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Open letter to Philip Roth
On what he has meant to his readers, especially his Jewish readers: the daily feature this morning at Jewish Ideas Daily.
Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
OED
Reviews
- Auslander, “Hope: A Tragedy”
- Auster, “Invisible”
- Bailey, “The Astrologer”
- Bauer, “Frances and Bernard”
- Beha, “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”
- Bellow, “Letters”
- Bernays, “The Man on the Third Floor”
- Berry, “What Are People For?”
- “The Best American Poetry”
- Brombert, “Musings on Mortality”
- Broyard, “Intoxicated by My Illness”
- Buckley, “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
- Cameron, “Coral Glynn”
- Cantalupo, “Emma Wolf’s Short Stories”
- Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”
- Clayton, “Mitzvah Man”
- Cohen, “Amateur Barbarians”
- Connelly, “The Brass Verdict”
- Eco, “The Prague Cemetery”
- Erdrich, “The Round House”
- Ford, “Independence Day”
- Franzen, “Freedom”
- Gates, “The Signifying Monkey”
- Gorra, “Portrait of a Novel”
- Gurganus, “Local Souls”
- Halkin, “Melisande! What Are Dreams?”
- Hamilton, “Death of a Citizen”
- Harding, “Tinkers”
- Heller, “The Believers”
- Henkin, “The World Without You”
- Hill, “Grand Strategies”
- Hitchcock, “Another Shore”
- Hoeveler, “Watch on the Right’
- Jacobson, “Zoo Time”
- Jeffers, “Norman Podhoretz”
- Jones, ”Adventures of Douglas Bragg”
- Kamenetz, “Burnt Books”
- Kernan, “The Death of Literature”
- Krauss, “Great House”
- Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”
- Lynn, “The Exiles”
- McCarry, “Shelley’s Heart”
- McCarry, “The Shanghai Factor”
- McMurtry, “Literary Life”
- Marcus, “The Flame Alphabet”
- Martin, “Break the Skin”
- Merullo, “Fidel’s Last Days”
- Messer, “Grand River and Joy”
- Munro, “Dear Life”
- Munson, “November Criminals”
- Oakeshott, “The Voice of Liberal Learning”
- Obreht, “The Tiger’s Wife”
- Ohmann, “Politics of Letters”
- Ozick, “Foreign Bodies”
- Pelikan, “The Idea of the University”
- Pierpont, “Roth Unbound”
- Pipkin, “Woodsburner”
- Powers, “Suitable Accommodations”
- Prose, “Goldengrove”
- Prose, “Touch”
- Robinson, “Absence of Mind”
- Robinson, “When I Was a Child I Read Books”
- Rosenblum, “Herself When She Is Missing”
- Roth, “Indignation”
- Roth, “The Humbling”
- Roth, “Nemesis”
- Russo, “That Old Cape Magic”
- Ruttenberg, “The Passionate Torah”
- Segal, “The Innocents”
- Shamsie, “Burnt Shadows”
- Sloan, “Jerzy Kosinski”
- Spencer, “Men in Black”
- Spiotta, “Stone Arabia”
- Steiner, “Real Presences”
- Stern, “The Frozen Rabbi”
- Teachout, “Beyond the Boom”
- Toutonghi, “Evel Knievel Days”
- Wagenstein, “Isaac’s Torah”
- Winton, “Breath”
- Wolfe, “Back to Blood”
- Yglesias, “A Happy Marriage”
- Youmans, “A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage”
- Zipperstein, “Rosenfeld’s Lives”
Reconsiderations
- Bellow, “Mr Sammler’s Planet”
- Brinig, “Singermann”
- Brudno, “The Fugitive”
- Buechner, “Godric”
- Cahan, “The Rise of David Levinsky”
- Capote, “In Cold Blood”
- Caspary, “Thicker than Water”
- Cather, “My Ántonia”
- Dick, “The Man in the High Castle”
- Fante, “Full of Life”
- Forbes, “A Mirror for Witches”
- Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
- Fraser, “Flashman”
- Gellhorn, “Point of No Return”
- Gold, “Jews Without Money”
- Grade, “The Yeshiva”
- Graff, “Literature Against Itself”
- Grant, “When I Lived in Modern Times”
- Jabotinsky, “Samson”
- James, “The Lolita Man”
- James, “The American”
- Johnson, “Middle Passage”
- Lewis, “The Wife of Martin Guerre”
- Lewis, “Against a Darkening Sky”
- Lewisohn, “The Island Within”
- Maugham, “Cakes and Ale”
- Miller, “The Raven and the Whale”
- Morrison, “Beloved”
- Nabokov, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”
- Nabokov, “Bend Sinister”
- Nabokov, “Pale Fire”
- O’Connor, “Stealing Home”
- Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”
- Ozick, “The Shawl”
- Portis, “Masters of Atlantis”
- Powers, “Morte D’Urban”
- Prose, “A Changed Man”
- Puzo, “The Godfather”
- Roth, “Call It Sleep”
- Roth, “Goodbye, Columbus”
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” II
- Roth, “The Ghost Writer”
- Roth, “The Dying Animal”
- Russo, “Empire Falls”
- Shaara, “The Killer Angels”
- Sheed, “The Hack”
- “The Sopranos”
- Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley”
- Strunk and White, “The Elements of Style”
- Tarr, “The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen”
- Tobenkin, “Witte Arrives”
- Trilling, “The Middle of the Journey”
- Villarreal, “Pocho”
- Wallant, “The Pawnbroker”
- Wharton, “The Age of Innocence”
- Willeford, “The Shark-Infested Custard”
- Williams, “Stoner”
- Williams, “The Hair of Harold Roux”
- Winter, “Hoffman’s Hunger”
- Wolf, “Other Things Being Equal”
- Wright, “Native Son”
- Yezierska, “Bread Givers”
Authors
- Jacques Barzun
- Judith Butler
- Hortense Calisher
- Evan S. Connell Jr.
- J. V. Cunningham
- Peter De Vries
- Denis Dutton
- Joseph Epstein
- William Gay
- Günter Grass
- George Hitchcock
- Christopher Hitchens
- James D. Houston
- Howard Jacobson
- Stephen King
- Irving Kristol
- Charles McCarry
- Roland Merullo
- Wright Morris
- Howard Nemerov
- Richard John Neuhaus
- Anthony Powell
- Francine Prose
- Philip Roth
- J. D. Salinger
- Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
- Wilfrid Sheed
- Lionel Trilling
- John Updike
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Topics
- Academic interpretation
- Acknowledgments in novels
- Adultery
- Advanced Placement English
- Anthologies
- Baseball and fiction
- Blogging, I: why do it
- Blogging, II: to essay
- Blogging, III: the economics
- Blogging, IV: and freedom
- Cancer, I: etiquette
- Cancer, II: diagnosis
- Censorship
- Conservatives and the university
- Criticism, I: diminishing returns
- Criticism, II: and careerism
- Criticism, III: and credentials
- Criticism, IV: the question
- Criticism, V: ten rules
- Criticism, VI: and moral fashion
- Dialogue, I: chitchat
- Dialogue, II: twittle-twattle
- Difficulty
- Elitism
- The existence of fictional characters
- Experimental writing, I
- Experimental writing, II
- Fiction and truth
- The fox’s apology
- Future of the book, I
- Future of the book, II
- Future of the book, III
- Future of the book, IV
- Future of the book, V
- The game of fiction
- Gay marriage
- Genre
- The gentleman
- Highbrow and lowbrow
- Holocaust, I: and Israel
- Holocaust, II: silence
- Holocaust, III: memory
- Ideology
- Identity, I: and freedom
- Identity, II: and argument
- Identity, III: making it large
- Influence
- Intellectuals and politics
- Irony
- The Left, II: and literature
- The Left, I: and academe
- The Left, III: and culture
- The liberal arts
- Literary evaluation
- The literary fallacy
- Literary fiction
- Literary history
- Literary mashups
- Literature, I: the very idea
- Literature, II: with prefixes
- Literature, III: and status
- Literature, IV: working definition
- Literature, V: the institution
- Literature, VI: and politics
- “Lolita,” I: style
- “Lolita,” II: background
- “Lolita,” III: an interpretation
- The novel of belief
- Plot and thought
- Pulp literature
- Reviewing, I: its ethics
- Reviewing, II: “mean”
- Reviewing, III: “positive”
- Reviewing, IV: and verdicts
- Satire
- The scandal of literary prizes
- The scandal of Philip Roth’s prize
- Self-evidence
- Sex and the novel
- The shlimil
- Seriousness
- Solipsism in interpretation
- The spirit of party in criticism
- Suspense
- Technology and writing
- Terrorism by other means
- The text, I: mucked up
- The text, II: unified
- The text, III: crafted
- The text, IV: experienced
- The text, V: ignored
- Timeliness
- Unreliable narrators
Five Books
Book Lists
- Cancer reading
- Complete annotated guide to 9/11 novels
- Conservative novels
- Depressing novels
- Fifty best novels since 1880
- “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years”
- Football novels
- Forthcoming fiction, 2010
- Historical novels
- Hollywood novels
- The Holocaust: A reader’s guide
- Labor novels
- MLA rankings of American writers
- One-book authors
- Texas novels
- Veterans’ books
- Year in Jewish books (2010)
- Year in Jewish books (2011)
Symposium
D. G. Myers
A critic and literary historian for nearly a quarter of a century at Texas A&M and Ohio State universities, I am the author of The Elephants Teach and ex-fiction critic for Commentary. I have also written for Jewish Ideas Daily, the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Philosophy and Literature, the Sewanee Review, First Things, the Daily Beast, the Barnes & Noble Review, the Journal of the History of Ideas, American Literary History, and other journals. Here is the Commonplace Blog’s statement of principles, such as they are.
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3 comments:
There's something to be said, though, for an artist going out at, or at least not embarrassingly past, the top of his game. Transparent Things, for example, would have made for a far better Nabokoda than Look at the Harlequins! or (shudder) The Original of Laura. Roth by contrast leaves nothing in his oeuvre* of which he, or we on his behalf, need feel ashamed.
*Boldly asserted and plausibly maintained, as my wife is fond of describing legal bluffs, since I've actually read fewer than half his novels.
I confess to feeling excluded from (and less interested in) Roth's writing, perhaps largely because of what you have identified as Roth's Jewish focus; Flannery O'Connor's and Walker Percy's Roman Catholicism creates a similar exclusion (for me)--but on a smaller scale because of my experience as a Protestant Christian in my early years. All of this raises a question: Just as regionalism (if it still exists) tends to limit a writer (and I could have also cited dozens of other categories for writers), in what ways do you think that religion (or a writer's complete immersion in a religious culture) can similarly limit a writer's "outreach" to and connection with other readers?
I've been thinking about this post since I read it yesterday. First, the father you describe, and especially the particular kind of not-ambitious ambition you describe in him, reminds me of my own father. Those qualities perhaps did grow out of or relate to that era, but they do still reside deeply in me. Second, I'm not sure his work-path story directly relates to your own work path, as yours has writing as its focus. Writing is a very particular kind of ambition, with its multiple punishments and misunderstandings. And I'm not sure you have to conclude that there is any particular lesson for your children, except whatever you've been telling them and showing them all along. I know you admire Christopher HItchens, and he didn't pull punches in the integrity department.
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