Congestive heart failure in New York, age 85
- No complaint there.
RIP, Phil.
He and Tom Wolfe were both on my Death Pool list.
I have read books by both of them.
Goodbye, Columbus.
My 20s were my prime reading years, and along with science fiction I read the literary giants of the day, including Updike, Barth, Mailer, Heller and Philip Roth. And when my best friend (and fellow obsessive reader) asked me who was America’s Best Writer I had to give the nod to Roth.
Roth didn’t write any of my Top 10 favorite books, but was consistently masterful, chapter after chapter and book after book. Funny and wise with brilliant prose.
It’s sad to see the idols of your youth pass on.
My freshman year one of the assigned books was Portnoy’s Complaint, which I found riveting – I read it through in one sitting – no jokes, please. It was his style and flow that I liked. I have to admit that the only thing of his I’ve read since is The Breast.
Tried to read Roth on several occasions. I probably average a book a week, and used to have 2 work friends who were avid readers. One of them was a huge Roth fan. But I never cared enough to finish a single one of his books.
Maybe I’ll try to slog through one in memoriam…
Of his books I’ve read maybe 6? 7? Sorry, can’t bother to count them up at the moment. He was very prolific, y’know.
It got to the point where it seemed like everything I was reading was about east coast Jewish characters in academia, by a Jewish writer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, much important 20th century literature comes from that milieu. But for me, there was a sense that I was visiting the same world over and over again. I guess the imprimatur of “great writer”, that included Roth, is why I gravitate to these writers as I am neither Jewish nor east coast.
So, often when a new Roth book came out (they came out every year) I would pick it up, pause, sigh, and tell myself, “Ok. Here we go again.”
Sounds like me, too. I have a friend who loves Roth and we’d discuss why and his books, especially his later books like American Pastoral, were great, but I never found myself finishing them.
Yep - my impression as well.
John Irving, one of his contemporaries and a similar writer, did the same thing. Not necessarily with Jewish characters, but with the same personality types (neurotic sexually-insecure people with dysfunctional families) and the same settings and themes. Just like everything at Taco Bell is a different combination of the same 4 ingredients, I feel like everything Irving writes is some combination of penis problems, bears, wrestling, and New England.
I quite enjoyed The Plot Against America, even tho I kept comparing it to It Can’t Happen Here and finding Roth’s novel somewhat lacking.
Roth gave up writing a while ago, so he probably knew the end was near. He had a great and long career. Few of the major 50s/60s writers were still considered major in th 2000s.
But I bet that none of the obituaries mention The Breast.
I have never read a Roth book. His stuff always seemed… incredibly boring.
I wrote a thread in hear a few years back about whether John Updike was really important any more and whether he would be read in the future. My thought: no. And that’s my same thought about Roth and pretty much anyone post-War. Same withing with the recently deceased Wolfe (and I have read Bonfire of the Vanities: some interesting bits but ultimately not necessary).
The problem doesn’t really come down to whether the individual books are “good” or not. The problem is structural: academic opinion and popular tastes have diverged, so we are left with perhaps academics saying in the year 2080, “Philip Roth was like soooo important, guys,” and the average person not giving a rat’s ass.
Now the counter to that is, “But does the average person give a rat’s ass about Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, etc.” And the answer: yeah, sort of. Macbeth and The Great Gatsby will continue to be taught in schools and they will remain foundational to the English lit canon and people will read them. Roth? Updike? Etc.? They won’t.
Now, it’s a conceit of academics that every era has its very important writers, and they are in the business of selling a certain canon and selling themselves as the caretakers of the canon, but… who cares? It’s like poetry. No one knows who the supposedly important poets of the 80s and 90s were, no one cares except the caretakers. The difference when it comes to novels is that an “important” novel is readable in the same way that a piece of trash like Twilight is readable. There is some hope of entertainment.
Yeah, this. Exactly this. (Of course, Sinclair Lewis was a Nobel Prize winner, and Roth never made the grade. Twisting the knife a little there, Phil!)
Roth appeared in one of my favorite Little Annie Fanny episodes ever, back around 1970-71. Harvey Kurtzman called him “Portnoy” and had him sex-doping the Bernaise sauce for an intimate dinner. Little Annie was dieting and turned it down, after Portnoy had eaten a huge portion. It ended with Roth chasing her and various other women across the city rooftops.
Aeschines @15:. I agree with you, too. Roth and Updike will be the Harold Frederics of the late 20th century. Fun for weirdos like me who dig up and read dusty old second- or third-rate literature.
As for Wolfe, I have a feeling that The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and The Right Stuff might stay in print, at least for students of the 1960s. They’re both insightful and a pleasure to read.
Reading parts of The Breast and Portnoy’s Complaint 30+ years ago left me with the impression that Roth might be talented, but it wasn’t a talent that I liked at all. And when I heard about his relationship with Claire Bloom, whose work on film I do admire, I liked him even less. The Daily Mail is often an unreliable source, but I have to say that I agree with their assessment:
“Even as an enraptured literary world lavished praise on Roth the writer yesterday, it was conveniently overlooking how deeply unimpressive was Roth the man.”