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In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.
Philip Roth presents a vivid portrait of an innocent man being swept away by a current of conflict and violence in his own backyard - a story that is as much about loving America as it is hating it. Seymour "Swede" Levov, a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, and the prosperous heir of his father's Newark glove factory comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even a most private, well-intentioned citizen, it seems, gets to sidestep the sweep of history. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall ... a strong, confident man, a master of social equilibrium, overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. For the Swede is not allowed to stay forever blissful living out life in rural Old Rimrock in his 170 year-old stone farmhouse with his pretty wife (his college sweetheart and Miss New Jersey of 1949) and his lively albeit precocious daughter, the apple of his eye ... that is until she grows up to become a revolutionary terrorist.
Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey Sabbath at 64 is an aging, raging powerhouse, defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress, Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past.
At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen’s death, Peter is still trying—and failing—to write his way free of it.
The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman.
In this mesmerizing, funny, chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, the subject the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness is a terrible disease. When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process.
In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.
Philip Roth presents a vivid portrait of an innocent man being swept away by a current of conflict and violence in his own backyard - a story that is as much about loving America as it is hating it. Seymour "Swede" Levov, a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, and the prosperous heir of his father's Newark glove factory comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even a most private, well-intentioned citizen, it seems, gets to sidestep the sweep of history. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall ... a strong, confident man, a master of social equilibrium, overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. For the Swede is not allowed to stay forever blissful living out life in rural Old Rimrock in his 170 year-old stone farmhouse with his pretty wife (his college sweetheart and Miss New Jersey of 1949) and his lively albeit precocious daughter, the apple of his eye ... that is until she grows up to become a revolutionary terrorist.
Once a scandalously inventive puppeteer, Mickey Sabbath at 64 is an aging, raging powerhouse, defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress, Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past.
At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen’s death, Peter is still trying—and failing—to write his way free of it.
The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman.
In this mesmerizing, funny, chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, the subject the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness is a terrible disease. When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process.
Letting Go is Philip Roth's first full-length novel, published just after Goodbye, Columbus, when he was 29. Set in 1950s Chicago, New York and Iowa City, Letting Go presents as brilliant a fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century America defined by social and ethical constraints, and by moral compulsions conspicuously different from those of today.
The hero of Everyman is obsessed with mortality. As he reminds himself at one point, "I'm 34! Worry about oblivion when you're 75." But he cannot help himself. He is the ex-husband in three marriages gone wrong. He is the father of two sons who detest him, despite a daughter who adores him. A masterful portrait of one man's inner struggles, Everyman is a brilliant showcase for one of the world's most distinguished novelists.
Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman John Baal, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a homerun sober. If you’ve never heard of them—or of the Ruppert Mundy’s, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history—it’s because of the Communist plot and the capitalist scandal that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.
Everything is over for Simon Axler. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his 60s, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air". When he goes on stage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else.
Newark 1944. In der Stadt bricht eine schreckliche Polioepidemie aus. Die meisten Betroffenen sind Kinder...
Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather". It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact - and the creative power - of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies.
In 1951, the second year of the Korean War, a studious, law-abiding, and intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, begins his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighborhood butcher, seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees on every corner for his beloved boy.
Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella, the first book published by Philip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture. It won the National Book Award in 1960.
What if a look-alike stranger stole your name, usurped your biography, and went about the world pretending to be you? In Operation Shylock, master novelist Philip Roth confronts his double, an impostor whose self-appointed task is to lead the Jews back to Europe from Israel.
The Facts is the unconventional autobiography of a writer who has reshaped our idea of fiction - a work of compelling candor and inventiveness, instructive particularly in its revelation of the interplay between life and art.
We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after". The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.
Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.
With The Dying Animal, he revisits the character David Kepesh. At age 60, Kapesh is drawn out of his carefully ordered existence and into an obsessive affair with one of his students.
Nothing in the summary hints at the sucker-punch that this book delivers in its heartrending conclusion. The frame of this novel is the love affair between an older college professor (David) and his beautiful student (Consuela), who is many years younger. The themes of this book include the struggle for meaning in life, loss of youth, mortality, connection, sexual fulfillment, familial loyalty and disloyalty, and honesty with oneself. The themes are developed by the primary story, as well as by a series of remembrances that David narrates from his life. Yes, there are quite a number of scenes of explicitly described sex and sexual fantasies. Gratuitous? No. Pornographic? No. Stick with this short novel to the end. It is well worth it. Very well narrated.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
"The Dying Animal" explores those corners of human mind where the lust and sexual desires live.
The main character of the book is the aging man named Kepesh, an intellectual celebrity, amateur pianist and university scholar.
Divorced when was still quite young he kept his solitude as a virtue, a freedom and ... the ground for endless sexual adventures with his young female students. His life was well arranged, promiscuous and easy-going until, at age 62, he meets Consuela, a beautiful offspring of Cuban emigrants. Initially his desire for her is almost only bodily, almost fleshly and full of fetish obsession about her breast. But as Consuela demonstrates her freedom - he almost falls in love with her. This love reveals itself in a strange way - in his morbid jealousy for her, her friends, boyfriends and even brothers. I say "almost" because he maintains the sexual relations with his previous lover. Reading the book it is very hard to judge if Kepesh was only an animal with sexual desire to Consuela, or if he truly loved her, but was intimidated by his senescence, generation gap etc...
There is also an interesting part about father-son relations. Kepesh - the bad father, who forsook his son when he broke his marriage, has, nevertheless, an important role in boy's life.
The book ends in completely unanticipated and tragic way - shocking the readers at first. However, in the tragedy and uncertainty of the book climax lies its most important virtue - the reflection on, sometimes insecure and full of abeyance, yet true love and caring, the love that has a power to fight the death. That is my rendering of Kepesh final indecisiveness - contrary to many reviews I have read...
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Well narrated - the story gets to the heart of all the ends and outs of growing old dying and being unfaithful and self centered! I really had to get past the old man sexing to get to the message. I would not have read this if I really had known what it was about.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I've only read/listened to a couple of Roth's books but they were both thought provoking, strange, a bit erotic, and fun. I guess more than anything else, his books make me laugh, but then sometimes, i'm not sure if i'm amused or repulsed... it's quite odd. Definitely worth listening to.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
The book is an easy listen, but has some very powerful moments. The ending takes an interesting twist. Short book. Worth the time.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
I enjoy his insight into the human way with relationships. I like the way he writes. Worth you read and time.
fast pace, steamy!
an eternal subject: old man - young woman
Roth offers some powerful moments while dissecting his protagonist's life. He keeps it short and juicy. Truly recommendable.
Still not sure how much I liked this book - it was odd - a bit hard to catch on to the story
How did the narrator detract from the book?
Narrator was actually fine. He read it well.
Any additional comments?
Horrible book. Very self-centered guy blowing his horn. Nothing even remotely likable about this guy. The ending made no sense to me.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful
I have listen to this audio book after watching Elegy a few years ago. The movie is a little bit more romantic than the book. Philip Roth is definitely trying to pursue the idea of flesh/body or what is more the animal body. Passion is what this animal body can withhold. The book is a mixture of well intended bibliography, modern family, drama, death and a most surprising sexuality. Roth at its best!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Philip Roth is one of those writers who, whilst I?ve dipped into Saul Bellow, got lost along the way and this novella represents and interesting short interlude and a useful entr?e to ?Elegy? which is out currently and directed by Spanish writer and film maker Isabel Coixet.
On first taste, this looks like deep dish misogyny and if the intention is to serve with a patina of irony I certainly missed it. Philip Roth is now seventy five years old and the character of David Kepesh is supposedly sixty two ? yet his cultural references, all standard 1960s fare do not have the flavour of someone who was in their late teens or very early twenties in the sixties. So what or where is the authentic voice here? A college lecturer with a Sunday morning culture show on TV??..come on, keep up?this is 2001. The whole breast/fetish thing looks and feels so very ?John Fowles? but without the post-modern construct to obscure the lack of meaningful characterisation, warmth or depth. The control/lust relationship between the two protagonists also seems a little pointless. The lack of emotion, feelings ? I can see it, I know what it is?love is absent...but what do I learn, what?s the point? John Updike cooks up the same ingredients with more flavour and satisfaction without turning out a souffl? of emotions.
I?ll look for the film adaptation, made by a female who at first glance appears more Consuela Castillo than David Kepesh. Perhaps the trick I?m missing is that Conseula is the chef de cuisine?only further investigation of Philip Roth will determine.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful