Philip Roth

[Mobbd]

The Anne Frank thing would've made a great novel in its own right, I thought; it's a great idea but he doesn't really pursue it. 

It was perfect for that character. So vain, so egotistical, so utterly despicable as a thought/fantasy (though ultimately harmless).

[poodlefaker]

Haven't read much. Just that short story about the bikini girls going into a store. Was good though!

A&P the story is called apparently.

Think I struggled with Rabbit Run as a teen.

If you like Updike - which I do, tho I appreciate why many people don't - he's v. rewarding bcs he wrote so much, and it's all very similar and pretty consistent over a 50 year career. (more so than Roth, I'd say). Like P G Wodehouse or Graham Greene or Ann Tyler - if you find it's your thing, you're set up for the next five years.

[wrec]

I've gone on Portnoy by mistake! I had pretty much written Roth off as someone I didn't need to read. Read a bit of The Plot Against America at some point and meant to give it a proper go but Trump's election made it less appealing.
Anyway I got a second-hand copy of Portnoy's Complaint recently having confused it with The Crying of Lot 49 (which I had intended to read), and enjoyed it way more than I expected.
The sexual and racial politics are of their time, but genuinely captured. The humour stands up, and the iconoclastic treatment of Judaism seems fairly revolutionary. Is there much precedent in representing the neurotic east coast secular Jewish male? I suspect Woody Allen drew on this stuff a lot and smoothed off the edges a bit.

[Mobbd]

Really glad you liked it @wrec. I loved it (though we're going back a decade or so now). High level of wank joke invention. His mother is very funny, as is his father's anxiety constipation which I always think about when I'm bunged up. What more legacy could a writer hope for?

As mentioned up thread I couldn't handle "Plot Against" for the very same reason you cite. Doesn't mean it's not a good book but it's too stark a reminder now that we live in the darkest timeline.

[wrec]

Really glad you liked it @wrec. I loved it (though we're going back a decade or so now). High level of wank joke invention. His mother is very funny, as is his father's anxiety constipation which I always think about when I'm bunged up. What more legacy could a writer hope for?

For some reason I hadn't realised Roth was properly funny, thought he was all stern big themes and grim misogyny.

[Mobbd]

For some reason I hadn't realised Roth was properly funny, thought he was all stern big themes and grim misogyny.

Tbh, he's sometimes so funny and in such a lowbrow scatological way that I'm amazed he's even allowed up onto such a high literary pedestal. Zuckerman Unbound was pretty funny too (though I doubt anything tops Portnoy).

[poodlefaker]

Currently reading Percival Everett's Erasure, which is giving me strong Philip Roth feels, as the kids say.