Philip Roth - Indignation - are you curious?

Hey fuck off^^^

Can't wait, obvs.

tbh that description sounds like a Philip Roth madlib

it does, but that's not a problem for me. definitely looking forward to this.

"tbh that description sounds like a Philip Roth madlib "

most of the best of Roth are actually the same book,or ideas, written all over again, and the result was always brilliant.

so thats not suppose to be a problem,yeah

I'm glad he's alive at writing, and that he still has the potential to write a novel that holds its own among his best. Who else in his generation has that potential? Tom Wolfe, maybe.

er, alive and writing

Ozick. Morrison?

Updike?

Would be great if Updike came out with a masterpiece, but...

Updike's Seek My Face (2002) is great, not a masterpiece but still.
there is a chance that Eastsick part 2 will be great, esp. since it deals,again, with Updike's suburb obsessions, and aging.

It's weird, I read one Roth book ('Professor of Desire'), liked it a lot, and don't feel any enthusiasm for reading more of his stuff. Possibly because it all sounds the same when reading summaries.

you are making a mistake.
i'd say Human Stain, Sabbath Theatre and Portnoy must.
the last 2 can be summarized more or less the same, yet, so different and so good.

i mean, lots of masterpieces have the same skeleton sctructure- let's say,one of the ancient greeks tragedy structure, yet they are great.

who was it who said, rightfully, that there are maximum 5 narrative structures in litreture, and all novels are improvisasions on the same story.

Yeah, I don't mean to imply that all his stuff his really the same, and I'm sure I'll read another one at some point, but it's kinda hard to get excited about beforehand.

"Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over."

C'mon, you know you wanna know where Sabbath's Theater goes from that opening sentence.
I'd be excited about this new book, but I've so much Roth left to read. Like, say, any (and all) of the Zuckerman books, which I've ignored so far, because I wanted to get to them in order. I think I may bring the Library of America omnibus of "Zuckerman Bound" (the first trilogy of Zuckerman books + an epilogue) with me on vacation. I'm glad he keeps churning them out though. I for one am not about to catch up with him anytime soon.

Nobel Prize here i come

Tom Wolfe is like a bazilliuon times better! And he's not even v good! Being obsessed with yr own subject matter is kindof a weakness, isn't it?

Tom Wolfe is like a bazilliuon times better! And he's not even v good!

srsly, who is this guy?

Which guy?

"Niles Caulder." Was agreeing with you!

The Human Stain is one of my favorite novels, period.

...in part because it covers a period of history (the Lewinsky scandal) when American public discourse resembled a Roth novel.

OTM.Best Roth novel imo.certainly the tightest in narrative structure and plot (along with Portnoy)

I see I missed the opportunity for an easy Claire Bloom joke.

The Human Stain was sort of like watching an expert marksmen at a carnival shooting gallery; sure dude hit all the targets but the effect was still slightly ridiculous. otoh I really like The Plot Against America, which I think has the best actual story of the recent Roths.

Was agreeing with you!

Yay! I like it when that happens.

i'm pretty jazzed. everyman was terrific, the passages about lying and gravedigging keep popping up in my head. he sounded quite interested to see what his brain would throw up post-zuckerman in the exit ghost press, too. was that one any good? i was enjoying the zuckerman stuff and then stalled on the anatomy lesson.

i'd heartily second/third/fourth endorsement of the human stain.

I will read it because I automatically read new Roth - my favourite living novelist. All the same, I fear he's past his best - progressive falling off since "Human Stain" and I'm sceptical he has another great book in him. Love to be proved wrong, obviously.

Found this at Waterstones today and bought it. I've got a seven hour flight on Friday--am going back and forth between saving the experience for the trip or just tearing into it now.

reviews arent unified on the book but most agrees it's at least intersting:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/rothp/indignat.htm

So far (47 pages in), I'm loving it. It somehow feels a closer cousin to The Ghost Writer than Exit Ghost, which was a sort-of-sequel to TGW. PR's college days (he, like Marcus Messner, the protagonist of Indignation, left Newark to attend a liberal arts college in middle America) are strangely underrepresented in his otherwise comprehensive fictionalization of his life, so that may be providing him with some energy.

An excerpt:

Later I learned from my mother the full circumstances of that day, about how Mr. Pearlgreen had come to see about the toilet at the back of the store that morning and left my father brooding over their conversation from then until closing time. He must have smoked three packs of cigarettes, she told me, he was so upset. "You don't know how proud of you he is," my mother said. "Everybody who comes into the store--'My son, all A's. Never lets us down Doesn't even have to look at his books--automatically, A's.' Darling, when you're not present you are the focus of all his praise. You must believe that. He boasts about you all the time." "And when I am present I'm the focus of these crazy new fears, and I'm sick and tired of it, Ma." My mother said, "But I heard him, Markie. He told Mr. Pearlgreen, 'Thank God I don't have to worry about these things with my boy.' I was there with him in the store when Mr. Pearlgreen came because of the leak. That's exactly what he said when Mr. Pearlgreen was telling him about Eddie. Those were his words: 'I don't have to worry about these things with my boy.' But what does Mr. Pearlgreen say back to him--and this is what started him off--he says, 'Listen to me, Messner. I like you, Messner, you were good to us, you took care of my wife during the war with meat, listen to somebody who knows from it happening to him. Eddie is a college boy too, but that doesn't mean he knows enough to stay away from the pool hall. How did we lose Eddie? He's not a bad boy. And what about his younger brother--what kind of example is he to his younger brother? What did we do wrong that the next thing we know he's in a pool hall in Scranton, three hours from home! With my car! Where does he get the money for the gas? From playing pool! Pool! Pool! Mark my words, Messner: the world is waiting, it's licking its chops, to take your boy away.'" "And my father believes him," I said. "My father believes not what he sees with his eyes for an entire lifetime, instead he believes what he's told by the plumber on his knees fixing the toilet in the back of the store!" I couldn't stop. He'd been driven crazy by the chance remark of a plumber! "Yeah, Ma," I finally said, storming off to my room, "the tiniest, littlest things do have tragic consequences. He proves it!"

Hitchens' review.

my stepmom loved it

Movie version debuting at Sundance, directed by Jim Schamus (Focus Features honcho):

http://deadline.com/2016/01/james-schamus-on-his-sundance-directing-debut-focus-exit-and-why-hes-all-about-jesus-qa-part-1-1201688959/

Saw the trailer for the movie a couple weeks ago and couldn't make heads or tails of it, so I bought the book. Read it over the weekend and really enjoyed it. Anyone seen it yet?

was going to the preview tonight but I wanna stay in and read

this was good, and faithful to the book to my memory

Two Roth adaptations hitting at roughly the same time, huh? American Pastoral's out this fall I believe.

yeah, thats a better book but id bet not as good an adaptation. we'll see tho

Yeah Ewan McGregor spearheading the American Pastoral film seems... odd. And the
corny trailer featuring another fucking Mad World cover does not inspire high hopes.

I thought this adaptation of Indignation sucked. Like I said, I bought the book a couple weeks ago because the trailer was baffling. Another win for trailer companies? It was a totally lifeless take on a really bleak and nuanced book, I think Richard Brody was otm in his review: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/a-sterilized-philip-roth-adaptation

If a movie based on a good book is worth watching, it’s worth watching on its own terms. The comparison of the movie to the book is a matter of mere curiosity, except when the movie isn’t much of an experience at all—that’s when the comparison becomes a matter of diagnosis. In the writer and director James Schamus’s adaptation of “Indignation,” which opened on Friday, there’s no Beethoven; the music that Bertram blasts is Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. The difference matters; the musical choice marks the difference between intimate expression and public display, between the terrifying and visionary novel and the cramped and simplistic movie. Schamus doesn’t just cut out the Beethoven; he cuts the heart out of the novel and delivers only its inert remains to the screen.

It was just really rote, and yeah it was faithful to the novel in terms of dialogue and basic plot, but the strange structure and the gradual reveals are gone. Wasted opportunity. It's a pretty weird and dark book, this felt like a TV movie run through. Bought American Pastoral, gonna read that before the movie in October, I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up...

amer pastoral the film was okay, way too melodramatic and a few unforgiveable changes from the novel but i expected that tbh

******SPOILER ALERT*******

i haven't read the book in about a decade but i seem to remember that so much of the book is in the swede's head, like an important moment is the part about the swede worrying that him kissing his daughter too-fully in a possibly inappropriate manner at the beach when she was a child was the cause of her later personal problems

also mcgregor really isn't what you picture when you think of the swede at all.