Philip Roth is one of my heros. All his life, he has been fighting bourgeois Jewish moral indignation. In doing so, he has shown the opinion-making pundits—many Rabbis, the Bnai Brith, the how-dare-you “spokesmen” such as Leon Weisenthaler and Norman Podhoretz, as well as a slew of Academic literary critics-- what it means to maintain a distance form orthodox opinions.
Note the Comment below: the use of "lib-rad" is like the "Jewish self-hater" label Roth fought in his time. There should be, as the writer states, movies and novels about the divisions among Jews. They won't by written or produced by those with slogans which divide up the world into the right-thinking and the dangerous (Roth had thought-out principles--which is why he was called a "misogynist" and a "traitor" ).
From the Goodby Columbus stories through Portnoy’s Complaint, he had the courage to reveal what really had happened to the Jewish Mother, the successful business- and law-school college grad, the “New York intellectuals” (who could not abide the 60s anti-war movement), and the young Jewish American woman who sought out what she guessed was the man who had his feet on the ground and could appreciate her needs, including her own professional life. What had become of the sons and daughters of immigrants who slaved so that their kids could enjoy The Golden Land? Many were venal, neurotic, deniers that anything sinister was happening of importance outside their offices and homes. So afraid of their mothers that they only could show sexual desire for girls whom they disrespected from the tits upward—like Portnoy, Zuckerman.
Literary historians say D H Lawrence and Arthur Schnitzler took Freud’s psychology, esp. his studies of sexuality, and, almost as soon as he had written them, exemplified them in their writings (Sons and Lovers, Dream Story). Well, I think it might be said that Roth’s novels of his protagonists’ (Roth Roth Roth Roth Roth) adventures in 1990s Israel (Operation Shylock, The Counterlife) are a literary exposition of Chomsky’s work. His depiction of the Palestinian insurgents, and how they are hamstrung by the laws of a nation-state that provides by its public discourse a pre-determined condemnation for the disenfranchised, is only equaled by Doctorow’s examples in The Book of Daniel.
In the late short novels (he calls them generically Nemeses: Short Novels) he faces the void as bravely as Lawrence did in his Ship of Death poems. Nemesis is a trip to despair. The protagonist cannot overcome his shame at being a carrier of Polio. He also is bothered by his decision to leave his job at a Newark playground to be with his girlfriend at her summer camp. He is given every chance to overcome this shame, to realize his girlfriend does love him, that he still has a career ahead of him, and that he is no way even culpable, but just a human being who needs the strength of character to stop equating his soul with infection—the body infected with Polio, the soul with something more powerful and challenging. Both inevitable in a human being. This story is of a Job who lived in an age where God was not in the whirlwind, but in the still small voice within. He saw that voice as something that told him he had to atone with his life, and virility. Well, he did. So his nemesis, his evil face in the mirror, won.
Not to mention the great trilogy I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, and The Human Stain. Or the alternate history of America, The Plot Against America. From the start of his career, Roth says, he chose America over rabbinic Judaism: the little man who defeated Hitler, the pop culture entertainers who claimed their place with songs and films. Sounds like Whitman here. Sounds also like a whole boatload of capitalist propaganda. George Gershwin, fine. But Irving Berlin and his schmaltz? The Hollywood moguls? Al Jolson and his blackface? Fiddler on the Roof? Roth, however, was never sorry. He says more, more. “Life is and.”
Roth stopped writing recently. I wonder what it had to do with that promise having evaporated in the national security, all-surveilled state, and the replacement of that America with an oligarchy of corporate depredation that has no idea of what being predatory means.
Note the Comment below: the use of "lib-rad" is like the "Jewish self-hater" label Roth fought in his time. There should be, as the writer states, movies and novels about the divisions among Jews. They won't by written or produced by those with slogans which divide up the world into the right-thinking and the dangerous (Roth had thought-out principles--which is why he was called a "misogynist" and a "traitor" ).
From the Goodby Columbus stories through Portnoy’s Complaint, he had the courage to reveal what really had happened to the Jewish Mother, the successful business- and law-school college grad, the “New York intellectuals” (who could not abide the 60s anti-war movement), and the young Jewish American woman who sought out what she guessed was the man who had his feet on the ground and could appreciate her needs, including her own professional life. What had become of the sons and daughters of immigrants who slaved so that their kids could enjoy The Golden Land? Many were venal, neurotic, deniers that anything sinister was happening of importance outside their offices and homes. So afraid of their mothers that they only could show sexual desire for girls whom they disrespected from the tits upward—like Portnoy, Zuckerman.
Literary historians say D H Lawrence and Arthur Schnitzler took Freud’s psychology, esp. his studies of sexuality, and, almost as soon as he had written them, exemplified them in their writings (Sons and Lovers, Dream Story). Well, I think it might be said that Roth’s novels of his protagonists’ (Roth Roth Roth Roth Roth) adventures in 1990s Israel (Operation Shylock, The Counterlife) are a literary exposition of Chomsky’s work. His depiction of the Palestinian insurgents, and how they are hamstrung by the laws of a nation-state that provides by its public discourse a pre-determined condemnation for the disenfranchised, is only equaled by Doctorow’s examples in The Book of Daniel.
In the late short novels (he calls them generically Nemeses: Short Novels) he faces the void as bravely as Lawrence did in his Ship of Death poems. Nemesis is a trip to despair. The protagonist cannot overcome his shame at being a carrier of Polio. He also is bothered by his decision to leave his job at a Newark playground to be with his girlfriend at her summer camp. He is given every chance to overcome this shame, to realize his girlfriend does love him, that he still has a career ahead of him, and that he is no way even culpable, but just a human being who needs the strength of character to stop equating his soul with infection—the body infected with Polio, the soul with something more powerful and challenging. Both inevitable in a human being. This story is of a Job who lived in an age where God was not in the whirlwind, but in the still small voice within. He saw that voice as something that told him he had to atone with his life, and virility. Well, he did. So his nemesis, his evil face in the mirror, won.
Not to mention the great trilogy I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, and The Human Stain. Or the alternate history of America, The Plot Against America. From the start of his career, Roth says, he chose America over rabbinic Judaism: the little man who defeated Hitler, the pop culture entertainers who claimed their place with songs and films. Sounds like Whitman here. Sounds also like a whole boatload of capitalist propaganda. George Gershwin, fine. But Irving Berlin and his schmaltz? The Hollywood moguls? Al Jolson and his blackface? Fiddler on the Roof? Roth, however, was never sorry. He says more, more. “Life is and.”
Roth stopped writing recently. I wonder what it had to do with that promise having evaporated in the national security, all-surveilled state, and the replacement of that America with an oligarchy of corporate depredation that has no idea of what being predatory means.