Have I been memed by Jewish writing and literature faculty at

His good is great and his duds are not nearly as bad as Don Delillo's, Corncob's, and Pynchon's (to name the meme 4).

Read American Pastoral first you dip
also Portnoy's Complaint I guess

>>8961815
Sorry I'm phoneposting; I should elaborate. American Pastoral, Plot Against America, Goodbye Columbus, and Sabbath's Theater. Maybe start with Goodbye. Sabbath's is his most loopy I've read. Plot is classic.

It could be he's not your shtick cause it's very plain middle style with a lot of modern realism but he's probably the best writer doing that right now.

>>8961821
Each of the books in the American Pastoral series are meant to be stand alone. I know that won the Pulitzer, but THS got the PEN/Faulkner, so I assumed it was of merit.

>>8961840
So the appeal of Roth is more about accurately showing the contemporary man? He is an ideas man, not an aesthetics man?

>>8961781
>Unaesthetic prose that throws in literary references haphazardly
That's... just wrong. If anything, the prose was reaching for an aesthetic that didn't belong to the story. But at the same time, the book's about a fucking English professor who idolizes language. Did you miss the part about his dad teaching Coleman that well-refined language is the most important tool he can have, named all his kids after Shakespeare characters, etc? Do you think, maaaybe, that had any connection to him being so enraged when his word choice is misconstrued? Or that the object of his affection is an anti-intellectual illiterate? These are some pretty surface level themes you seem to be missing.

I read this as a part of a Yale Open Course. Maybe some of these lectures will help you understand the work better. As I recall the lecturer specifically addresses some criticisms of Roth and why it has literary merit anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbqL2G_iQ-c

>>8961909
I didn't miss these, but having easily recognizable themes does not make the novel good, and outside of characterizing women as Greek goddesses and the Julius Caesar names, it feels like he is just dropping random fucking names to seem cool. I'll check out the YOC.

>>8961961
>he is just dropping random fucking names to seem cool
.....
I don't know how to say it any other way. These were clear stylistic choices used to reinforce central themes. You're approaching a piece of literature like a post on 4chan you want to call out for being a tryhard or something.

>>8961781
1. Sabbaths Theater, Portnoy's Complaint, and American Pastoral are the masterpieces. Human Stain is basically momcore, although the novel-wide pun on niggardly is amusing

2. No one has stereotyped, hurt, or misrepresented the American Jew more than Philip Roth.

>>8961872
>He is an ideas man, not an aesthetics man?
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I haven't read THS yet but American Pastoral is a very controlled book, structurally speaking. Roth takes Melville's technique of shared characteristics between characters as ways of drawing out their differences and the contradictions in their own personalities. Very Jungian. Swede Levov and his daughter might as well be the same person, politics aside. This isn't a flaw in the righting, and it's done very much on purpose.

>>8962039
All of the Jews I know who have read Roth (and it is more than a few) love him and think he nailed it. My college roommate was a Jewish guy from Princeton and he thought he had never seen such an accurate portrayal of the New Jersey Turnkike than the one in Portnoy's Complaint

>>8962009
But have you read a writer who is OBJECTIVELY good? Infinite Jest accomplishes a lot of themes from THS (support group, love, racial identity), but in a stylistically pleasing way. I never questioned DFW, and most people never do. So how does Roth get away with dubious style?

>>8962148
>a writer who is OBJECTIVELY good
No such thing.
>a stylistically pleasing way
The style is the most grating part of Infinite Jest, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed it a lot.
>I never questioned DFW, and most people never do.
Oh I get it. This is bait.
>how does Roth get away with dubious style?
Until you can pinpoint exactly what it is you find dubious about it (and "trying to seem cool" is not a valid argument here) I'm not sure what else there is for me to say.

>>8961815
Don DeLillo has one bad book and it's his first one

>>8962206
I thought Cosmopolis was pretty mediocre desu. That's the only DeLillo I've read.

Portnoy's Complaint is completely mediocre, edgy Jew, pop Freud, bad humour. Not going to waste my time with anything else he wrote. Bloom has shit taste anyways re Amerifat fiction.

>>8962083
I cannot respond with an anecdote of my own, that said one cannot cally his portrayal of Mickey Sabbath as a positive portrayal of an American Jew

>>8961781
I couldn't help but agree at first. I was consistently underwhelmed by Roth, but still felt he's a really fun writer while not being completely trite. I'm not sure how much others would agree on this, but once i get past the usually boring expositions, I feel like his books are "page-turners", to use a cliche. They're just so fucking gossipy and juicy, it's like hearing about the neighborhood scandals.

But yeah, of all the books I've read by him (The Plot Against America, American Pastoral, and The Humbling (yes, pretty fucking obscure and panned, it was the first book I read by him and decided to choose randomly)), I haven't been super impressed at his style or at his erudition, his philosophical ideas.

But they're fucking powerful. They stay with you. I mean, The Humbling was shit, I agree on that too, but American Pastoral and The Plot Against America, I still think of them with awe. They're just emotionally explosive and very, very well-crafted books.

The thing in Roth's works is the psychology of the characters and the realism. You may not appreciate it if you're used to Joycean bombast in fiction --- which there's nothing wrong with, it's just not what Roth does. That's my thoughts on him.

>>8961781
not even one good writer called "philip"