Freewheeling Andy Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Reading this at the moment. It's good, isn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Is it? Damn! I just bought two Roths - The Breast and Portnoy's Complaint - and had The Human Stain in my hand and set it down as I thought three was a bit excessive in one go... Keep us posted though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted June 10, 2008 Author Share Posted June 10, 2008 Well, I doubt you're going to be disappointed by those two. I only picked it up because I was away and had nothing to read. I seem to remember it having good reviews from elsewhere, though. The opening premise is very similar to Disgrace - ageing professor has to leave university due to pressure from peers after he behaves in an un-PC way. So far, though, it's delved far deeper into the same issues, of race and conflict, that pervade Disgrace. I think there are strong similarities between the two books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
~Andrea~ Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Who is it by please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Philip Roth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sedgewick Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Damn! I just bought two Roths - The Breast and Portnoy's Complaint Given that it's only about seventy pages, you'll fly through The Breast. I've got loads of Roth but, er, have only read a couple...and not his best known ones. Actually, Everyman is quite well known. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Given that it's only about seventy pages, you'll fly through The Breast. True, but should I first read its obvious inspiration, Kafka's Metamorphosis? That would slow things down a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NiceguyEddie Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 The Human Stain is exceedingly good. American Pastoral is supposed to be his masterpiece, but I've not read it yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sedgewick Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 True, but should I first read its obvious inspiration, Kafka's Metamorphosis? That would slow things down a bit. That's only about fifty pages, in my edition at least. I'm sure it would only take an hour and a coffee each to get through them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Stein Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 The Human Stain is exceedingly good. American Pastoral is supposed to be his masterpiece, but I've not read it yet. American Pastoral is brilliant. It was the book I read which finally turned me on to Roth, after Sabbath's Theater and Deception hadn't and The Dying Animal had partly persuaded me. For that reason, as I read it when I still wasn't a huge fan of Roth, I'm not sure I would rate American Pastoral as his best. (Maybe if I read it again sometime I will.) For now I loved the Zuckerman Bound books - The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson and The Prague Orgy - the last two are perfect in my opinion. I haven't read many of his others - Everyman is the only other I think - and now that I really rate him, I find myself in an odd position, where on the one hand I can't wait to read more and look forward to discovering the rest of his stuff enormously; and on the other hand not wanting to read more in case I'm disappointed and this new burnished image of him I have gets tarnished. But I'm going to head for Patrimony or The Facts soon I think, the latter of which apparently plays with fact and fiction as only Roth can. Or The Breast, as it's the first David Kepesh book and I'll be reading the second, The Professor of Desire, for a book group read soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted July 24, 2008 Author Share Posted July 24, 2008 Finally coming back to this. It took me an age to chew through the second half of the book, and I've no real idea why. It's still a great book, although pretty dense and heavy. But I think it lost some of the verve midway through - the passages were just too long and a tad introspective for my tastes, I think. One of the kys to the book seems to be Roth trying to address pretty much every issue that was controversial in post-war USA - race, anti-semitism, feminism, Vietnam, the prurience over sex (and particularly in the Clinton-era). He does it with a very light hand, but still it just seems perhaps a touch too deliberate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tiresias Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 I am going to read this book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted August 1, 2008 Share Posted August 1, 2008 The only Roth I've read is Patrimony so far, however I do have American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain in my stack. As I understand it the latter three are a loose trilogy. I've read that Patrimony is not typical of Roth though I thought he captured the relationship with his father beautifully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted January 14, 2009 Author Share Posted January 14, 2009 This is interesting, reading back what I wrote about The Human Stain. I've just finished reading American Pastoral - which Philip Steyn, above, mentions as his favourite. It's a great book. I'm pretty sure of that. It's heavy amd hard-hitting, and quite profound, and full of insight. But it's hard, hard work. At least, I found it hard work. The chapters are long, the paragraphs are long, the sentences are long, the book is dense. Very dense. And it flits around, it moves around in time, always looking back. Which is a brilliant way of building the central character, "The Swede", but which I found hard to get through. So is it actually a great book, if I had such trouble grabbing on to the narrative flow and reading it? Probably it is, but I'm really not sure if I'd be recommending it to anyone. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kell Posted January 14, 2009 Share Posted January 14, 2009 I have The Human Stain on Mount TBR. Hopefully I'll get to it soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pontalba Posted January 16, 2009 Share Posted January 16, 2009 I've recently finished American Pastoral, and although I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was somewhat like going 10 rounds with Mohammad Ali. Battering from all sides simultaneously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freewheeling Andy Posted January 16, 2009 Author Share Posted January 16, 2009 I think that's right, Pontalba. The content was bruising, but also the intense, heavy prose style was bruising, the structure I found a bit bruising, so along with the emotional stuff there was also a feeling of relief when I finished it. It took a lot of effort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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