Althouse: Philip Roth has died.

May 22, 2018

Philip Roth has died.

The New Yorker reports.

48 comments:

AustinRoth said...: I don't welcome his death or any such morbidity, but I do feel he was maybe the most over-rated author of the 20th century.; 5/22/18, 11:02 PM
rcocean said...: I didn't like him, but its sad he never got the Nobel Prize. He was just the sort of chap they like.; 5/22/18, 11:07 PM
rcocean said...: I suppose it was between him and Pinter and the Nobel Prize Committee chose the Brit.; 5/22/18, 11:08 PM
rcocean said...: Mr. Roth was the last of the great white males: the triumvirate of writers — Saul Bellow and John Updike were the others — who towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century.

Huh? These fellows didn't tower over anyone from 1950-1999.

Bellow was a bore, Roth was vulgar and 2nd rate, and Updike was refined and 2nd rate.

But its the New York Times, after all.; 5/22/18, 11:13 PM
rcocean said...: Vidal, Capote, and Mailer would be outraged to know they'd been elbowed aside for Philip Roth.

At least the NYT didn't include Doctrow or Salinger as the 3rd man.; 5/22/18, 11:16 PM
miklos000rosza said...: I think that his fiction was decent to sometimes very good, definitely a step below great. Several of his later books are very good. There's a fairly recent film about him viewable on Amazon Prime.; 5/22/18, 11:16 PM
Rob said...: Roth was always good, sometimes great. I don't think there's a funnier book than Portnoy's Complaint. Thank you, Mr. Roth.; 5/22/18, 11:24 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I got a lot out of “American Pastorale.”; 5/22/18, 11:26 PM
wildswan said...: i HATED HIS WRITING SO MUCH i NEVER READ A LINE HE WROTE. The awfulness came right through the book cover and I turned away. His writing was just copies from other people with real imaginations; and the chewing gum lost its flavor on the bedpost overnight.; 5/22/18, 11:28 PM
rcocean said...: "American Pastorale.”

It was one of the runners-up to Toni Morrison's Beloved, in the "What is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?" contest held by the New York Times Book Review.; 5/22/18, 11:38 PM
eddie willers said...: I tired to read him and I just couldn't finished.

I watched a lot of Cheyenne with Clint Walker, though.; 5/22/18, 11:42 PM
rcocean said...: "I HATED HIS WRITING SO MUCH i NEVER READ A LINE HE WROTE."

Its always odd when you meet fan-boys who love some writer so much they can't think straight or defend their favorite writer when criticized. So, they're reduced to dumb snark. Or writing goofy "satires" of people who don't like *their* writer.

They'll even go on Amazon and argue with people who give "their" writer bad reviews, or - and this is really weird - they'll give a great review but give in one or two stars so people looking for bad reviews - will find their positive review.; 5/22/18, 11:43 PM
rcocean said...: Its obvious Roth appealed to the kind of person who reads the New York Times - he's the book equivalent of Woody Allen or if you wish to get musical Stephen Sondheim.; 5/22/18, 11:46 PM
traditionalguy said...: He was a good writer that affected you, provided that you could endure his books to the end.; 5/23/18, 12:06 AM
Trumpit said...: "I don't welcome his death or any such morbidity, but I do feel he was maybe the most over-rated author of the 20th century."

Thank you for the lovely eulogy. I'll never forget it.; 5/23/18, 12:13 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Andrew McCarthy has a good essay on the timing of the Trump "Investigation". It is becoming very clear that the Obama Administration was looking for an angle to investigate before Summer of 2016, and may well have been doing so since 2015. Basically, the people from the Obama Administration who have testified publicly about the investigation are lying about when and why it was started.; 5/23/18, 12:24 AM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: My prediction for the next famous American writer to die, thereby fulfilling the 'Death always comes in 3's' adage: Joyce Carol Oates!; 5/23/18, 2:06 AM
Oso Negro said...: If one googles Philip Roth, the first thing to appear is his Wikipedia entry, the fifth listing is his letter imploring Wikipedia to correct an entry about him. It's a fine read.; 5/23/18, 3:59 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: There never was -- and probably never will be -- a better writer about Jewish teenage boys masturbating.; 5/23/18, 4:05 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/23/18, 4:07 AM
John Christopher said...: For no particular reason than that they were there, I listened to all of his books on audio over the course of about a month last year. About 120 hours or so, that I listened to mostly while driving or in line at airports.

Having them all condensed made the repetition and themes interesting for how they were skewed and changed throughout the books.

American Pastoral was also my favorite. I didn't know it at the time, but I can think of at least three other books I've read and like that owe a huge influence to it. The Human Stain was a close second.

The tension between how much of the (I hate this word but) "problematic" aspects are on purpose and how much is guileless is part of the appeal.; 5/23/18, 4:07 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Roth should be remembered also for his depiction of a Jewish father being chronically constipated.; 5/23/18, 4:08 AM
Big Mike said...: I only ever read Portmey’s Complaint. Besides convincing me and everyone else that Jewish men obsess over fellatio, I couldn’t see the point. I never bothered with snything else he wrote.

Losing Tom Wolfe, that’s a loss. Losing Roth, not so much.; 5/23/18, 4:21 AM
DrSquid said...: I enjoyed The Great American Novel. I read it around 1975 after finding it in the USO library in Keflavik Iceland. I was pretty much unaware of who Philip Roth might be and chose it only for the title. I thought it was very entertaining and laughed out loud at several passages, so I found a few other Roth titles but never really got the fever for him. Must admit I didn't know he wasn't already dead.; 5/23/18, 5:31 AM
Tina Trent said...: Roth got away with a lot of humid sexual rage because he directed it at gentile women, and that made it acceptable. He wanted to play identity politics so long as they weren't played against him. That's a recipe for being hoisted on your own petard.; 5/23/18, 6:01 AM
Fabi said...: I like Sammy Hagar better.; 5/23/18, 6:20 AM
Tank said...: American Pastoral. I remember that when I read it I thought it was a very good book. I can't remember it now, but that's not unusual. I have a small brain, it can only hold so much.; 5/23/18, 6:35 AM
tim in vermont said...: Never forgiven for coining “Jewish American Princess.”

Sorry, but he’s up at the top as far as I am concerned. I know that people who don’t agree with a writer on some political point or other then say that person is a “bad writer.” I think he was brilliant, but it helps to be acquainted with Jewish life to really appreciate some of his stuff, I guess.

I am glad he didn’t win the Nobel Prize, it puts him on a level with Mark Twain.; 5/23/18, 6:45 AM
James K said...: I also liked "American Pastoral" and "The Human Stain." In "Pastoral" he gives a treatment of the Newark glove industry not unlike Melville's of whaling. But in both books, despite being a lefty himself, he depicts the viciousness of the radical left.

I found "Portnoy's Complaint" a bit over the top, but there's a lot of very funny stuff.; 5/23/18, 6:53 AM
daskol said...: "There never was -- and probably never will be -- a better writer about Jewish teenage boys masturbating."

As someone who discovered Roth during my Jewish masturbatory teenage boyhood, I heartily concur with this sentiment. And he aged very well for someone so seemingly miserable.; 5/23/18, 7:01 AM
William said...: I read about half his books. There was something interesting or funny in all the ones I read.. He didn't get into your synapses the way Salinger, Fitzgerald, or Vonnegut did, but he was fun to read. Updike, Bellow Mailer were far more blah and extraneous to life as I lived it. Roth, imho, was fairly rated. He was an important American writer who told you what it was like to be alive at a certain time,; 5/23/18, 7:12 AM
William said...: Does the rule of threes segregate by sex or nationality? Margaret Atwood looks vulnerable.; 5/23/18, 7:18 AM
M Jordan said...: Roth? Meh.

The best American writer of the latter half of the 20th century was Ken Kesey.; 5/23/18, 7:20 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: I think he was an important enough writer that Madame Tussaud's should make a figure of him.

Just so I can make a waxing Roth joke.; 5/23/18, 7:29 AM
roesch/voltaire said...: I last read Everyman where Roth’s protagonist faces old age and infirmity. He dies from cardiac arrest and enters into nowhere just as he feared. A touching book to read at my age. Roth had huge talents and imagination that explored our lives well I think.; 5/23/18, 7:42 AM
Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...: Goodbye, Columbo!; 5/23/18, 7:54 AM
Michael K said...: Blogger rcocean said...
Its obvious Roth appealed to the kind of person who reads the New York Times - he's the book equivalent of Woody Allen or if you wish to get musical Stephen Sondheim.

That's pretty much my impression, as well.

I could have predicted that R/V would have every book he wrote.

"Literary Fiction" has never interested me.; 5/23/18, 8:15 AM
tim in vermont said...: I enjoyed Vonnegut more when I thought he was writing ironically, after hearing him go off in his old age, he might have written Harrison Bergeron straight up.; 5/23/18, 8:33 AM
tim in vermont said...: R/v and I agree on something, just wanted to note that.; 5/23/18, 8:34 AM
mccullough said...: Roth was a very good writer, even though he was a total asshole in life.

DeLillo, Pynchon, and Cormac McCarthy are all still alive. Below and Updike are both dead and both not worth reading. Fine craftsmen with no insight.; 5/23/18, 9:43 AM
madAsHell said...: When I was younger, I thought jacking-off-into-the-liver-before-dinner was a crude plot device. Today, I'm pretty sure that really happened as part of Roth's life.; 5/23/18, 10:16 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: I really liked "Goodbye Columbus" and laughed all the way though "Portnoy's Complaint." His other works left me cold.; 5/23/18, 10:32 AM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/23/18, 11:28 AM
ballyfager said...: In Portnoy's Complaint he created a memorable character who wasn't even actually a character at all. Not too many teenaged readers of that book will ever forget Thereal McCoy.

Funniest line in the same book. His father worked an insurance debit in a black neighborhood in Newark. Does this job still exist? Anyway, he expressed it thusly, "My father sells life insurance to people who aren't even sure they're alive".; 5/23/18, 11:43 AM
tim in vermont said...: Some people like literary fiction they way other people enjoy fine wine or expensive cigars. Some people like flying, some people like sailing, and some people like driving around the country in massive motorhomes. I like literary fiction myself, but I don’t imagine the world couldn’t get along without it.; 5/23/18, 1:06 PM
Bilwick said...: Roth wasn't my cup of literary tea, but "Portnoy" was funny, and that's mainly what a humorous book is supposed to be. When I was in college one Lit professor who taught contemporary fiction had us read and study a short story of Roth's whose title I don't remember, although I remember the story pretty well. It was about a Jewish soldier who gets latched onto by another soldier, I think also Jewish, who is sort of a goldbrick. The main thing I remember is the protagonist's sergeant telling him he has no prejudice against Jews by saying, "I don't care if someone stitched a hem in your dick."; 5/23/18, 2:18 PM
DrSquid said...: William Chadwick, that short story was called Defender of the Faith.; 5/23/18, 6:38 PM
Christy said...: Read him in college and while I appreciated his craftsmanship, I didn't find he had much to say to a young woman from the Southern Baptist tradition in East Tennessee. Seriously, Naipaul was less alien to my thinking than Roth. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed American Pastoral when I read it for book club a few years ago. Guess we both changed.; 5/23/18, 7:16 PM