Let us now praise (?) Phillip Roth

[discokim]

I just finished Phillip Roth's American Pastoral. Brilliant, though the book on tape version, read by Ron Silver, had me thinking and occasionally inadvertently talking like a 60-year old Jewish man fron Newark. Such a beautiful rambling 14 hours about family, daughters, choosing to live a life different from your parents, there's also some bombs

Comments

[deadmoviestar]

I agree with you. It's the same flaw that Charlie Kaufman's always had -- can tell a whale of a beginning and a middle, but it falls apart at the end. I think Roth is so incredibly fantastic that a minor letdown at the end is but a small, small price to pay for what you've picked up along the way.

[discokim]

Roth is definitely in the 'owes me nothing' category, but I still would really love to find out what the hell happened to Seymour LaVove. Maybe because it's Nathan Zuckerman & he's making the whole thing up anyway, an ending that tells you nothing just underscores the point that Nathan is a writer trying to tell a story with no information to go on.