I’ve always been a sucker for postmodern literature. I like how it plays with structure and reliability to make narrative more interesting by adding extra dimensions. That’s not to say all postmodern writers are equally wonderful. I’ve recently been revisiting authors I like, and I keep coming back to Phillip Roth as one of my favorites.
I wanna talk about a couple of the novels of his that I’ve read and what I enjoy about them. Let’s start with an easy one that Face Off seems to have ripped off. This novel follows Phillip Roth during the trial of John Demjanjuk, a former Nazi, moved from America. During this time, an imposter in Israel, going by the same name (PR) is proposing the need for ‘Diasporism’ or the decolonization of Israel, so that Jews once again disperse. Phillip Roth must track down this imposter, and put an end to his antics, as he comes in contact with Palestinians, Jews defending Demjanjuk, taxi drivers, and much more. I liked this book because it played a lot with tensions, and the imposter often felt like he was interrogating some of the widespread Jewish general beliefs about Israel, and the tensions surrounding the discourse as well. Without spoiling much, I found this book to be interesting, timely, and funny.
Another book which I very much enjoyed was Portnoy’s Complaint. In this story, a patient is talking to his psychotherapist about two warring factions inside himself. Sexual longing and a desire for altruism and doing good. In this book, the main character, Alex, satisfies himself with a piece of salami. One gets the sense very much that Alex’s views of sexuality going forward, are the result of the interactions he had when he was a kid. This book is one of the few to make me laugh out loud. As a Jewish American myself, but no salami enthusiast, I can relate to how dynamics as kids play out in unexpected places. This book is manic, intense, and uncomfortable. I highly recommend it, if nothing else, because among banned books, this is among the more interesting.
The first of Phillip Roth’s books that I read was Goodbye Columbus. This story tells about the teenage affair of Neil and Brenda. Neil is a quintessential urban (New York/New Jersey) Jew. The food he eats is quite distinctive, his family has ties to Israel, is physically darker, looks stereotypically Jewish, and he’s working class. Brenda on the other hand, a suburban princess a generation removed from the city is a different sort of character. She lives a life of luxury, going to country clubs, eating grapefruit, having WASPs marry her siblings and having plastic surgery to ‘fix’ her nose. This novel grapples with the ways that Jews are quite different in their level of assimilation, and this reflects in their social relationships. I particularly found the relationship between Neil and Brenda’s father to be quite interesting, as he, unlike the rest of his family, has an element of untamedness. This book is pregnant with symbolism and dialogue, and there’s the unavoidable sense that something is wrong in how the two romantics view each other.
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