Book Report: "Deception," by Philip Roth

Deception by Philip Roth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Philip Roth is a good writer, and I'm sure from a technical standpoint this is an excellent book. But as a nonacademic, the post-modernist structure of this book gets to be a bit much.

The book purports to be a series of conversations between an author, named Philip; an English woman who may or may not have been his mistress, a Czechoslovakian woman who may or may not have been a prostitute, and Philip's wife. The wife discovers the book and is convinced it describes actual affairs Philip has had, although he denies that they occurred anywhere except in his mind. After the confrontation with the wife, the conversations go back to the English woman and Philip discussing what he told the wife. The book leaves the reader to form his own opinion about whether any of the conversations actually occurred or are made up in Philip Roth's head.

I can take a little post-modernism, but by the end of this book, I was longing for just a straight forward story by an author who doesn't insert himself into the middle of it.

Book Report: "Letting Go," by Philip Roth

Letting Go by Philip Roth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is another extraordinary Roth book. He excels at showing, not telling. It is a psychological study, in the Henry James tradition (from what I've been told about Henry James, I haven't read much of him,)set in Chicago, mostly, about a trio of young people who become involved with each other while at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and then wind up teaching at the University of Chicago. As always in Roth, being Jewish, is a big part of the book. What I like about Roth is he describes situations and conversations and let's the reader figure out motivations rather than spelling them out. The book is a little short on plot, but very interesting.

Book Report: "Goodbye, Columbus," by Philip Roth

Philip Roth: Novels and Stories 1959-1962: Goodbye, Columbus & Five Short Stories / Letting Go by Philip Roth


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am a Philip Roth fan, although not an uncritical one.  I don't know anyone who depicts the richness of Jewish life in America with such warmth and humor but fearlessness.  I wish Amish/Mennonites had someone writing who was half as good.

This book is Roth's first one, published in 1959, and winning The National Book Award. I picked this book up at the library, thinking that Goodbye, Columbus, would probably be pretty much like the movie but not having seen the movie in many years I was ready for a repeat of the story.  I won't say the book is nothing like the movie, but significant details are changed.  In the book, the young man doesn't have an affair with the mother -- they never can stand each other, and he doesn't get the advice at the end to go into plastics. (Later Update:  As Anonymous Wendy points out below, I confused Goodbye, Columbus with The Graduate, which has nothing to do with Philip Roth. The only similarity is that Richard Benjamin kind of looks like Dustin Hoffman.)

The other five short stories in the book are the equal of or better than Goodbye, Columbus.  The Conversion of the Jews, is about a young boy who questions Jewish dogma, arguing that if God is all-powerful there could have been a virgin birth as preached by some Christians.  He gets in trouble with the rabbi and winds up forcing the conversion of his entire synagogue to Christianity.  Many Jewish Americans were highly offended by the story, while critics loved it.

The other stories in the book are Defender of the Faith,  Epstein, You Can't Tell A Man By The Song He Sings, and Eli, The Fanatic.  I won't take the time to detail all of them, but generally they follow the same themes as the first two I have mentioned.

If your only knowledge of Philip Roth is the scandal caused by Portnoy's Complaint, when it was published (it wouldn't raise many eyebrows now,) then you owe it to yourself to read some of his other works.  You will feel enriched.

Third Day Book Report: "A Changing Light"

This month's Third Day Book Report is on A Changing Light, by Nora Gallagher, which is set in Los Alamos, NM during the mid-1940s when scientists there were inventing the atomic bomb. By coincidence, at the same time I was reading Changing Light, I was listening in the car to Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which deals with the early 1940s, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. I really liked both books, but they're completely different, except for their time periods and the subject of World War II.

Changing Light looks at the little picture, the relationship between a New York artist, a Georgia O'Keefe type of painter, who has moved to New Mexico because of the perfect light for her art and to get away from her domineering husband who envies her success, and a Hungarian Jew who took to Einstein his idea for an atomic bomb and is having second thoughts about what he is doing, as the bomb nears completion. There is a love story, told delicately, but passionately, like an O'Keefe painting of a pistel and stamen.

Roth's novel imagines a big picture that could have, but didn't happen. He writes about what could have happened if Charles Lindbergh, an admirer of Hitler, had run for the presidency in 1940 and defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although written from the point of view of a boy,The Plot Against America is more about the country and the latent anti-semitism that runs rampant with some encouragement from the political powers that be.

Changing Light is Gallagher's first novel, but she is an experienced writer and this book is written with a deft hand, almost a painterly touch. Roth is not subtle, and although he writes passionately, it is not a love passion but a political passion, at least in this book. I have really gotten to enjoy Roth the last few years, particularly Sabbath's Theater and Everyman. The plot of The Plot Against America gets a little farfetched at times, while Changing Light also has some improbabilities. I really enjoyed both books and gave them my highest ratings of five stars each.