perhaps the common thread we can agree on as deserving its place in literature?
9
All deserving writers should all write about those things that the right-minded want them to.
Mr. Lipsyte may have professional reasons for wringing his hands over Phillip Roth's alleged "toxic masculinity." I do not. In fact, I came away from this essay pitying the poor man (Lipsyte) and wondering what he must endure at the hands of entitled young students at Columbia University--so full of energy and youthful fury! His essay reads as a tentative, quivering effort to suggest to those marvelously all knowing students that there might be something of value in the work of a dead white man. How brave! How insightful!
We live in an era when professors of great achievement live in fear of a bad review from their students, the social justice warrior wannabes. I suppose that it happens to many, but I have now an understanding that was slow in coming. I have lived long enough to see foolish children setting the terms of their education and demanding that actual adults succumb to their ignorant desires. With no understanding or appreciation for the fact that his fiction is a dazzling display of insightful, soul-searching, honest writing, they determine to judge Mr. Roth according to their own limitations. Now there's a topic for a Phillip Roth!
69
Re: Thomas Hall
Thanks for writing. Although I was never a professor of great achievement, I am glad to be retired now and no longer need to deal with the new McCarthyism in higher education, whether from the left or right end of politics.
34
If this kind of public vexation over non-PC works of art like those of Philip Roth keeps up, pretty soon all art that's produced will be nothing more than bland rice pablum. And one thing is for sure: If we demand that writers and artists illustrate the morally "right" point of view, we'll get nothing but mediocre art.
34
Check out the rest of the world for great literature. There's a whole planet of great writers out there.
4
Latin American male authors and poets were discussed with admiration earlier with American friends, and 'Love in The Time of Cholera' was a great success visiting the parents in Paris.
Planning to go in search of 'Blindness', a Nobel winner and take a second look. Not for the faint of heart and where the presence of sex between men and women does not feature. It is a woman who leads the afflicted out of the tunnel, and in Stephens the Irish philosopher, he leans on his Thin Woman in the battle between Pan and the God of Love.
I get that, and I do. All the time. First on my list is the brilliant Brazillian novelist Clarice Lispector, who died in 1977.
My very perceptive wife sees the problem as one where Roth, a writer we both admire, had a problem in realizing fully developed female characters. This seems to have been a problem for Dickens as well, but not for, say, Trollope. Does this make Roth or Dickens unworthy of our admiration? I don't think so but the issue should be discussed. Roth, himself, noted that, Celine, a vicious antisemite, was one of his favorite writers. There will always be excellent writers who make us address wrinkles in their personality or literary themes. So what?
35
arp,
Perhaps you have forgotten Dickens' creation of Miss Havilland in her cobweb of wedding crumbs and intrigue, while Trollope remains mild when it comes to his portrayal of the fairer sex and their expectations.
We don't know if a writer is any good until 50 years after his death, when we will see if his work is still read.
I am reading Conrad, who passes that test.
17
And some writers are women.
1
I came to Philip Roth's work later in life; in the sixties and seventies the "New Journalism" and other nonfiction was what I read. As a result, the Roth I read and appreciated were books like "The Human Stain," "The Plot Against America," and "The Great American Novel."
In those books - and others - Roth told stories about people in settings about which I had little to none personally lived experience. That did not prevent me from finding some nugget of truth about human experience that hit me where I live. That doesn't mean that the truth I found was always pleasant or validated my worldview. But it sure reflected the messiness and imperfection that is what it means to be human.
24
Against all odds, I would have to say Philip Roth died a mensch. I did not like all of this books I read, and was actually repelled by Sabbath's Theater. Yet, Philip Roth was the voice of humanity and the voice of everyman (and women, too). Acutely aware of his identity, he gave voice to that identity in each of his works. He was an American, but a Jewish American as well, which deeply influenced his voice. Sad, resigned, rebellious, humorous, moral, Roth did embody the human comedy. He valued the gift of life.
26
His writing may have been all of those things, but I'm not so sure about him, personally.
Let's see the next few scholarly biographies before we start the canonization process. I mean, he wasn't even Catholic. ;)
I am a feminist and I loved Roth's writing--all of it--early and late. "American Pastoral" is one of the finest American novels of the 20th century, in my opinion.
39
No, we don't need more narratives about tumescent men. Period. Or to read old narratives about them, either, except as a warning.
33
Sure - let's can the Iliad - the Odyssey - the Aeneid - and about 80% of the greatest books ever written to serve some vaguely ill-defined and silly social justice dictate of the middling average.
32
So, Oriflamme, don’t read Roth, or anything else that offends you. I’m sure that, under today’s political climate, no professor will force students to read whatever they don’t want to read for whatever reason.
Plenty of readers share my belief that Roth deserves the Nobel for literature
31
I have read Homer. Homer is a favorite of mine. Roth is no Homer.
3
In hindsight Philip Roth's "'toxic masculinity'" was more an "arrested development" stuck in Freud's "phallic stage." Or, as his comedic contemporaries Mike Nichols and Elaine May put it, "How bleak was my puberty." After his breakthrough with "Portnoy's Complaint" and "Goodbye, Columbus," his later series on the sexual obsession of Prof. David Kepesh wore a bit thin even though it seems that there are great many Kepesh's out there like Harvey Weinstein and the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His characters though interesting often lacked the psychological insight or depth that one would want. Perhaps it reflected his own struggles, but I found more in his other works than his regressed sexuality (aka "toxic masculinity which to me is an oxymoron).
13
Ah so sick, so sick of this middle class political correctness that is very reminiscent of the boring and controlling 1950"s.
As a women ,a radical and a feminist I am beginning to really dislike "women of america" . This desire to purify art and make it clean ,PC for all races and sexes is just another way of persecuting the artist.
How did McCarthyism has become mainstream America? Horrible .
147
"How did McCarthyism become mainstream America"? The answer to that question is another question: How did the central issue of American politics become a struggle for control of the Secret Police?
2
Joyce Carol Oates to the rescue.
1
As a strong supporter of Roth's work and someone that is quite sensitive to the falsehoods that have come down through sexism and racism, I think Mr. Roth would have rejected your defense. The problem with the claim that Roth's work was essentially sexist so as to limit his view, that is a perfectly fine complaint to make. The problem is that it is not a correct description of his work. For other writers this would be an accurate assertion of how their work missed the marl of better quality writing. Stereotypes, which were never Roth's trade, make for lazy writing...something one could never accuse Mr. Roth of.
1
Philip Roth's point of view about sex, lust, individuality in the context of its time is his own. His characters are unique and unforgettable, whether the reader liked them or not.
Why generalize about toxic masculinity, whatever that is. Some men exhibit bad or even toxic behavior. Most are complex human beings with redemptive aspects. Roth's literary legacy should not be swept up in the current wave of misandry.
55
Let's see. If you were male, Jewish, self obsessed and continually priapic, maybe Roth was someone to identify with. For anyone else--- he was often pretty offensive. Really, I could do without the eulogies.
45
When I was teaching drama, the asst. principal confided to me that Hamlet shouldn't be taught - our students couldn't possibly identify with him. "let's see'" I said, "he hates his step-father, is angry at his mother, thinks his girlfriend is disloyal and that his best friends from school are plotting against him - what teenager could possibly identify with him, since he is a prince from Denmark, 500 years ago..."
5
after reading this so called analysis, I literally had
to take a series of deep breaths before formulating my comment. everyone who reads
seriously, probably around ten percent of the
population, knew these kind of articles were
coming.Roth explored the eternal struggles of
humankind, not only mankind, to find our way
through the labyrinth that is modern life.
yes,his male characters can seem obsessed
with their own tormented sexuality, but his women are complex in their own ways and more than a match for anyone who comes their way.
in this new atmosphere of ours where EVERY
WORD,it seems,is parsed for political correctness, his characters, his all too human
men especially, are to be analyzed and found
lacking if they are not the one dimensional,
P.C.sterotypes of,say,Jonathan Franzen,for
instance,where the father is a brute and the
wife is a victim denied sexual freedom and
both children are properly gay or bisexual.
give me a break. compared to the literary
pygmies who pass for geniuses today,Roth
is a giant among semi talented pygmies.
please spare us these "young ,successful writers"who can't hold a candle to a true titan
like Phillip Roth.
48
Goodness. I love Philip Roth. But you're shortchanging Franzen a bit - I'm rather suspecting you haven't read him. Did you read Purity? I didn't actually think it was that great a book, but check out the character of Anabel, if you think Franzen only writes women as victims. Anabel is a caricature, but she's hilarious. Franzen is making fun of her - for her "victim" style feminism.
4
I read "the corrections"and
"freedom." that was more than
enough for me.
Very well and bravely said, Sam! Mr. Roth would be proud.
I can't help thinking that the same people who object to Roth's depiction of masculinity are brothers and sisters under the skin with the rabbis and Jewish cultural figures in the fifties who objected to the Jewish characters who populated short stories such as "Defender of the Faith" and "Conversion of the Jews," and novels like The Counterlife, The Human Stain, Ghost Writer and, yes, Goodbye Columbus.
Nathan Marx, Ozzie Friedman, Rabbi Binder, Zuckerman, Tarnopol et. al were above all real. They were genuine in that their loose inconvenient and untied ends of their natures made them both flawed and utterly sympathetic in their imperfections, weaknesses and drawbacks. The janitor in "Conversion of the Jews," who confronts every situation with the question, "Is it good for the Jews or is it bad for the Jews?" sits on the shoulders of those who, as Orwell has it, "sniff for Orthodoxy in every line," whatever the cause.
I will continue to read and admire his work, to be instructed by it and yes, to like it. It's definitely good for this Jew.
22
We don't need "toxic" male viewpoints to chronicle anything about our society anymore. We have Donald Trump and his toxic male utterances and 240 years of American history told from a male point of view. That's more than enough. Women have had enough of toxic male writing. It's everywhere online, in case you haven't noticed. Maybe instead people should be studying books on feminism and other things written by women, to see how the female POV is being chronicled.
25
As far as I’m concerned, much ( but certainly not all) contemporary feminist literature is vitiated by political correctness and can be subsumed under the following;
“We’re equal to men, but better. Men, especially white heterosexuals, are toxic. But it’s probably all males, whatever they may be “
13
Toxicity is not limited to the males.
You only have to read Patricia Highsmith to know that--though she actually preferred the company of men, even though she was a lesbian.
But she could write fascinating complex men, and see their POV quite clearly.
Roth couldn't do the same for women.
So why is he the greater writer? (Oh right, because she wrote mysteries.)
“As far as I’m concerned,” you don’t seem like the kind of guy who reads a lot of feminist literature. I’d like to know your reading list so I can see why you developed such a strong opinion about it.
1
Good discussion at a time when any male discussing these matters runs the risk of touching the third rail!
We are in a particular time period and First World (US) location where the social pendulum has swung into anti-patriarchy. Long overdue.
However, most people are still influenced (greatly) by their biology and their upbringing. What impacts will this have on longer term changes? And btw, how does the rest of the world view these First World changes in an era of globalization?
And why during this particular pendulum swing, are many of the positive legal advances of the past 40 years in terms of women's rights, birth control, abortion, LGBTQ and racism under attack and in retreat? Our elected POTUS is unabashedly sexist and racist.
What a long strange trip we have been on. Easy prediction - more changes ahead.
8
I'm gay, and I find my own dilemmas and longings reflected (if only by analogy) in Roth's work -- far more so, in fact, than by those who'd dilute male sexuality into some spurious (and currently mandatory) conflation called "LGBTQ."
8
Indeed, it feels as if "masculine" is the new social taboo. Men who feel masculine will have to closet their feelings and express a public persona that matches the new, intolerant public expectation. This in turn will generate a truly toxic internal tension in men, which will find its way outward into society. That is not progress.
The irony is that the current orthodoxy denigrates even men (like Roth's characters) who feel insecure.
As for men (including gay men) who might feel "feminine"? The current "LGBTQ" formulation casts doubt on whether they're even men.
That is not progress, either!
I am bereaved that my hero is gone. I am 56, a Jewish woman. Mr. Roth wrote exquisitely-chosen words that spoke to 5+ generations, as he himself saw the world during the decades of his writing. Political correctness has nothing to do with his books or his mind. It is nonsensical to judge him for his literary provocations. As an artist, he was guided to chronicle the times and inspire change, and that he did. My original paperbacks of Portnoy's complaint and Goodbye Columbus are dogeared and smell of aged paper. As I got older and could afford hard bound books, I bought those, and with great joy wrote in pen in the margins to mark ghastly and glorious elements of American Life. Mr. Roth's body of work is one that starts in lustful youth and ends in ugly (and still a little bit lustful) mortality. You'll live on for many, Mr. Roth. Thank you.
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"But few have so as deftly."
You're trying to hard.
4
Oh brother. Should we all write, speak, and think about everyone in the same monotone way? Gender and sexuality are complicated, and not always polite. Roth understood that, and he was a genius.
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Roth's insight into gender and sexuality was the monotonous thing. He was very good at depicting one gender and one sexuality, however, and it happened to be the one most likely to be celebrated, and it was.
1
I knew the NYT would have plenty of apologetic, angst- and guilt-ridden, semi-appreciations of Roth. At some point in the future he will be more forcibly and straightforwardly recognized for what he was: the greatest American writer of the last half century and arguably as fine a writer as this country has ever produced.
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"Some have argued quite compellingly that we don’t need any more stories about the heterosexual male psyche, no more depictions of male characters [...] There are so many other stories to be told..."
...and stories are a finite resource?
I do not understand how the very real need for more representation of women equates to needing fewer "stories about the male psyche." If you don't want to read the latter, great. But acting like they are taking up part of some Representation Quota is silly and disingenuous at best.
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It also suggests that all men share the same point of view which is utterly ridiculous. Roth no more speaks for me than Toni Morrison does.
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I admire Roth's beautifully layered writing. The Human Stain and American Pastoral are as good as Steinbeck's East of Eden. And I don't really care what you think of Roth's status as a "presumptively invalid" white male.
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The problem with Roth and Updike's depiction of heterosexual “tumescent masculinity” is simply that they describe it as (a) numbingly monotonous – correctly, (b) inevitable and ubiquitous – incorrectly, and (b) admirable for its energy, at least sub rosa – also incorrectly. They describe endless lusty rams, endlessly charging for the ewes. Yes, they concede, it can be awkward, even a little bit humiliating, but a force of nature like their men cannot be contained.
This is the (moderately) literary version of that tiresome song "Free Bird." As a heterosexual male whose sexuality has nothing whatsoever in common with Roth or Updike's characters, I am embarrassed that they made it appear the de facto standard, and in the process revolted generations of women. And revolted me too, doubly so because they were slandering my sexuality at the same time. I’m embarrassed their stuff on this topic is out there in the public sphere and widely accepted.
Male sexuality, like female sexuality, is all over the map, and there’s lots of room for great literature that explores it (along with other topics, one hopes, not with monochromatic focus).
There’s no room, however, for more quasi-literary exploration of Roth/Updike type hetero masculine sexuality. It’s been done to death, and it was never that interesting to begin with. Hemingway, despite his many flaws, at least had some romance.
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Sorry, cannot agree. John Updike could string words together like nobody's business, even if you didn't love his characters.
And 'Freebird' is a great song.
10
fair enough, but my sexuality is very much as they describe. every morning, i want an ewe.
hemingway shot himself. roth lived to old age. there was always something suicidal at the core of hemingway's notion of manhood. therefore, maybe c) is true ("admirable for its energy").
according to legend, an interviewer as James Baldwin how he stayed so youthful. Baldwin replied, "sex and mimosas."
like freud, I think blocking one's own sex drive leads to neuroses. iggy pop said lust for life. i say lust IS life. iggy pop has outlived hemingway too.
12
Oh now--wait a minute. You're going to start rating writers on the basis of their calendar ages at the time of death?
That's not what I mean by literary longevity.
None of us will live long enough to know if Roth passed the test of time. Hemingway is not a favorite of mine, but there's no remaining doubt about him.
Plenty of truly great writers died much younger than Hemingway. And Arthur Hailey lived to 84, so by that logic, almost as great as Roth.
1
It is puritanical and ignorant to insist that characters in fiction have behaviors and attitudes that conform to anyone's ideas of how people "should" act or think.
Roth's characters boldly and engagingly portrayed people who were grappling with life's ethical and appetite-driven problems.
He illuminated the human condition brilliantly.
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Well, some humans' conditions, anyway.
2
We cannot assess works that were written before a complete societal change of mind on social issues BASED ONLY on the current thinking. If that were how we assess everything, we'd constantly be throwing everything and everyone out.
Roth was a brilliant writer. Look at his work both through the lens of the time it was written in and today's. Enjoy the acerbic wit, the beautiful writing, and teach it to future generations. We have to look back in order to find our way forward. Philip Roth is one good way of achieving that. No one who reads him comes away empty.
Our culture is the culmination of millennia of bits and pieces. They include Philip Roth.
---
www.rimaregas.com
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Don't worry, some of us disliked his work 30 years ago too.
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AMB,
I wasn't urging everyone to like him. Not everything we read needs to be likeable in order to for us to draw useful lessons.
11
"I recently heard a young, successful writer admit that though she knew it was wrong, she had a place in her heart for Philip Roth." - I am irked by this attitude. I knew when he died we were going to hear all this stuff. I don't get it. I love Philip Roth, and I'm a very vehement feminist, and I don't feel I must "admit" it or that it's "wrong." That's just silly. It's a narrow view of life and literature. I don't know how else to explain. I see no contradiction. I don't read literature to find role models, or lessons on how people should act or how society should be, and I don't demand that artists that I like agree with my worldview. It's art. His vision is uniquely his own. He creates a fictional world that I find very compelling; I don't have to LIKE all the characters in it, and he wouldn't expect me to. Certainly some of his female characters are not well rounded or convincing, and a couple of his books I found simply too macho to deal with, but every artist has flaws. Some of the greatest ones have the most glaring flaws. Philip Roth was a great genius.
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I sincerely appreciate this comment, and agree with its sentiment entirely.
12
Agree. Can the same be said about say, Woody Allen? Although there were no "character flaws" attributed to Roth's the person.
1
Has the NYT gone totally tone deaf, asking a man to write about toxic masculinity? Isn't it women whose voices we should be hearing?
3
We find Roth compelling and his work extraordinary because he leads us into realities of the human condition. Mr. Lipsyte and others of his ilk may not like these places, but I note that they follow him anyway. They do so because of Roth's sheer brilliance, his artistic excellence and his capacity for revealing truth. For those who are truly offended, who think his work is about the 1960s, about "toxic masculinity," or who are otherwise repelled, please go read something else. And grow up. Roth's work is not a prescription for your life nor is it an historical account of anyone else's. It is fiction. As such it is beyond moral righteousness.
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I don’t think you read the piece, or perhaps you only had a moment to skim and missed the point. Mr. Lipsyte is recommending reading Roth and recommending visiting these places. What his ilk is up to is an open question.
4
Those who read Roth through the lens of Portnoy's Complaint miss the amazing novelist he became in the late eighties. Roth's subject, at least since The Anatomy Lesson, has been pain, mortality, and loss. These anxieties are often placed in political contexts, as in the trilogy, because politics affects individuals and families, aggravates (or sometimes alleviates) the events that hasten pain or mortality or loss. Carnality, in his characters, is a sometimes desperate denial of that existential predicament. Or a failure to deny it -- as in the graveyard scene in Sabbath's Theater (which I agree is his greatest novel).
11
Yes, I would advise those who haven't read much Roth to forget his most infamous book, Portnoy's Complaint, as a youthful exercise and turn to the novels of his mature period: American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, Human Stain, Sabbath's Theatre and others. Even where flawed, his late novels have passages of remarkable force and beauty and sentences of memorable power and rhythm. Forget this nonsense about "toxic masculinity", his work will survive. His late novellas like Everyman, Exit Ghost and Indignation wrestle with aging, death and loss. They seem to me an atheist's version of Tolstoy's late stories where the mortality and fragility of the human condition is confronted without blinkers.
9
Am article worthy of a writing great. Roth's mastery of word should not be diminished because the reader may not feel an affinity with the characters or experience.
Great writers should be lifted. Fiction, in fact all the arts, is the perfect way to learn of others' life experiences - their deep dark holes if you will. Some would say that would be useful at this time.
5
Good fiction enlarges experience. Poor fiction diminishes it. I don't care for Roth,(I'd rather read about trees than troubled men) but can appreciate that he is an important artist.
2
Roth, Mailer, Cheever, Updike, Bellow: I've enjoyed the work of all, but always, always with a shiver, a frisson of horror. The portraits of women are simply appalling. Oddly enough, that has been part of the fascination in reading these works. They are like accidental confessions, a window into the easy, unquestioned misogyny of so many men of that era. When I was young, my mother sat me down and strongly recommended that I read Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," which was of the same general vintage (early 1960s). Ms. Friedan cleared up quite a few mysteries.
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Great comment, so true about being fascinated by literary misogyny.
I’ll never forget my first reading of Cheever’s “The Five Forty Eight” with the terrible Blake narrating. This one line about his wife still chills: “Louise had got old. “
If only Miss Dent were weaker and did away with him! To his credit, Cheever gives her absolute moral authority.
10
Women can be simply appalling. As can men. This new insistence that women and all other "victims" are always honest, always morally upright, always correct, is mindless. Human beings are complicated - why is it so hard for people to understand that this is fiction?
2
Why should anyone feel guilty to have a special place in your heart for any author. I'm a great admirer of Cormac McCarthy. I also love Dickens. Why can't an author be judged by the quality of his writing? Is there a universal lens through which Roth's work must be judged as literature based on one's cultural/political beliefs?
Are we teaching that a book is not successful because you don't agree with the politics. Should we not read Cormac McCarthy because of the violence in his novels, some of which have no female characters? I actually know the rebuttal to my questions but I attended college in the early 70's and I feel deprived of air when we make judgements on the quality of art based on 21st century political thinking no matter how right-minded. Philip Roth wrote for himself, at a certain time, in a certain place. Can't that be ok?
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In 1970, I was fortunate to be chosen to be in Mr.Roth’s (that is how he liked to be addressed; he similarly called us Mr or Miss) first short story writing seminar that he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Needless to say, it was my best academic experience at Penn. At the first day, the ground rules were that he would not entertain questions about him or his own work. “I’m not here for someone to do his PhD thesis on me,” he proclaimed. What he did was magnificently dissect the craft of the short story, and really teach. Each of us produced a different short story every week, which our peers analyzed critically, given the tools Mr. Roth shared. And we also read the great writers as well, particularly Kafka, from who I could see the genesis of the young Philip Roth. He was a brilliant teacher, and though I did not pursue a writing career, he enriched my life immeasurably.
By the way, he was nothing at all like Nathan Zuckerman.
Thank you, Mr. Roth, for making my college experience unforgettable.
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In the psat, the liberal arts were dedicated to certain principles, chief among them was freedom of expression.
The idea that we are not allowed to like Roth because of the allegedly macho pathos of his novels is reprehensible.
I fear that academia, indeed the whole of our society, is succumbing to a mind-numbing political correctness that is, for want a better term, a sort of soft totalitarianism.
We need artists and scholars to delve into unpopular realms, and to feel free to say unpopular things, because the conventional wisdom may be wrong.
For example, in 19th century Paris, the leading surgeons denied the germ theory of disease, ridicuing Pasteur's and Lister's belief that microscopic germs caused disease. However, Pasteur and Lister were vindicated and we learned that leading surgeons were killing patients because they did not sterlize their equipment.
Perhaps Roth, and his more macho turbulent sensibility, was the Pasteur or Lister of today.
I would love to discuss some of feminism's errors and contradictions, but I have not the space and I find that my less than favorable discussion of feminism precludes the posting of my essays.
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In reply to David Gottfried: I, too, am appalled by the "mind-numbing political correctness . . . a sort of totalitarianism" that seems to be plaguing our society. I would point out, however, that your comment seems to be committing the same all-or-nothing sin.
The idea that a woman, in my case a univ lit prof of Roth's generation, who finds most of his work tedious, must be relegated to a subset of mindless, easily-offended, delicate-article females is ridiculous. I don't damn the writer, want him banned, or think his masculinity is "toxic"--whatever that is.
Most sophisticated women readers have forever been cheerfully shifting their gender perspective to better experience the journeys of male narrators and protagonists from Homer through Nabokov to DeLillo and beyond. Please don't use those of us who don't find much reward in Roth's works as your straw men.
1
This claim that you are "not allowed to like Roth" reminds me of the Fox News viewers complaining that they are "not allowed to like Christmas." It's a claim to victimhood from the groups that are the least victimized in American history. Poor white men, not allowed to like Roth!
Of course you are allowed to like Roth. And others are allowed to perceive what that says about you -- much like I have opinions on people who like Ann Coulter, or people who like Ayn Rand, or people who like Alex Jones.
1
I don't think there is anything "wrong" with Philip Roth or his subjects (admittedly, I haven't read all of his writing). The problem is that each of us has a nuanced, flawed, complicated human perspective but the straight white male perspective is constantly front and center in literature, art, film, etc. At its core, #metoo is about giving voice to the female experience that is so often relegated to the shadows.
I believe that we need a diversity of voices, even the deranged and problematic ones. But, please, not only the deranged and problematic ones.
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@Carla True, but Roth gives a pretty unique and unapologetic perspective on Jewish experience in the US. Seeing him as giving the straight white male perspective is both somewhat inaccurate and much too broad.
8
We also need to consider the possibility that Roth is front-and-center because his writing is absolutely brilliant.
12
Roth’s writing isn’t about the white male perspective anymore than Hemingway’s was about what it’s like to be a soldier or big game hunter.
It’s a cliche but the best art gets at the universal through the specific.
16
Philip Roth’s women characters tend to fit into one of three categories: sexual partners, prospective sexual partners, or mothers. His view of half the human population was limited and skewed. I recognize the quality of his writing, but his novels aren’t among those I admire most (many of which were written by men who were capable of seeing women as full-fledged human beings). I’m a well-educated, well-read professional woman with a multi-dimensional life, and my experience simply isn’t reflected much in Philip Roth’s books. Protagonists like Mickey Sabbath are relics of a previous era, but Roth was, too. He was a man of his generation. Contemporary male writers who insist on seeing all women merely as sex objects or mommies don’t have that excuse.
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Read him or not, but fiction is not sociology, a substitute bible or meant to confirm or pander to the reader's own experience.
The trouble with "well-educated" people these days, men and women both, is that they regard the arts as training manuals or instructional materials, embraced or shunned for the nominal subject matter.
Isn't enough to say, Roth took a a road you didn't and sees the world, and his world, in ways you can't and don't? Dismissing Roth's "women" as either "sex objects" or "mommies" suggests another person of her time, with no small burden of piety and cant.
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I think that's true and fair, but there are exceptions, e.g. Drenka in Sabbath's Theater. I think as well that one reason Roth isn't so good about women characters is he's actually not writing very much about erotic life. Despite the fact that most people see it as central to his fiction, I think it's actually pretty peripheral. Not an excuse: I just don't think any of us who really love Roth -- well certainly not me -- find him interesting because of the sexual stories he tells. Not in the slightest, really.
13
Well stated, jrd. I believe that in many cases the criticism is posturing intended to put into evidence the writer's sensitivity and correctness. What is the evidence for that belief? The fact that the political critics read him. If his books are in fact so poisonous why pick them up at all?
1
Thank you, Mr. Lipsyte, for your insightful analysis of aspects of the legacy of Phillip Roth. I was stunned reading Goodbye Columbus as a college student. It felt that the author was speaking directly to me and reassuring me that the hidden conflicts of my own sexual and social and religious struggles need not be shameful but were shared with others and were ok.
Since then I have enjoyed reading several of Phillip Roth's books, but it was the epiphany of Goodbye Columbus that has remained with me all these years.
Politically correct or not, Phillip Roth shall remain one of my personal heroes.
28
I found a copy of Philip Roth’s collection of short stories: Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories, which I’ve been perusing. Roth was popular among my parent’s generation (1st and 2nd generation Jews born in America), but not so much with mine (Baby Boomers).
I was surprised to see two short stories that deal with religious identity. The first, THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS, is about a Hebrew school student who challenges his rabbi about whether the virginal conception of Jesus, as described in the New Testament, could at least theoretically be true. The character is somewhat deranged, so it’s hard to tell if Roth is making fun of him or if his challenge reflects Roth’s own musings about
Christianity.
The second story, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, describes the efforts of an American Jewish soldier in World War II to try to follow the kosher dietary laws. Again it’s hard to tell if Roth is mocking this person or fairly describing the difficulties of assimilation for some of the people among whom he was raised in the New York Orthodox Jewish community of his youth.
6
Pinchas, my father was an American Jewish soldier in Germany 1950 Allied Army of occupation who made great efforts to observe the Jewish dietary laws in the Army in a hitherto hateful location. No satire, no assimilation. The Real Deal.
3
The Conversion of the Jews is hilarious and poignant as well. Roth's musings are as much about the Jewish faith as the Christian one. It is a spot on description albeit a satiric one of the Hebrew school experience for folks of a certain age. Classic! Hope you enjoyed it.
2
I did find it amusing. However after I graduated from Harvard I had the great privilege of attending Ohr Samayach yeshiva in Jerusalem where I discovered an amazing rich and satisfying world of genuine Jewish spirituality and scholarship. Not at all like Roth's negative depiction here.
"We also tend to forget, when talking in broader terms about a writer’s legacy, that the whole conversation stems from the toil of a single person. Fiction writers often operate in a grand swirl of imagination, experience and language."
The key word here is "Fiction."
20
I'd say that the key word here is 'life,' rather than fiction. Life is messy, people often see the world through stereotypes, harbor malign feelings of resentment and delusions of grandeur, and take pleasure when others fail. Great and good fiction captures this rawness, and it never, never aligns itself to any one ideology or sinks in the mud of didacticism.
21