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Indignation
Against the backdrop of the Korean War, a young man faces life’s unimagined chances and terrifying consequences.
It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio’s Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working 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 in every corner for his beloved boy.
As the long-suffering, desperately harassed mother tells her son, the father’s fear arises from love and pride. Perhaps, but it produces too much anger in Marcus for him to endure living with his parents any longer. He leaves them and, far from Newark, in the midwestern college, has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world.
Indignation, Philip Roth’s twenty-ninth book, is a story of inexperience, foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual discovery, courage, and error. It is a story told with all the inventive energy and wit Roth has at his command, at once a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in his recent books and a powerful addition to his investigations of the impact of American history on the life of the vulnerable individual.
It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio’s Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hard-working 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 in every corner for his beloved boy.
As the long-suffering, desperately harassed mother tells her son, the father’s fear arises from love and pride. Perhaps, but it produces too much anger in Marcus for him to endure living with his parents any longer. He leaves them and, far from Newark, in the midwestern college, has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world.
Indignation, Philip Roth’s twenty-ninth book, is a story of inexperience, foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual discovery, courage, and error. It is a story told with all the inventive energy and wit Roth has at his command, at once a startling departure from the haunted narratives of old age and experience in his recent books and a powerful addition to his investigations of the impact of American history on the life of the vulnerable individual.
235 pages, Hardcover
First published September 5, 2008
387 people are currently reading
11.1k people want to read
About the author
Philip Roth
284books7,094followersPhilip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague.
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October 13, 2022
PERCHÉ NON SONO CRISTIANO
Ritorno a Winesburg, Ohio, che per essere un'oscura cittadina sperduta dell'Ohio, è diventata letterariamente celeberrima grazie all'invenzione, o creazione, di Sherwood Anderson, cui Roth paga omaggio nel suo romanzo.
Indignazione è un ottimo romanzo di formazione, e deformazione, e disgregazione, visto che si conclude con la morte del protagonista, un memorabile Marcus Messner.
Ci sono momenti più che notevoli: su tutti, secondo me, il primo colloquio tra Marcus e il preside, che l'indignazione te la fa provare con i brividi sulla pelle.
Ci sono momenti meno riusciti, come l'esplosione di punti esclamativi del finale (non posso farci niente, il punto esclamativo mi rimane indigesto, mi va di traverso quando se ne abusa � e l'abuso arriva subito dopo il semplice uso).
Anche l'artificio del racconto in prima persona fatto da un personaggio già morto mi sembra già più che sfruttato da sessanta anni a questa parte (da quando Joe Gillis mise K.O. le platee di gran parte del mondo), e non mi sembra che Roth aggiunga niente di nuovo all'argomento in questione.
Per questo ho tolto la quinta stella che altrove, invece, Indignazione mi sembra meritare pienamente.
Anche nel film, il colloquio col preside è uno dei momenti migliori.
Anche nel film il colloquio tra Marcus e il preside è notevole, bravi entrambi, Logan Lerman e Tracy Letts, l’indignazione cresce davvero ogni qual volta l’uomo invade la privacy del giovane (sempre, a ogni domanda e a ciascuna asserzione).
Sarah Gadon è un'Olivia molto azzeccata.
Il film trasmette bene la cupezza di quell’epoca della storia statunitense: i bianchi dominanti, altri colori di pelle non si vedono, quindi razzismo, incluso antisemitismo strisciante, la guerra in Corea, il perbenismo, le malattie mentali diagnosticate come se fossero aspirine, elettroshock a go go, la paura del comunismo, la paura del sesso�
Il dialogo abbonda, e ovviamente non manca la voce narrante, ma nessuna parola sembra sprecata, di troppo.
E anche nel film qualche passaggio è venuto meno bene: direi soprattutto inizio e fine, che sono la stessa situazione, visto che il cerchio si chiude � il film è costretto a mostrare, e quindi esplicitare di più, e un po� di magia si perde per strada.
Complessivamente un po� troppo ‘perfettino�, certo non all’altezza di opere più o meno recenti ambientate nello stesso periodo (le prime che mi vengono alla mente sono quelle di Todd Haynes, ‘lontano dal paradiso� e ‘Carol�, film con una marcia in più).
Ritorno a Winesburg, Ohio, che per essere un'oscura cittadina sperduta dell'Ohio, è diventata letterariamente celeberrima grazie all'invenzione, o creazione, di Sherwood Anderson, cui Roth paga omaggio nel suo romanzo.
Indignazione è un ottimo romanzo di formazione, e deformazione, e disgregazione, visto che si conclude con la morte del protagonista, un memorabile Marcus Messner.
Ci sono momenti più che notevoli: su tutti, secondo me, il primo colloquio tra Marcus e il preside, che l'indignazione te la fa provare con i brividi sulla pelle.
Ci sono momenti meno riusciti, come l'esplosione di punti esclamativi del finale (non posso farci niente, il punto esclamativo mi rimane indigesto, mi va di traverso quando se ne abusa � e l'abuso arriva subito dopo il semplice uso).
Anche l'artificio del racconto in prima persona fatto da un personaggio già morto mi sembra già più che sfruttato da sessanta anni a questa parte (da quando Joe Gillis mise K.O. le platee di gran parte del mondo), e non mi sembra che Roth aggiunga niente di nuovo all'argomento in questione.
Per questo ho tolto la quinta stella che altrove, invece, Indignazione mi sembra meritare pienamente.
Anche nel film, il colloquio col preside è uno dei momenti migliori.
Anche nel film il colloquio tra Marcus e il preside è notevole, bravi entrambi, Logan Lerman e Tracy Letts, l’indignazione cresce davvero ogni qual volta l’uomo invade la privacy del giovane (sempre, a ogni domanda e a ciascuna asserzione).
Sarah Gadon è un'Olivia molto azzeccata.
Il film trasmette bene la cupezza di quell’epoca della storia statunitense: i bianchi dominanti, altri colori di pelle non si vedono, quindi razzismo, incluso antisemitismo strisciante, la guerra in Corea, il perbenismo, le malattie mentali diagnosticate come se fossero aspirine, elettroshock a go go, la paura del comunismo, la paura del sesso�
Il dialogo abbonda, e ovviamente non manca la voce narrante, ma nessuna parola sembra sprecata, di troppo.
E anche nel film qualche passaggio è venuto meno bene: direi soprattutto inizio e fine, che sono la stessa situazione, visto che il cerchio si chiude � il film è costretto a mostrare, e quindi esplicitare di più, e un po� di magia si perde per strada.
Complessivamente un po� troppo ‘perfettino�, certo non all’altezza di opere più o meno recenti ambientate nello stesso periodo (le prime che mi vengono alla mente sono quelle di Todd Haynes, ‘lontano dal paradiso� e ‘Carol�, film con una marcia in più).
February 23, 2021
Philip Roth tells an interesting story. The book is only 200 pages long, but nevertheless it is very complex, multi-faceted, fluid, tensed and it touches the reader deeply. Philip Roth has created a story where the atmosphere and feelings of this time are perfectly written. An exceptionally good book and it is consequently absolutely recommendable.
"Denn die Schwäche anderer Menschen kann dich ebenso besiegen wie ihre Stärke, Schwache Leute sind nicht harmlos."
S. 153
"Denn die Schwäche anderer Menschen kann dich ebenso besiegen wie ihre Stärke, Schwache Leute sind nicht harmlos."
S. 153
February 6, 2022
Indignation, Philip Roth
Indignation is a novel by Philip Roth, released by Houghton Mifflin on September 16, 2008. It is his twenty-ninth book.
Set in America in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, New Jersey, who describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio.
Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher, who appears to have become consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life, the world, and the uncertainty that awaits his son.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نهم ماه دسامبر سال2010میلادی
عنوان: خشم؛ نویسنده: فلیپ راث؛ مترجم: فریدون مجلسی؛ تهران، نیلوفر، سال1388، در191ص؛ شابک9789644484209؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
خشم (سال2008میلادی)، آخرین رمان «فیلیپ راث»، در باره ی سیر تاریخ اجتماعی «آمریکا»ست، نگارنده در این کتاب، به شرح زندگی «مارکوس مسنر» جوان، فرزند قصاب «کاشر»، اهل «نیوآرک» در «نیوجرسی» میپردازد� که در سال1951میلادی، در اوج جنگ «کره»، گام به کالج محافظه کار «وینزبورگ»، در «اوهایو» میگذارد� کتاب، با الهام از شورش دانشجوئی آغاز، و در یادداشتی نهائی، با شورش دیگری، پایان مییابد� تحلیل روانی شخصیتها� داستان، با قلم توانای «راث»، یکی از بزرگترین نویسندگان کنونی «آمریکا»، حیرت انگیز است؛ «مارکوس»، قهرمان نویسنده، دوست دارد: درس بخواند، و کار کند؛ او میخواهد، در هیچ دار و دسته� ای، داخل نشود؛ پای به کلیسا نیز نگذارد؛ و هرچه زودتر با بالاترین نمره ها، فارغ التحصیل شود؛ او در دانشگاه، با دختری به نام «اولیوا» آشنا میشود� و…� «فیلیپ راث»، در پرداخت طنزآمیز و انتقادی شخصیتها، و مکانها و رفتارها یادآور «گوگول»، در کتاب «مردگان زرخرید (رعایای مرده)» است، و در تحلیل روانی و توصیف احساسات، و دلهره ها، و بیم و هراسهای انسانی، یادآور «داستایفسکی» در کتاب «جنایات و مکافات» است!؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 22/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Indignation is a novel by Philip Roth, released by Houghton Mifflin on September 16, 2008. It is his twenty-ninth book.
Set in America in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, Indignation is narrated by Marcus Messner, a Jewish college student from Newark, New Jersey, who describes his sophomore year at Winesburg College in Ohio.
Marcus transfers to Winesburg from Robert Treat College in Newark to escape his father, a kosher butcher, who appears to have become consumed with fear about the dangers of adult life, the world, and the uncertainty that awaits his son.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نهم ماه دسامبر سال2010میلادی
عنوان: خشم؛ نویسنده: فلیپ راث؛ مترجم: فریدون مجلسی؛ تهران، نیلوفر، سال1388، در191ص؛ شابک9789644484209؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
خشم (سال2008میلادی)، آخرین رمان «فیلیپ راث»، در باره ی سیر تاریخ اجتماعی «آمریکا»ست، نگارنده در این کتاب، به شرح زندگی «مارکوس مسنر» جوان، فرزند قصاب «کاشر»، اهل «نیوآرک» در «نیوجرسی» میپردازد� که در سال1951میلادی، در اوج جنگ «کره»، گام به کالج محافظه کار «وینزبورگ»، در «اوهایو» میگذارد� کتاب، با الهام از شورش دانشجوئی آغاز، و در یادداشتی نهائی، با شورش دیگری، پایان مییابد� تحلیل روانی شخصیتها� داستان، با قلم توانای «راث»، یکی از بزرگترین نویسندگان کنونی «آمریکا»، حیرت انگیز است؛ «مارکوس»، قهرمان نویسنده، دوست دارد: درس بخواند، و کار کند؛ او میخواهد، در هیچ دار و دسته� ای، داخل نشود؛ پای به کلیسا نیز نگذارد؛ و هرچه زودتر با بالاترین نمره ها، فارغ التحصیل شود؛ او در دانشگاه، با دختری به نام «اولیوا» آشنا میشود� و…� «فیلیپ راث»، در پرداخت طنزآمیز و انتقادی شخصیتها، و مکانها و رفتارها یادآور «گوگول»، در کتاب «مردگان زرخرید (رعایای مرده)» است، و در تحلیل روانی و توصیف احساسات، و دلهره ها، و بیم و هراسهای انسانی، یادآور «داستایفسکی» در کتاب «جنایات و مکافات» است!؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 22/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 16/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
July 23, 2023
Philip Roth rămîne întotdeauna egal cu el însuși, ușor recognoscibil, ingenios, ironic, amintindu-ne întrebările mari ale vieții și obligîndu-ne să răspundem la ele. Iată un adevăr și un îndemn: Indignarea nu-i bună la nimic. În acest roman, un tînăr moare fiindcă nu găsește ceva mai bun de făcut decît să se indigneze. Nu era cazul. Să nu uităm, totuși, că Stéphane Frédéric Hessel credea că o viață nu are sens dacă nu te indignezi 24 de ore din 24. Nu-i împărtășesc convingerea. Un ins care suferă de această manie devine automat hipertensiv...
Fiindcă am bănuiala că nu e nevoie de încă un rezumat al romanului, mă voi opri, în această notă, la un pasaj care m-a pus pe gînduri. Poate că episodul a mai fost povestit de cineva, cîndva, mi se pare cunoscut. Dacă e să-l credem pe Jorge Luis Borges, nimic nu e nou în literatură, totul a fost spus deja. Numărul temelor, subiectelor și metaforelor e limitat.
Și acum exemplul. Marcus Messner s-a îndrăgostit de Olivia Hutton, colega lui cu părul arămiu de la colegiul Winesburg. S-au întîlnit o dată, au mers la un restaurant, au stat de vorbă, au făcut sex (într-un fel), apoi fata i-a întors brusc spatele. Nu mai vrea să discute cu el și îl evită sistematic. Marcus nu poate înțelege motivele Oliviei. E și foarte tînăr. E și foarte naiv. Subtilitățile erotice îl depășesc. Va afla mult mai tîrziu că fata are un psihic fragil. Îi scrie, așadar, un mesaj intrigat: vrea să afle de ce îl ocolește. Olivia îi răspunde într-un tîrziu. Cînd primește mesajul, îndrăgostitul e cuprins de o euforie care se manifestă cam așa:
„Mi-am apăsat gura pe foaie și am sărutat acel „O� [din numele Olivia, n. m.]. L-am sărutat de nenumărate ori. Apoi, dintr-un impuls, m-am apucat să ling cu vîrful limbii cerneala din semnătură� I-am băut scrisul. I-am mîncat numele. M-am străduit din răsputeri să nu mănînc întreaga ei epistolă� (p.90). Ce spuneți? Există o semnificație în acest pasaj? Sau e doar gestul unui îndrăgostit exaltat? Repet, cred că am mai citit cîndva, undeva această scenă teribilă de bibliofagie.
În opinia mea, Indignare ilustrează un principiu cunoscut sub numele de Efectul fluturelui. Un gest aproape insignifiant, minor, anodin poate avea un efect devastator: „Deciziile cele mai banale, cele mai accidentale și chiar comice pot duce la rezultate din cele mai disproporționate� (p.268).
P. S. Fără mare legătură cu cele scrise deasupra. Cînd înghite praful de arsenic, Emma Bovary simte în gură „un gust acru, ca de cerneală�. În Numele trandafirului, călugărul Jorge din Burgos mănîncă la propriu partea a doua (partea care investiga problema comediei, cea pierdută astăzi) a Poeticii lui Aristotel.
Romanul merită mai mult de 3 steluțe și mai puțin de 4. Ar trebui să avem posibilitatea de a lucra și cu fracțiuni...
Fiindcă am bănuiala că nu e nevoie de încă un rezumat al romanului, mă voi opri, în această notă, la un pasaj care m-a pus pe gînduri. Poate că episodul a mai fost povestit de cineva, cîndva, mi se pare cunoscut. Dacă e să-l credem pe Jorge Luis Borges, nimic nu e nou în literatură, totul a fost spus deja. Numărul temelor, subiectelor și metaforelor e limitat.
Și acum exemplul. Marcus Messner s-a îndrăgostit de Olivia Hutton, colega lui cu părul arămiu de la colegiul Winesburg. S-au întîlnit o dată, au mers la un restaurant, au stat de vorbă, au făcut sex (într-un fel), apoi fata i-a întors brusc spatele. Nu mai vrea să discute cu el și îl evită sistematic. Marcus nu poate înțelege motivele Oliviei. E și foarte tînăr. E și foarte naiv. Subtilitățile erotice îl depășesc. Va afla mult mai tîrziu că fata are un psihic fragil. Îi scrie, așadar, un mesaj intrigat: vrea să afle de ce îl ocolește. Olivia îi răspunde într-un tîrziu. Cînd primește mesajul, îndrăgostitul e cuprins de o euforie care se manifestă cam așa:
„Mi-am apăsat gura pe foaie și am sărutat acel „O� [din numele Olivia, n. m.]. L-am sărutat de nenumărate ori. Apoi, dintr-un impuls, m-am apucat să ling cu vîrful limbii cerneala din semnătură� I-am băut scrisul. I-am mîncat numele. M-am străduit din răsputeri să nu mănînc întreaga ei epistolă� (p.90). Ce spuneți? Există o semnificație în acest pasaj? Sau e doar gestul unui îndrăgostit exaltat? Repet, cred că am mai citit cîndva, undeva această scenă teribilă de bibliofagie.
În opinia mea, Indignare ilustrează un principiu cunoscut sub numele de Efectul fluturelui. Un gest aproape insignifiant, minor, anodin poate avea un efect devastator: „Deciziile cele mai banale, cele mai accidentale și chiar comice pot duce la rezultate din cele mai disproporționate� (p.268).
P. S. Fără mare legătură cu cele scrise deasupra. Cînd înghite praful de arsenic, Emma Bovary simte în gură „un gust acru, ca de cerneală�. În Numele trandafirului, călugărul Jorge din Burgos mănîncă la propriu partea a doua (partea care investiga problema comediei, cea pierdută astăzi) a Poeticii lui Aristotel.
Romanul merită mai mult de 3 steluțe și mai puțin de 4. Ar trebui să avem posibilitatea de a lucra și cu fracțiuni...
January 27, 2014
INDIGNATION,the novel, and an opinion regarding literary criticism
Philip Roth's twenty-ninth book "Indignation" is one of those novels about which some critics are a bit, well, indignant. They're indignant that Roth didn't produce another masterpiece of the same degree as "American Pastoral," "The Human Stain," or "The Plot Against America," to name a few.
They also are a bit indignant that Roth once again addresses the same issues he has repeatedly addressed in previous works, that is, overcoming the dominance of family, growing up Jewish, rebelling against family tradition to gain autonomy, the eternal quest for sexual initiation, love, loss, and inevitably death. Of course, Roth is dealing more frequently with death as he contemplates his own mortality. That's not unnatural considering the man is now seventy-nine, born March 19, 1933. You might check my math. I'm not getting any younger either.
Marcus Messner has a lot about which to be indignant. He is nineteen. Indignation is as prevalent for him as adolescent angst. He is the perfect student. He works part time in his father's Kosher butcher shop in New Jersey. But he yearns to break free from his family's restrictive life style. Doesn't every adolescent?
Marcus's father's love for him is boundless. But in his effort to protect Marcus from the rest of the world, his love is oppressive. Like Garp, who worries about the worst case scenario in every scenario, he frets that Marcus will unwittingly end up in a situation beyond his control. "You are a boy with a magnificent future before you," his father tells him. 'How do I know you're not going to places where you can get yourself killed?'
And, oh, God, Marcus is still a virgin. He doesn't want to be. Who does at that age anymore?
Marcus escapes the family ties that bind by enrolling in Winesburg College far from home in the Midwest. Roth's allusion to Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," is fitting, because there is much of the grotesque to which Marcus is exposed. It is a bit of irony that flows through Roth's dark humor in this little book.
Having slipped loose those familial bonds, Marcus seeks his independence and to lose his virginity. He does so, much to his surprise, to the lips of lovely Olivia, a troubled young woman with the scars of a failed suicide on her wrists and some time spent in a mental health institution. She tells Marcus, "I did that because I like you so much." Olivia has her own poignant reasons for pleasing Marcus, leading to a very complicated and moving relationship.
Having kicked over the family traces, Marcus becomes a rebel on a very conservative campus. He can't win. It is not a good time to be expelled. It is 1951, the second year of the Korean War when the most intense fighting was occurring around the 38th parallel.
Historically, this was a period of escalating Chinese involvement. Mao had called upon Stalin's aid for equipment and materiel, to which Stalin agreed. McArthur was considering using nuclear weapons against Chinese and North Korean troops prior to his being recalled by President Truman.
Marcus had included ROTC in his schedule. He is nobody's fool. It would be safer to go to war as an officer. However, Marcus is foolish enough to push his campus issues to the point he is expelled.
Marcus is drafted. The next stop is the 38th Parallel.
I leave it to the reader to find what happens to Marcus Messner.
However, as noted in Roth's subsequent short novel, "Nemesis," it is the last of four short novels beginning with "Everyman in 2006, followed by "The Humbling," and "Indignation." Those four short novels complement one another on the unifying theme of mortality. "Indignation" clearly belongs in this quartet that constitutes a remarkable literary dirge.
Roth's detractors bash the old man for rehashing the same themes throughout his works. Some refer to it as cannibalizing from his previous works.
The simple fact of the matter is life is a process much the same for every individual. You are born. You have a relationship with your family, sometimes with two parents, sometimes with one. Sometimes even none.
Depending on what part of the world you live in you go to school. You interact with your fellow students or village mates. You are socialized. As a child becomes an adolescent, he pulls away from his family.
During the process of gaining autonomy there is conflict with your family.
You may or may not have spiritual values. If you do, you most likely will lose your religion should you be fortunate enough to attend an institute of higher education.
You will become politicized. Per Paul Simon,"You will be Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered, and Beatled till you're blind."
At some point you will become initiated into the mysterious realm of the great secret of sex. It will be pleasant or it will be unpleasant.
You will feel guilt or not. You will pursue the sexual union for its intense gratification or not.
You will fall into lust, once or more. If you're lucky, you'll find something that you identify as love. It will last or it won't. It may be marriage or not.
You may choose to have children or not. You will bear children or abort them. If you have children you will subject them to the same pressures you felt from your own family as an adolescent or not.
Your children will love you, hate you, or become indifferent to you.
If you are fortunate, you will never go to war. If you are not, oh, fortunate son, you will go to war because you are no Senator's son. You will kill or be killed. You will live or you will die. You have some degree of control over this depending on your skill at killing others or saving yourself through cowardice.
If you go to war and you live, you will come home a different person. It is unlikely you will ever be the same. If you are the same and you are unaffected you are amoral. You have a choice to be moral or amoral.
You may live to a ripe old age or you may die in the next moment through events completely out of your control.
The only universal truth is you will never get out of this life alive.
Through each phase of life there will be conflict. You will have good days. You will have bad days. Some days you will be the windshield. Other days,you will be the bug.
How many variations are there on what it is to live as a human being, no matter your culture, your parents,your community, your values?
I may have missed a few sub-issues here and there. But have I missed that much?
For those critics who accuse writers of rehashing the same themes, I ask how many different themes are there from the dawn of time. Their belief that an author has developed a formulaic work is a futile effort on their part to say they are different, that they are unique, that their lives be different from that described above. They are wrong. One day they will be dead wrong.
Ernest Hemingway may have said it best in A Farewell to Arms.
The question is does a book stand completely on its own, separate and apart from every other book. I think not. I think what James Baldwin said is true. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.�
People read books. They are influenced by them. Writers write from their lives and the books they have read. Books breed books. In short, there are only so many variations on a theme.
So, not only is this a review of Roth's "Indignation, it's a review of reviewers and critics. I'll express a little of my own indignation over the ethics of critics and critiques, or rather the lack of simple ethics in tanking a work by a major writer while wearing a gleeful smile.
Michiko Kakutani is a primary example of the critic who will shred an author's work--the greater the author the more brutal the shredding.
In the words of George Bernard Shaw, which might be considered a bit mean spirited, too: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. You may find this in "Man and Superman: Maxims for Revolutionists," written in 1903. Not to say that literary criticism isn't writing, those who do not write literature, critique or criticize it.
I will be among the first to say Kakutani earned her chops as a literary critic for the New York Times. She got her B.A. in English Lit at Yale in 1976, mentored by author John Hersey. Subsequently she began her career as a reporter, first for the Washington Post and then for Time Magazine. She began reviewing books for the NYTimes in 1983. She won the Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism in 1998. None of these things are small accomplishments.
However, at Wikipedia, we find the following, all precisely documented and referenced:
What I find particularly refreshing here on goodreads is the recommended practice of posting a spoiler alert,to hide spoilers, thus allowing the reader of the review to determine whether or not they want the key plot points revealed or not. To me that's the way to write a review.
Here is the link to Ms. Kakutani's review of "Indignation."
I leave it to the reader of this review to determine whether they would like to have the punchline of "Indignation" destroyed by the very title of the review, and hammering the nail down on the coffin with a one sentence paragraph lead in to the remainder of the review. The line begins, "The narrator of Philip Roth’s new novel is a..."
Norman Mailer was never at a loss for words in response to an unfavorable review. He was no knight in shining armor. Some of his opinions regarding Ms. Kakutani are past demeaning. However, he stooped to her level and engaged in a tit for tat. The bottom line is Ms. Kakutani on more than one occasion spoiled a novel for the prospective reader by unveiling the turns and twists of an author's work. Yes, she was the divine wind in her treatment of "Indignation."
It is a simple question to ask at this point. Would you buy a mystery if the reviewer had already told you who done it? Well, if it were an author I regularly read, the answer is probably, yes. For many readers, though, the answer is "What's the point?"
While Ms. Kakutani may have her Pulitzer, is it ethical to torpedo a novel using a technique to discourage the work finding a readership. I say it is not.
In Disney's "Bambi," the little rabbit Thumper was constantly reminded by his mother, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." That is NOT my theory regarding literary criticism. But the only point to spilling all the beans by a reviewer is hitting below the belt. It is a nasty form of preemptive censorship committed for reasons lacking honesty or honor.
Reviewers and critics have joyfully taken pot shots at every author of any merit with relish. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, O'Connor. However, I am always amazed that critics of that sort may critique, but have not written a literary work. In the present case, the score is Roth:
1960 National Book Award for Goodbye, Columbus
1975 National Book Award - finalist for My Life As A Man
1978 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Professor Of Desire
1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1980 National Book Award - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1980 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1984 National Book Award - finalist for The Anatomy Lesson
1984 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Anatomy Lesson
1986 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife
1986 National Book Award - finalist for The Counterlife
1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony
1994 PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock
1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for Operation Shylock
1995 National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater
1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for Sabbath's Theater
1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for American Pastoral
1998 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for American Pastoral
1998 Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist
1998 National Medal of Arts
2000 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (France) for American Pastoral
2001 Franz Kafka Prize
2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for The Human Stain
2001 Gold Medal In Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters
2001 WH Smith Literary Award for The Human Stain
2002 National Book Foundation's Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2002 Prix Médicis Étranger (France) for The Human Stain
2003 Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Harvard University
2005 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Plot Against America
2005 Sidewise Award for Alternate History for The Plot Against America
2005 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction for The Plot Against America
2006 PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement
2007 PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman
2007 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
2010 Paris Review's Hadada Prize
2011 Man Booker International Prize
Kakutani:
1998 Pulitzer Prize for Literary Criticism
Novels--0
Game. Set. Match.
When Roth was awarded the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, the following is noted in the Wikipedia entry- regarding the award:
Good question.
Philip Roth's twenty-ninth book "Indignation" is one of those novels about which some critics are a bit, well, indignant. They're indignant that Roth didn't produce another masterpiece of the same degree as "American Pastoral," "The Human Stain," or "The Plot Against America," to name a few.
They also are a bit indignant that Roth once again addresses the same issues he has repeatedly addressed in previous works, that is, overcoming the dominance of family, growing up Jewish, rebelling against family tradition to gain autonomy, the eternal quest for sexual initiation, love, loss, and inevitably death. Of course, Roth is dealing more frequently with death as he contemplates his own mortality. That's not unnatural considering the man is now seventy-nine, born March 19, 1933. You might check my math. I'm not getting any younger either.
Marcus Messner has a lot about which to be indignant. He is nineteen. Indignation is as prevalent for him as adolescent angst. He is the perfect student. He works part time in his father's Kosher butcher shop in New Jersey. But he yearns to break free from his family's restrictive life style. Doesn't every adolescent?
Marcus's father's love for him is boundless. But in his effort to protect Marcus from the rest of the world, his love is oppressive. Like Garp, who worries about the worst case scenario in every scenario, he frets that Marcus will unwittingly end up in a situation beyond his control. "You are a boy with a magnificent future before you," his father tells him. 'How do I know you're not going to places where you can get yourself killed?'
And, oh, God, Marcus is still a virgin. He doesn't want to be. Who does at that age anymore?
Marcus escapes the family ties that bind by enrolling in Winesburg College far from home in the Midwest. Roth's allusion to Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio," is fitting, because there is much of the grotesque to which Marcus is exposed. It is a bit of irony that flows through Roth's dark humor in this little book.
Having slipped loose those familial bonds, Marcus seeks his independence and to lose his virginity. He does so, much to his surprise, to the lips of lovely Olivia, a troubled young woman with the scars of a failed suicide on her wrists and some time spent in a mental health institution. She tells Marcus, "I did that because I like you so much." Olivia has her own poignant reasons for pleasing Marcus, leading to a very complicated and moving relationship.
Having kicked over the family traces, Marcus becomes a rebel on a very conservative campus. He can't win. It is not a good time to be expelled. It is 1951, the second year of the Korean War when the most intense fighting was occurring around the 38th parallel.
Historically, this was a period of escalating Chinese involvement. Mao had called upon Stalin's aid for equipment and materiel, to which Stalin agreed. McArthur was considering using nuclear weapons against Chinese and North Korean troops prior to his being recalled by President Truman.
Marcus had included ROTC in his schedule. He is nobody's fool. It would be safer to go to war as an officer. However, Marcus is foolish enough to push his campus issues to the point he is expelled.
Marcus is drafted. The next stop is the 38th Parallel.
I leave it to the reader to find what happens to Marcus Messner.
However, as noted in Roth's subsequent short novel, "Nemesis," it is the last of four short novels beginning with "Everyman in 2006, followed by "The Humbling," and "Indignation." Those four short novels complement one another on the unifying theme of mortality. "Indignation" clearly belongs in this quartet that constitutes a remarkable literary dirge.
Roth's detractors bash the old man for rehashing the same themes throughout his works. Some refer to it as cannibalizing from his previous works.
The simple fact of the matter is life is a process much the same for every individual. You are born. You have a relationship with your family, sometimes with two parents, sometimes with one. Sometimes even none.
Depending on what part of the world you live in you go to school. You interact with your fellow students or village mates. You are socialized. As a child becomes an adolescent, he pulls away from his family.
During the process of gaining autonomy there is conflict with your family.
You may or may not have spiritual values. If you do, you most likely will lose your religion should you be fortunate enough to attend an institute of higher education.
You will become politicized. Per Paul Simon,"You will be Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered, and Beatled till you're blind."
At some point you will become initiated into the mysterious realm of the great secret of sex. It will be pleasant or it will be unpleasant.
You will feel guilt or not. You will pursue the sexual union for its intense gratification or not.
You will fall into lust, once or more. If you're lucky, you'll find something that you identify as love. It will last or it won't. It may be marriage or not.
You may choose to have children or not. You will bear children or abort them. If you have children you will subject them to the same pressures you felt from your own family as an adolescent or not.
Your children will love you, hate you, or become indifferent to you.
If you are fortunate, you will never go to war. If you are not, oh, fortunate son, you will go to war because you are no Senator's son. You will kill or be killed. You will live or you will die. You have some degree of control over this depending on your skill at killing others or saving yourself through cowardice.
If you go to war and you live, you will come home a different person. It is unlikely you will ever be the same. If you are the same and you are unaffected you are amoral. You have a choice to be moral or amoral.
You may live to a ripe old age or you may die in the next moment through events completely out of your control.
The only universal truth is you will never get out of this life alive.
Through each phase of life there will be conflict. You will have good days. You will have bad days. Some days you will be the windshield. Other days,you will be the bug.
How many variations are there on what it is to live as a human being, no matter your culture, your parents,your community, your values?
I may have missed a few sub-issues here and there. But have I missed that much?
For those critics who accuse writers of rehashing the same themes, I ask how many different themes are there from the dawn of time. Their belief that an author has developed a formulaic work is a futile effort on their part to say they are different, that they are unique, that their lives be different from that described above. They are wrong. One day they will be dead wrong.
Ernest Hemingway may have said it best in A Farewell to Arms.
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.�
The question is does a book stand completely on its own, separate and apart from every other book. I think not. I think what James Baldwin said is true. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.�
People read books. They are influenced by them. Writers write from their lives and the books they have read. Books breed books. In short, there are only so many variations on a theme.
So, not only is this a review of Roth's "Indignation, it's a review of reviewers and critics. I'll express a little of my own indignation over the ethics of critics and critiques, or rather the lack of simple ethics in tanking a work by a major writer while wearing a gleeful smile.
Michiko Kakutani is a primary example of the critic who will shred an author's work--the greater the author the more brutal the shredding.
In the words of George Bernard Shaw, which might be considered a bit mean spirited, too: "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. You may find this in "Man and Superman: Maxims for Revolutionists," written in 1903. Not to say that literary criticism isn't writing, those who do not write literature, critique or criticize it.
I will be among the first to say Kakutani earned her chops as a literary critic for the New York Times. She got her B.A. in English Lit at Yale in 1976, mentored by author John Hersey. Subsequently she began her career as a reporter, first for the Washington Post and then for Time Magazine. She began reviewing books for the NYTimes in 1983. She won the Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism in 1998. None of these things are small accomplishments.
However, at Wikipedia, we find the following, all precisely documented and referenced:
"Salman Rushdie has called her 'a weird woman who seems to feel the need to alternately praise and spank.'[9] In a June 2005 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, author Norman Mailer criticized Kakutani as a 'one-woman kamikaze' who 'disdains white male authors' and deliberately 'bring[s] out your review two weeks in advance of publication. She trashes it just to hurt sales and embarrass the author.' Mailer also said that New York Times editors were 'terrified' of Kakutani, and 'can't fire her' because she's 'a token,' 'an Asiatic, a feminist.'[10] Jonathan Franzen called her 'the stupidest person in New York.' [11] Franzen has also called her an 'international embarrassment.' [12] Moreover, in recent years, Kakutani's particularly harsh reviews of books by famous authors (for example, John Updike's The Widows of Eastwick[13]) are followed by usually milder or openly positive reviews of the same titles by other Times reviewers.[14]See references cited therein.
On July 19, 2007, The New York Times published a pre-release story written by Kakutani about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. An account of the ensuing controversy, including the critical comments of some Harry Potter fans, can be found on the Times Public Editor's blog.[15]"
What I find particularly refreshing here on goodreads is the recommended practice of posting a spoiler alert,to hide spoilers, thus allowing the reader of the review to determine whether or not they want the key plot points revealed or not. To me that's the way to write a review.
Here is the link to Ms. Kakutani's review of "Indignation."
I leave it to the reader of this review to determine whether they would like to have the punchline of "Indignation" destroyed by the very title of the review, and hammering the nail down on the coffin with a one sentence paragraph lead in to the remainder of the review. The line begins, "The narrator of Philip Roth’s new novel is a..."
Norman Mailer was never at a loss for words in response to an unfavorable review. He was no knight in shining armor. Some of his opinions regarding Ms. Kakutani are past demeaning. However, he stooped to her level and engaged in a tit for tat. The bottom line is Ms. Kakutani on more than one occasion spoiled a novel for the prospective reader by unveiling the turns and twists of an author's work. Yes, she was the divine wind in her treatment of "Indignation."
It is a simple question to ask at this point. Would you buy a mystery if the reviewer had already told you who done it? Well, if it were an author I regularly read, the answer is probably, yes. For many readers, though, the answer is "What's the point?"
While Ms. Kakutani may have her Pulitzer, is it ethical to torpedo a novel using a technique to discourage the work finding a readership. I say it is not.
In Disney's "Bambi," the little rabbit Thumper was constantly reminded by his mother, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." That is NOT my theory regarding literary criticism. But the only point to spilling all the beans by a reviewer is hitting below the belt. It is a nasty form of preemptive censorship committed for reasons lacking honesty or honor.
Reviewers and critics have joyfully taken pot shots at every author of any merit with relish. Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, O'Connor. However, I am always amazed that critics of that sort may critique, but have not written a literary work. In the present case, the score is Roth:
1960 National Book Award for Goodbye, Columbus
1975 National Book Award - finalist for My Life As A Man
1978 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Professor Of Desire
1980 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1980 National Book Award - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1980 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Ghost Writer
1984 National Book Award - finalist for The Anatomy Lesson
1984 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Anatomy Lesson
1986 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife
1986 National Book Award - finalist for The Counterlife
1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony
1994 PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock
1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for Operation Shylock
1995 National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater
1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - finalist for Sabbath's Theater
1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for American Pastoral
1998 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for American Pastoral
1998 Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist
1998 National Medal of Arts
2000 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (France) for American Pastoral
2001 Franz Kafka Prize
2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for The Human Stain
2001 Gold Medal In Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters
2001 WH Smith Literary Award for The Human Stain
2002 National Book Foundation's Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2002 Prix Médicis Étranger (France) for The Human Stain
2003 Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Harvard University
2005 National Book Critics Circle Award - finalist for The Plot Against America
2005 Sidewise Award for Alternate History for The Plot Against America
2005 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction for The Plot Against America
2006 PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement
2007 PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman
2007 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
2010 Paris Review's Hadada Prize
2011 Man Booker International Prize
Kakutani:
1998 Pulitzer Prize for Literary Criticism
Novels--0
Game. Set. Match.
When Roth was awarded the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, the following is noted in the Wikipedia entry- regarding the award:
"...Roth was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction on the world stage, the fourth winner of the biennial prize. One of the judges, Carmen Callil, a publisher of the feminist Virago house, withdrew in protest, referring to Roth's work as 'Emperor's clothes.' She said 'he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe... I don’t rate him as a writer at all ...' Observers quickly noted that Callil had a conflict of interest, having published a book by Claire Bloom which had criticized Roth. In response, one of the two other Booker judges, Rick Gekoski, remarked: 'In 1959 he writes Goodbye, Columbus and it's a masterpiece, magnificent. Fifty-one years later he's 78 years old and he writes Nemesis and it is so wonderful, such a terrific novel ... Tell me one other writer who 50 years apart writes masterpieces ... If you look at the trajectory of the average novel writer, there is a learning period, then a period of high achievement, then the talent runs out and in middle age they start slowly to decline. People say why aren't Martin [Amis] and Julian [Barnes] getting on the Booker prize shortlist, but that's what happens in middle age. Philip Roth, though, gets better and better in middle age. In the 1990s he was almost incapable of not writing a masterpiece � The Human Stain, The Plot Against America, I Married a Communist. He was 65-70 years old, what the hell's he doing writing that well?'"
Good question.
March 19, 2023
“It’s about life, where the tiniest misstep can have tragic consequences.�
Philip Roth, one of the great American novelists, died in May 2018, so I decided to read Sabbath’s Theater, his final National Book award winner, and then his uncharacteristically shorter final four novels (some say novellas) grouped under the descriptor “Nemeses,� which would seem to be linked by the author’s concerns arising out of (his own) decline and death. His last say, shall we say. I had wanted to read them in order of publication, but I had this one nearby and read it. It surprised me in not being about the sad observations of an aging (i.e., decaying) man (which most of the narrators or main characters of his last books are, though mortality for Roth has been a consideration for decades), but is narrated by a nineteen-year-old young man, whom we learn about 1/3 of the way in (possibly deserving of spoiler-alert status?)—just mentioned casually and that’s it—is actually dead. Yes, the story is narrated by a ghost.
The novel begins innocently and nostalgically enough, as Marcus Messner tells of family life and baseball and school work and working in his father’s butcher shop:
“It was my job not just to pluck the chickens but to eviscerate them. I hated that part. Nauseating and disgusting, but it had to be done. That's what I learned from my father and what I loved learning from him: that you do what you have to do.�
One motif is early fifties-style American determination in the close-knit context of a Jewish-American family; another is blood: Chicken blood, human blood, but also familial blood (I’m also listening to Kerouac now; there are no beatniks in this book nor anywhere near it, though they both grew up in the northeastern U.S.). This book as many other Roth books reveres craft; in this one butchering.
It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. Marcus can’t stand his father’s obsessive over-protection of him and needs to go far away to school. He ends up at Ohio’s Winesburg College (Yes, this is a reference to Sherwood Anderson’s short story collection Winesburg, Ohio, the small town gentile haven of Midwestern conservatism so contrasted with Marcus’s and Roth's own East coast Jewish Newark upbringing). Sweet Marcus, such a good, reliable boy, becomes resentful of his father, and yes, indignant, and indignant, too, at the Dean who wonders why Marcus switches roommates (indignantly) twice in his first term. Marcus, as a Jew, is indignant about Winesburg’s chapel attendance policy, and rather than quietly accepting the Dean’s mild chiding, explodes into argument with him, as he had done with his father. He is ready to leave Winesburg, the provincial place, and Marcus needing to leave is something the Dean correctly sees as Marcus’s basic m.o..
As with all Roth, one feature of the book is eloquent oratory, incisive argument, and bombast, but in this book, to what end? Indignation is about a young man’s resistance-for-resistance’s sake and the mistakes this sets in motion. It is not about old age (since he never makes it there, we know that early on), but it is a story about arrogant pushback (something Roth seems to have done with his own parents) and death(s).
The story takes place against the backdrop of the Korean War, which is always a specter of potential doom for the Messner family, who lost some of their own in WWII. You have to study hard, Marcus, and stay in school, or you may have to go to Korea and then maybe die. (This was part of my motivation, too, for going to college during the Vietnam War; you could avoid the draft if you went to college, though when that was taken away as an option, you could avoid the draft by going to Seminary--one way to a religious exemption--which I couldn't do). That is Marcus’s central purpose in life, to excel in school, and a second purpose, admittedly more frivolous but still pretty darned important to him, is “to have intercourse before I die[d]� (because this is Roth, and every Roth male main character no matter the age has sex on his brain, though in this tale the obsession is relatively innocent—especially compared to the old horn-dog Mickey Sabbath!), a goal which he pursues with a young woman, Olivia Hutton, who is herself sexually active (compared to the virginal Marcus) but also has in the past year attempted suicide.
We don’t exactly know why, but we know fairly early on that Olivia has a “reputation� at the college, and is thus “liked� (popular, in a way) but not deeply admired. The tone of the novel is largely comic (isolationist) until we begin to deal in a serious way with some of the realities of Olivia’s life, of American (and international, re: the Korean war) life and of Marcus’s life. Then things get serious and we have to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew.
If the author’s big trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain) is about postwar American history, this one is a short (but good!) contribution to that group, focused on American involvement in the Korean War. It doesn’t have the scope or ambition or heft of those three books; it isn’t as complexly layered as those three books are, but I still loved it as an older author’s—he’s 75 when he writes this, writing as well as anyone alive you can name--cautionary coming-of-age story, for its tragi-comic simplicity. And in Roth’s capable hands, he shows us a time in American history that depicts a campus panty raid under the threat of expulsion to the military, at approximately the same time Olivia “visits� Marcus in the hospital (yes, and I mean to have sex with him) where he is recovering from hernia surgery. Soon, there is trouble for Marcus, and he is forced to learn first-hand:
�. . . what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way one’s most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.�
Crazy Dad turns out to have been right, alas! It happens sometimes, huh! Ah, but Roth is such an amazing writer. I’m really more of a minimalist guy, historically, into guys (okay, there are more guys than women historically on this list, but I am rectifying that!) such as Hemingway and Carver, but I have enjoyed my deep dive into (non-minimalist) Roth the last couple years. I hadn’t expected to like this late book as much as I did. Who would expect it?! The dude was 75! But now, as each year approach that age, I think, why not?
Oh, and two things about the charge of misogyny leveled against Roth all his career? Marcus’s mother is one strong and independent woman here (as most Roth mothers are); also, the sad story of Olivia Hutton’s proudly joyful sexuality and where it leads to in 1951 Winesburg makes for one of the most poignant portraits of a bright and engaging woman I can recall in Roth. The quiet meeting between Marcus’s mother and Marcus’s girl friend and what results is heart-breaking.
Philip Roth, one of the great American novelists, died in May 2018, so I decided to read Sabbath’s Theater, his final National Book award winner, and then his uncharacteristically shorter final four novels (some say novellas) grouped under the descriptor “Nemeses,� which would seem to be linked by the author’s concerns arising out of (his own) decline and death. His last say, shall we say. I had wanted to read them in order of publication, but I had this one nearby and read it. It surprised me in not being about the sad observations of an aging (i.e., decaying) man (which most of the narrators or main characters of his last books are, though mortality for Roth has been a consideration for decades), but is narrated by a nineteen-year-old young man, whom we learn about 1/3 of the way in (possibly deserving of spoiler-alert status?)—just mentioned casually and that’s it—is actually dead. Yes, the story is narrated by a ghost.
The novel begins innocently and nostalgically enough, as Marcus Messner tells of family life and baseball and school work and working in his father’s butcher shop:
“It was my job not just to pluck the chickens but to eviscerate them. I hated that part. Nauseating and disgusting, but it had to be done. That's what I learned from my father and what I loved learning from him: that you do what you have to do.�
One motif is early fifties-style American determination in the close-knit context of a Jewish-American family; another is blood: Chicken blood, human blood, but also familial blood (I’m also listening to Kerouac now; there are no beatniks in this book nor anywhere near it, though they both grew up in the northeastern U.S.). This book as many other Roth books reveres craft; in this one butchering.
It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. Marcus can’t stand his father’s obsessive over-protection of him and needs to go far away to school. He ends up at Ohio’s Winesburg College (Yes, this is a reference to Sherwood Anderson’s short story collection Winesburg, Ohio, the small town gentile haven of Midwestern conservatism so contrasted with Marcus’s and Roth's own East coast Jewish Newark upbringing). Sweet Marcus, such a good, reliable boy, becomes resentful of his father, and yes, indignant, and indignant, too, at the Dean who wonders why Marcus switches roommates (indignantly) twice in his first term. Marcus, as a Jew, is indignant about Winesburg’s chapel attendance policy, and rather than quietly accepting the Dean’s mild chiding, explodes into argument with him, as he had done with his father. He is ready to leave Winesburg, the provincial place, and Marcus needing to leave is something the Dean correctly sees as Marcus’s basic m.o..
As with all Roth, one feature of the book is eloquent oratory, incisive argument, and bombast, but in this book, to what end? Indignation is about a young man’s resistance-for-resistance’s sake and the mistakes this sets in motion. It is not about old age (since he never makes it there, we know that early on), but it is a story about arrogant pushback (something Roth seems to have done with his own parents) and death(s).
The story takes place against the backdrop of the Korean War, which is always a specter of potential doom for the Messner family, who lost some of their own in WWII. You have to study hard, Marcus, and stay in school, or you may have to go to Korea and then maybe die. (This was part of my motivation, too, for going to college during the Vietnam War; you could avoid the draft if you went to college, though when that was taken away as an option, you could avoid the draft by going to Seminary--one way to a religious exemption--which I couldn't do). That is Marcus’s central purpose in life, to excel in school, and a second purpose, admittedly more frivolous but still pretty darned important to him, is “to have intercourse before I die[d]� (because this is Roth, and every Roth male main character no matter the age has sex on his brain, though in this tale the obsession is relatively innocent—especially compared to the old horn-dog Mickey Sabbath!), a goal which he pursues with a young woman, Olivia Hutton, who is herself sexually active (compared to the virginal Marcus) but also has in the past year attempted suicide.
We don’t exactly know why, but we know fairly early on that Olivia has a “reputation� at the college, and is thus “liked� (popular, in a way) but not deeply admired. The tone of the novel is largely comic (isolationist) until we begin to deal in a serious way with some of the realities of Olivia’s life, of American (and international, re: the Korean war) life and of Marcus’s life. Then things get serious and we have to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew.
If the author’s big trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain) is about postwar American history, this one is a short (but good!) contribution to that group, focused on American involvement in the Korean War. It doesn’t have the scope or ambition or heft of those three books; it isn’t as complexly layered as those three books are, but I still loved it as an older author’s—he’s 75 when he writes this, writing as well as anyone alive you can name--cautionary coming-of-age story, for its tragi-comic simplicity. And in Roth’s capable hands, he shows us a time in American history that depicts a campus panty raid under the threat of expulsion to the military, at approximately the same time Olivia “visits� Marcus in the hospital (yes, and I mean to have sex with him) where he is recovering from hernia surgery. Soon, there is trouble for Marcus, and he is forced to learn first-hand:
�. . . what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way one’s most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.�
Crazy Dad turns out to have been right, alas! It happens sometimes, huh! Ah, but Roth is such an amazing writer. I’m really more of a minimalist guy, historically, into guys (okay, there are more guys than women historically on this list, but I am rectifying that!) such as Hemingway and Carver, but I have enjoyed my deep dive into (non-minimalist) Roth the last couple years. I hadn’t expected to like this late book as much as I did. Who would expect it?! The dude was 75! But now, as each year approach that age, I think, why not?
Oh, and two things about the charge of misogyny leveled against Roth all his career? Marcus’s mother is one strong and independent woman here (as most Roth mothers are); also, the sad story of Olivia Hutton’s proudly joyful sexuality and where it leads to in 1951 Winesburg makes for one of the most poignant portraits of a bright and engaging woman I can recall in Roth. The quiet meeting between Marcus’s mother and Marcus’s girl friend and what results is heart-breaking.
April 17, 2021
“La palabra más hermosa de la lengua inglesa: « ¡In—dig—na—tion!»�Un sentimiento que debería estar en todos los corazones adolescentes, que quizá se va atemperando en exceso con los años, que no le sienta bien a todo el mundo (hay mucho indignadito suelto), que es del todo inútil si no invita a la acción y que con excesiva frecuencia invita a acciones inútiles.
“Eso es lo que aprendí de mi padre y lo que me gustó aprender de él: que haces lo que tienes que hacer�El problema es que no siempre es fácil saber qué es lo que se tiene que hacer y si vale la pena hacerlo. “Indignación�, de Philip Roth, es la historia de un chico rebelde que no supo ni dominar ni dirigir bien su indignación y que pagó muy caro su error, y no fue el único. Tampoco se le puede reprochar demasiado, como apunta Cummings en la cita que antecede al texto, hay niveles de mierda que uno ya no está dispuesto a aguantar.
Después está la indignación que el lector deberá sentir hacia una época no tan lejana, y cuyos principios se siguen reivindicando con no poco éxito en los últimos tiempos, en la que se santifican las tradiciones, se imponen los conceptos religiosos con mayor o menor diplomacia y apariencia de ecuanimidad, se estigmatiza al distinto, y se sigue viendo pernicioso todo aquello relacionado con un sexo que no se mueva por los cauces “aceptables�.
“En una noche de fin de semana en Winesburg, el dolor de huevos constituía la norma, y afectaba a decenas de chicos más o menos entre las diez y las doce de la noche, mientras que la eyaculación, el más agradable y natural de los remedios, era un acontecimiento siempre huidizo, sin precedentes en el historial erótico de un estudiante cuya libido se hallaba en la cima de su rendimiento.�Haz de tu vida algo interesante, te va la muerte en ello. Algo así viene a decir Roth desde un más allá inquietante a todos ustedes, adolescentes que, como el protagonista, tienen con mucha frecuencia la sensación de no comprender nada ni a nadie, que no terminan de descubrir cómo funcionan las cosas, que experimentan con el mundo como nunca antes, inmersos en la búsqueda de una identidad más allá del mundo protector y, a veces, asfixiante de los padres, a ustedes está especialmente dirigida la novela.
Y como siempre, amigos, no olviden vitaminizarse y supermineralizarse y que�
“� en la vida, el mínimo paso en falso puede tener trágicas consecuencias.�
P.S. Redondeando desde el 3,5.
June 8, 2020
”I put my mouth to the page and kissed the ‘O.� Kissed it and kissed it. Then, impulsively, with the tip of my tongue I began to lick the ink of the signature, patiently as a cat at his milk bowl I licked away until there no longer the ‘O,� the ‘l,� the ‘i,� the ‘v,� the second ‘i,� the ‘a�--licked until the upswept tail was completely gone. I had drunk her writing. I had eaten her name. I had all I could do not to eat the whole thing.�
After reaching the threshold of his frustration with his father, Marcus Messner heads west to attend the very conservative Winesburg College in Ohio. Given his obsession with the writings of Bertrand Russell and his own personal disregard for organized religion, he probably should have found a college that better fits his temperament. Desperation tends to lead to rash decisions, and Marcus would have done anything to get away from New Jersey, his father’s cloying obsession over every moment of his day, and the family kosher butcher shop.
He is a young man of grand passions and explosive opinions. He soon finds himself at odds with the requirements of the school, specifically the 40 times he has to attend chapel a year, but he also keeps moving from roommate to roommate, unable to get along with anyone, and finally moves into an attic room that no one wants so he can live by himself. Is he intolerable of differences of opinions, or is everyone else too intolerable to live with? His father has become angry at everyone and finds the world to be a very unsafe place, and though he would deny it vigorously, Marcus is exactly like his father. The difference is that his father took several decades longer to become that angry.
There is a girl. There is always a girl, or at least there always should be. Olivia Hutton is the odd, but pretty, girl in history class. A doe, a fragile beauty, who remarkably seems to like him. He is a virgin, and he soon discovers that she is not. When they park on their first date, he is expecting or hoping for some heavy petting, but he gets more than he could ever hope for or is even ready for.
She has a scar, a long, white scar across her wrist. ”You would have thought the whole of Olivia lay in her laughter, when in fact it lay in her scar.� Olivia finds him to be odd, serious, and mysterious. When Marcus’s mother meets her, she insists that he needs to stop seeing Olivia because... ”This is a girl full of tears.�
This astute observation made me sad. I thought to myself, here is a girl where the tragedy of her life is splashed across her face for all to see. Why is it no one can help her?
Marcus fucks everything up with Olivia. Is this the classic boy-wins-girl, boy-loses-girl, and boy-wins-girl-back plot? Hmmm, if only his life would prove to be that simple.
As she avoids him, his obsession with her grows. They exchange letters, jockeying for understanding. He realizes that he must get her back. He is working, trying to become valedictorian of his class, and trying to find the right words that will win back Olivia. He has no time for the rules and regulations of this very conservative school and soon finds himself in conflict with the dean.
Why can’t everyone just leave him alone? Why can’t Olivia see that his love/lust for her is real? Isn’t he doing enough?
This is 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Young men are dying in the snow and mud, trying to keep the Chinese from overrunning South Korea. The fear of being drafted is a looming dread hanging over him. As long as he can stay in school, he will be deferred, but can he make the compromises that will keep him out of conflict with the dean and also keep him out of the conflict overseas?
Marcus has a lot of can’ts in his vocabulary. Indignation surrounds him in a cloud of dissent.
The big decisions we make that we think will unalterably change the course of our lives are sometimes sabotaged by a series of small decisions that lead us down the most unexpected paths. It is ”incomprehensible the way one's most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.�
This is a slender volume that is exploring themes that go deeper than what the overarching plot would indicate. The writing flows quickly, like a rain swollen stream, and sometimes I found myself being pushed along too fast. I had to occasionally reach out and grab a passing branch so I could let the water flow past me for a while to ponder the subconscious rumblings of the machinery beneath the stage.
There is a movie from 2016, directed by James Schamus, that I fully intend to watch as well. Will Schamus capture the nuances? We shall see.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: and an Instagram account
After reaching the threshold of his frustration with his father, Marcus Messner heads west to attend the very conservative Winesburg College in Ohio. Given his obsession with the writings of Bertrand Russell and his own personal disregard for organized religion, he probably should have found a college that better fits his temperament. Desperation tends to lead to rash decisions, and Marcus would have done anything to get away from New Jersey, his father’s cloying obsession over every moment of his day, and the family kosher butcher shop.
He is a young man of grand passions and explosive opinions. He soon finds himself at odds with the requirements of the school, specifically the 40 times he has to attend chapel a year, but he also keeps moving from roommate to roommate, unable to get along with anyone, and finally moves into an attic room that no one wants so he can live by himself. Is he intolerable of differences of opinions, or is everyone else too intolerable to live with? His father has become angry at everyone and finds the world to be a very unsafe place, and though he would deny it vigorously, Marcus is exactly like his father. The difference is that his father took several decades longer to become that angry.
There is a girl. There is always a girl, or at least there always should be. Olivia Hutton is the odd, but pretty, girl in history class. A doe, a fragile beauty, who remarkably seems to like him. He is a virgin, and he soon discovers that she is not. When they park on their first date, he is expecting or hoping for some heavy petting, but he gets more than he could ever hope for or is even ready for.
She has a scar, a long, white scar across her wrist. ”You would have thought the whole of Olivia lay in her laughter, when in fact it lay in her scar.� Olivia finds him to be odd, serious, and mysterious. When Marcus’s mother meets her, she insists that he needs to stop seeing Olivia because... ”This is a girl full of tears.�
This astute observation made me sad. I thought to myself, here is a girl where the tragedy of her life is splashed across her face for all to see. Why is it no one can help her?
Marcus fucks everything up with Olivia. Is this the classic boy-wins-girl, boy-loses-girl, and boy-wins-girl-back plot? Hmmm, if only his life would prove to be that simple.
As she avoids him, his obsession with her grows. They exchange letters, jockeying for understanding. He realizes that he must get her back. He is working, trying to become valedictorian of his class, and trying to find the right words that will win back Olivia. He has no time for the rules and regulations of this very conservative school and soon finds himself in conflict with the dean.
Why can’t everyone just leave him alone? Why can’t Olivia see that his love/lust for her is real? Isn’t he doing enough?
This is 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Young men are dying in the snow and mud, trying to keep the Chinese from overrunning South Korea. The fear of being drafted is a looming dread hanging over him. As long as he can stay in school, he will be deferred, but can he make the compromises that will keep him out of conflict with the dean and also keep him out of the conflict overseas?
Marcus has a lot of can’ts in his vocabulary. Indignation surrounds him in a cloud of dissent.
The big decisions we make that we think will unalterably change the course of our lives are sometimes sabotaged by a series of small decisions that lead us down the most unexpected paths. It is ”incomprehensible the way one's most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.�
This is a slender volume that is exploring themes that go deeper than what the overarching plot would indicate. The writing flows quickly, like a rain swollen stream, and sometimes I found myself being pushed along too fast. I had to occasionally reach out and grab a passing branch so I could let the water flow past me for a while to ponder the subconscious rumblings of the machinery beneath the stage.
There is a movie from 2016, directed by James Schamus, that I fully intend to watch as well. Will Schamus capture the nuances? We shall see.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: and an Instagram account
July 30, 2018
Reading Indignation
There is some anger in each young generation - an urgent need to break free from parental values, and from a dominant society that doesn't match the visions adolescents have of a better future.
When Philip Roth takes on adolescent rage in his old age, it is of course going to be about overprotective fathers, oppressive religious rituals versus atheism, male sexuality in detail, difficulties with authorities in general, an American dream gone wrong.
Yet, despite the particular circumstances of the novel, set during the Korean War, it tells a story as universal and as timeless as human coming-of-age. Try to force the next generation to satisfy parental dreams, and disaster is going to strike. It is as inevitable as a Greek myth. Because they try to prevent the oracle's words from coming true, the Greek heroes set up the conditions that make the oracle come true. Because parents try to shield their children from evil, they cause a lot of problems for them.
There is some truth in that still, and Roth was a master of irony, so the topic suits him.
Recommended to those who see their children set sails for new horizons...
There is some anger in each young generation - an urgent need to break free from parental values, and from a dominant society that doesn't match the visions adolescents have of a better future.
When Philip Roth takes on adolescent rage in his old age, it is of course going to be about overprotective fathers, oppressive religious rituals versus atheism, male sexuality in detail, difficulties with authorities in general, an American dream gone wrong.
Yet, despite the particular circumstances of the novel, set during the Korean War, it tells a story as universal and as timeless as human coming-of-age. Try to force the next generation to satisfy parental dreams, and disaster is going to strike. It is as inevitable as a Greek myth. Because they try to prevent the oracle's words from coming true, the Greek heroes set up the conditions that make the oracle come true. Because parents try to shield their children from evil, they cause a lot of problems for them.
There is some truth in that still, and Roth was a master of irony, so the topic suits him.
Recommended to those who see their children set sails for new horizons...
May 25, 2018
As always Roth delivers fantastic story built of just human frailty and indignation. Marc Messner is indignant about things ranging from his father's obsessive over-protection to the Winesburg College requirement for chapel attendance 40 times. His own failure to compromise (Dean Coulter for all his faults was right about that) was his undoing. The Olivia Hutton incident is so heart-rending as well. Only a master writer like Roth could pack so much into such a short powerful book. Yes another seemingly benign but superb masterpiece from Roth.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
RIP (1933-2018). One of America's literary giants has left us.
August 16, 2016
“Of a terrible, the incomprehensible way one's most banal, incidental, even comical choices archive the most disproportionate result.�
� Philip Roth, Indignation
There was a period when I hated Roth's small books. I loved his big, strong, hefty books. I thought DeLillo and Roth's novella periods were horrible indulgences; vanity projects meant to expel some small idea, some festering detail yet unexplored in their earlier masterpieces. A prose zit popping. I still think they are a bit indulgent and not as good as Roth and DeLillo's great works, but I guess as I get a bit older, I become less indignant of things that matter little, really.
Anyway, this novella moved up my list because several Roth books have recently been made into movies and this looked like one my wife and I would go to together. So, I brought home my small, beautiful, yet unread, autographed copy of Roth's 'Indignation'.
My wife read it first, and finished it. That was a good sign. She has a very low toleration for crap and where I MUST finish something, she has no problem abandoning a novel if it doesn't measure up to her minute-by-minute standards (this creates a bit of uncertainty in our marriage and keeps me on my toes). She felt it was a bit darker than she typically likes. Once, early in our marriage, my wife summarized my literary taste as "older white men with sexual issues". Obviously, reading Roth is bound to solidify that stereotype.
When I started reading the novel, I was tickled to find a bunch of not-so-subtle allusions to Sherwood Anderson's . Anderson's book of related short stories seems to have been an inspiration, or at least a harbinger of, of this later Roth novella. While I don't love this book as much as Anderson's book, I still enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy a book about death, loneliness, isolation, rigidity, and indignation). It was tight, beautiful, and also strange and sad. IT was a Philip Roth novella.
� Philip Roth, Indignation
There was a period when I hated Roth's small books. I loved his big, strong, hefty books. I thought DeLillo and Roth's novella periods were horrible indulgences; vanity projects meant to expel some small idea, some festering detail yet unexplored in their earlier masterpieces. A prose zit popping. I still think they are a bit indulgent and not as good as Roth and DeLillo's great works, but I guess as I get a bit older, I become less indignant of things that matter little, really.
Anyway, this novella moved up my list because several Roth books have recently been made into movies and this looked like one my wife and I would go to together. So, I brought home my small, beautiful, yet unread, autographed copy of Roth's 'Indignation'.
My wife read it first, and finished it. That was a good sign. She has a very low toleration for crap and where I MUST finish something, she has no problem abandoning a novel if it doesn't measure up to her minute-by-minute standards (this creates a bit of uncertainty in our marriage and keeps me on my toes). She felt it was a bit darker than she typically likes. Once, early in our marriage, my wife summarized my literary taste as "older white men with sexual issues". Obviously, reading Roth is bound to solidify that stereotype.
When I started reading the novel, I was tickled to find a bunch of not-so-subtle allusions to Sherwood Anderson's . Anderson's book of related short stories seems to have been an inspiration, or at least a harbinger of, of this later Roth novella. While I don't love this book as much as Anderson's book, I still enjoyed it (as much as one can enjoy a book about death, loneliness, isolation, rigidity, and indignation). It was tight, beautiful, and also strange and sad. IT was a Philip Roth novella.
January 1, 2018
الراوي حاضر بنصه وروحه / غائب بجسده.. هذا هو بطلنا، جثة ميت. تذكرني برواية (ماركوس زوساك : سارق الكتاب) حيث كان الراوي (الموت) بنفسه.. في حبكة بسيطة وليست معقدة وليس ذات خيال خصب يجبرك روث على حب طبيعة هذا العمل الفوضوي في داخل الإنسان... كعادة سوادوايته يغرقنا في سخطه، روث بروايته سخط. رغم روحه المرحة التي قرأتها في (الوصمة البشرية) وهي عندي أعظم من سخط، ولكن كذلك سخط جميلة فقط في الصفعة التي توجهها لك في نهاتيها.
ينقل لنا روث تجربة "ماركوس مسنر" الدراسية - الجامعة - في أمريكا في الخمسينيات الميلادية. التي تزامنت مع حرب أمريكا : الكورية. فبعد مغادرة بطلنا مدينته نيو ارك ويترك والده لأجل الدراسة وذلك خشية الحرب كذلك والإلتحاق بها، ودون غفلان دور والده التخويفي الذي أصابه من الحرب وهذا الخوف والتضييق هو من كان ابن هذه العائلة اليهودية الوحيد للسفر حيث منطقة ريفية في أوهايو؛ وينزبرغ، وفي أثناء الدراسة يقع في غرام أوليفيه. فتاة كان والده دون شك ليرفض لو كان علي مقربة منه لنفوره من عاداتها وتقاليدها وكل الصفات التي حملتها.
الحرب التي كعادتها تدخل أمريكا نفسها فيها خوفًا من إنتشار الشيوعية التي حاربت روسيا بها أمريكا بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية فساندت كوريا الجنوبية على حساب كوريا الشمالية التي آزرتها روسيا والصين. وكانت من قبل ذكرى أبناء عمومته اللذان إلتهمتا الحرب العالمية الثانية تخيف والده اللحام اليهودي المتمسك بيهوديته وطريقته ذبحها التي لا يغفلها عنها الروائي في تفاصيل الرواية - أعشق التفاصيل - يخشى أن تلتهم ابنه الحرب ناهيك عن إيمانه بأن هذا الحرب لا تعني لهم شيء - كعادة كل حروب أمريكا لم تعني شعوبها شيئ ولم ترضيهم - فيخشى فقده مع خبرته القليلة فوق خشيته الدائمة عليه حتى من فتيات بصفات معينة!!.. كان كل هذا خناق وتضيق على ماركوس. حتى جامعته التي كان بها من قبل بالقرب من أسرته فقد تركها هي الأخري ليخلّف والده وجنون إرتيابه.
مع أوليفيا / أوليفيه يظهر علي السطح ثيمة الرواية أكثر وأكثر (التمرد) يبلغ تمرد ماركوس ذروته ليس من جهته بقدر ماهو بفاعلية من طرف أوليفيا فمين صفحات هذه الرواية الصغيرة تجد (فوضى: عبثية) الأحداث من حول ماركوس خروجه من بلدته وجامعته وعلاقته بأوليفيا ونقاشاته مع مشرفه في المبنى والأخبار التي عرفها عن نيه أمه في الإنفصال عن والده، ورغبة الأخيرة في أن يترك صديقيته والتي بدورها يزعجها الأمر حد الإنهيار وتركه للجامعة ثم حدثه الأخير حيث الحرب / الموت.
في السكن حيث جامعة ماركوس تختلف حياته ويجد أنماط بشرية مغايرة عن التي عرفها من قبل ويجد تجاوزات وتحولات يصعب عليه تأويلها. تربك شخصه وتربك فهمه لهذا التحول والتحرر الذي كان يعاركه من الداخل رغم تقبل بعضه بتحفظ. مشكلة ماركوس لم يفهم مجتمعه الجديد لسداجته فلم تساعده حتى بذرة (التمرد) التي في داخله والتي أخرجته من بلدته.
مقطع من الرواية :
يصف ماركوس هذه الحالة فيقول في الرواية : "قال لي أبي : "بدأت أعمل لكسب المال منذ أن كنت في العاشرة من عمري " كان أبي جزار الحي وكنت أقوم بايصال الطلبات الى الزبائن على دراجتي عندما كنت طالبا في المدرسة الثانوية باستثناء فترة موسم مباريات البيسبول وفي فترات ما بعد الظهر عندما كنت أحضر مباريات المناقشات التي تقام بين المدارس الثانوية، لكوني عضوا في فريق المناقشة في مدرستي. ومنذ اليوم الذي تركت فيه العمل في دكان أبي والذي كنت أعمل فيه ستين ساعة أسبوعيا الى أن تخرجت من المدرسة الثانوية في كانون الثاني وبدأت أدرس في الجامعة في شهر أيلول � تقريبًا منذ اليوم الذي بدأت فيه الدراسة في جامعة روبرت تريت، بدأ ينتاب أبي شعور بالخوف من أنني سأموت، ربما كانت لمخاوفه تلك علاقة بالحرب التي دخلت فيها القوات المسلحة الأمريكية على الفور برعاية الأمم المتحدة لدعم جهود جيش كوريا الجنوبية الذي لم يكن مدربا ومجهزا بشكل جيد، وربما كانت لمخاوفه علاقة بالخسائر الكبيرة التي تكبدتها قواتنا المسلحة نتيجة كثافة نيران الشيوعيين وخشيته من أن أستدعى الى الجندية ان طال أمد النزاع كما حدث في الحرب العالمية الثانية، وأقاتل وأموت في ساحة المعركة الكورية كما لقي ابنا عمي آبي وديف مصرعهما في الحرب العالمية الثانية، أو لعل مخاوفه كانت تنبع من همومه المالية، ففي السنة الماضية فتح أول سوبر ماركت في مكان قريب من دكان بيع اللحم الكوشر ( الحلال) الذي تملكه أسرتنا وبدأت المبيعات في دكان أبي تتدنى باضطراد وذلك لأن السوبر ماركت بدأ يبيع اللحوم والدواجن بأسعار أدنى من الأسعار التي يبيعها أبي�.. ص 5 - 6
سخط : فيليب روث
ترجمة خالد الجبيلي (2010)م
الجمل (176) ص
ينقل لنا روث تجربة "ماركوس مسنر" الدراسية - الجامعة - في أمريكا في الخمسينيات الميلادية. التي تزامنت مع حرب أمريكا : الكورية. فبعد مغادرة بطلنا مدينته نيو ارك ويترك والده لأجل الدراسة وذلك خشية الحرب كذلك والإلتحاق بها، ودون غفلان دور والده التخويفي الذي أصابه من الحرب وهذا الخوف والتضييق هو من كان ابن هذه العائلة اليهودية الوحيد للسفر حيث منطقة ريفية في أوهايو؛ وينزبرغ، وفي أثناء الدراسة يقع في غرام أوليفيه. فتاة كان والده دون شك ليرفض لو كان علي مقربة منه لنفوره من عاداتها وتقاليدها وكل الصفات التي حملتها.
الحرب التي كعادتها تدخل أمريكا نفسها فيها خوفًا من إنتشار الشيوعية التي حاربت روسيا بها أمريكا بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية فساندت كوريا الجنوبية على حساب كوريا الشمالية التي آزرتها روسيا والصين. وكانت من قبل ذكرى أبناء عمومته اللذان إلتهمتا الحرب العالمية الثانية تخيف والده اللحام اليهودي المتمسك بيهوديته وطريقته ذبحها التي لا يغفلها عنها الروائي في تفاصيل الرواية - أعشق التفاصيل - يخشى أن تلتهم ابنه الحرب ناهيك عن إيمانه بأن هذا الحرب لا تعني لهم شيء - كعادة كل حروب أمريكا لم تعني شعوبها شيئ ولم ترضيهم - فيخشى فقده مع خبرته القليلة فوق خشيته الدائمة عليه حتى من فتيات بصفات معينة!!.. كان كل هذا خناق وتضيق على ماركوس. حتى جامعته التي كان بها من قبل بالقرب من أسرته فقد تركها هي الأخري ليخلّف والده وجنون إرتيابه.
مع أوليفيا / أوليفيه يظهر علي السطح ثيمة الرواية أكثر وأكثر (التمرد) يبلغ تمرد ماركوس ذروته ليس من جهته بقدر ماهو بفاعلية من طرف أوليفيا فمين صفحات هذه الرواية الصغيرة تجد (فوضى: عبثية) الأحداث من حول ماركوس خروجه من بلدته وجامعته وعلاقته بأوليفيا ونقاشاته مع مشرفه في المبنى والأخبار التي عرفها عن نيه أمه في الإنفصال عن والده، ورغبة الأخيرة في أن يترك صديقيته والتي بدورها يزعجها الأمر حد الإنهيار وتركه للجامعة ثم حدثه الأخير حيث الحرب / الموت.
في السكن حيث جامعة ماركوس تختلف حياته ويجد أنماط بشرية مغايرة عن التي عرفها من قبل ويجد تجاوزات وتحولات يصعب عليه تأويلها. تربك شخصه وتربك فهمه لهذا التحول والتحرر الذي كان يعاركه من الداخل رغم تقبل بعضه بتحفظ. مشكلة ماركوس لم يفهم مجتمعه الجديد لسداجته فلم تساعده حتى بذرة (التمرد) التي في داخله والتي أخرجته من بلدته.
مقطع من الرواية :
يصف ماركوس هذه الحالة فيقول في الرواية : "قال لي أبي : "بدأت أعمل لكسب المال منذ أن كنت في العاشرة من عمري " كان أبي جزار الحي وكنت أقوم بايصال الطلبات الى الزبائن على دراجتي عندما كنت طالبا في المدرسة الثانوية باستثناء فترة موسم مباريات البيسبول وفي فترات ما بعد الظهر عندما كنت أحضر مباريات المناقشات التي تقام بين المدارس الثانوية، لكوني عضوا في فريق المناقشة في مدرستي. ومنذ اليوم الذي تركت فيه العمل في دكان أبي والذي كنت أعمل فيه ستين ساعة أسبوعيا الى أن تخرجت من المدرسة الثانوية في كانون الثاني وبدأت أدرس في الجامعة في شهر أيلول � تقريبًا منذ اليوم الذي بدأت فيه الدراسة في جامعة روبرت تريت، بدأ ينتاب أبي شعور بالخوف من أنني سأموت، ربما كانت لمخاوفه تلك علاقة بالحرب التي دخلت فيها القوات المسلحة الأمريكية على الفور برعاية الأمم المتحدة لدعم جهود جيش كوريا الجنوبية الذي لم يكن مدربا ومجهزا بشكل جيد، وربما كانت لمخاوفه علاقة بالخسائر الكبيرة التي تكبدتها قواتنا المسلحة نتيجة كثافة نيران الشيوعيين وخشيته من أن أستدعى الى الجندية ان طال أمد النزاع كما حدث في الحرب العالمية الثانية، وأقاتل وأموت في ساحة المعركة الكورية كما لقي ابنا عمي آبي وديف مصرعهما في الحرب العالمية الثانية، أو لعل مخاوفه كانت تنبع من همومه المالية، ففي السنة الماضية فتح أول سوبر ماركت في مكان قريب من دكان بيع اللحم الكوشر ( الحلال) الذي تملكه أسرتنا وبدأت المبيعات في دكان أبي تتدنى باضطراد وذلك لأن السوبر ماركت بدأ يبيع اللحوم والدواجن بأسعار أدنى من الأسعار التي يبيعها أبي�.. ص 5 - 6
سخط : فيليب روث
ترجمة خالد الجبيلي (2010)م
الجمل (176) ص
July 24, 2024
قهرمان کتاب پسر قصاب یهودی است که در نیمه قرن بیستم میخواه� درسی بخواند که تحقیر بچه قصاب بودنش،کم سوادی خانوادهاش،شکا� نسلها،عصیا� بلوغ و یهودی بودنش را در جامعه� برخلاف ادعا نژادپرستانه و تبعیضگ� به نوعی جبران کند و نشان دهد که اخلاقمدار� محافظهکارانه� امریکا در آستانه� فاشیسم دوران محاکمات مککارتی،کامل� پوچ است.در پایان متوجه میشوی� که کتاب خاطرها� از سرباز مسنر یا همان پسر قصاب یهودی است از زمانیک� خانوادها� را رها میکن� تا در آغاز جنگ کُره برای تحصیل به کالج محافظهکا� وینزبورگ در اوهایو میرو�.مارکوس دوست دارد که فقط درس بخواند و داخل هیچ حزب و گروهی نشود ولی زندگی سرنوشتی دیگر را برای او رقم میزن�.خاطرات زمانی بیان میشو� که او زیر تزریق مورفین یکی پس از دیگری است ولی فرایندهای عقلانیا� متوقف نمیشو�.فضای دانشگاهش،قوانین و مقررات و دنیای عاشقی او با اولیوا و فضای جنگ و نقد سیر تاریخی اجتماعی امریکا آنقدر خوب بیان شده که این کتاب کمحج� را می شود یک نفس خواند.
June 5, 2021
“ضع� الآخرين قد يحطّمك بالقدر الذي تستطيع قوتهم أن تفعل ذلك. إن الناس الضعفاء ليسوا غير مؤذين. فقد يكون ضعفهم هو قوتهم. قد يكون الشخص غير المستقر خطرًا عليك، وفخّاً.�
“ق� تكون المشاعر أكبر مشكلة في الحياة. يمكن أن تلعب المشاعر أكثر الخدع فظاعة".
“يشرّ� التاريخ أبوابه كل يوم ـ الحرب، التفجيرات، المذابح الجماعية، وأنتم غافلون عن كلّ هذا. حسنًا، لا أظن أنكم ستكونون غافلين طويلًا! يمكنكم أن تكونوا أغبياء كما تشاؤون، بل ويمكنكم أن تظهروا، رغبتكم الشديدة في أن تكونوا أغبياء، لكن التاريخ سيمسككم بقبضته في النهاية. لأن التاريخ ليس الخلفية ـ التاريخ هو خشبة المسرح! وأنتم على خشبة المسرح! كم هو مقزز جهلكم المروّع بالوقت الذي تعيشون فيه!�.
“ق� تكون المشاعر أكبر مشكلة في الحياة. يمكن أن تلعب المشاعر أكثر الخدع فظاعة".
“يشرّ� التاريخ أبوابه كل يوم ـ الحرب، التفجيرات، المذابح الجماعية، وأنتم غافلون عن كلّ هذا. حسنًا، لا أظن أنكم ستكونون غافلين طويلًا! يمكنكم أن تكونوا أغبياء كما تشاؤون، بل ويمكنكم أن تظهروا، رغبتكم الشديدة في أن تكونوا أغبياء، لكن التاريخ سيمسككم بقبضته في النهاية. لأن التاريخ ليس الخلفية ـ التاريخ هو خشبة المسرح! وأنتم على خشبة المسرح! كم هو مقزز جهلكم المروّع بالوقت الذي تعيشون فيه!�.
April 7, 2017
3.5 stars
Even when Philip Roth is not at his best, he's still plenty readable. Indignation is
definitely not Roth bringing his A-game chops but, still, quite riveting trying to fathom what's making 1951 college student Marcus Messner so damn indignant. The son of a kosher butcher, Marcus is a Jewish (by birth only) non-believer whose sole raison d'etre seems to be to do well at college at Wineburg, Ohio, so that he can avoid bring drafted into the Korean War as anything less than a lieutenant (and more probably, to escape having to work alongside his overbearing father in his failing Newark New Jersey butcher's business). Everyone is distracting Marcus from straight-A's: from fraternity members (of both the Jewish frat and non-denominational frat of Wineburg College) trying to get him to rush their frats, dormitory bunkmates that drive him crazy with their insolent behavior, a mystery "blow job queen" of a female classmate Olivia trying to inveigle herself into his life. Even the Dean of Students keeps calling Marcus to his office to sort out what's getting his goat.
As I've found in the past, when Roth reins in the length of his novels, the quality of his prose generally seems to jump upward. That's pretty much the case here. Solid,breezy storytelling, just enough heft to keep you thinking about what you've just read without bashing your skull in with needless exposition. This is not the best Roth I've read, but I was still plenty satisfied.
Even when Philip Roth is not at his best, he's still plenty readable. Indignation is
definitely not Roth bringing his A-game chops but, still, quite riveting trying to fathom what's making 1951 college student Marcus Messner so damn indignant. The son of a kosher butcher, Marcus is a Jewish (by birth only) non-believer whose sole raison d'etre seems to be to do well at college at Wineburg, Ohio, so that he can avoid bring drafted into the Korean War as anything less than a lieutenant (and more probably, to escape having to work alongside his overbearing father in his failing Newark New Jersey butcher's business). Everyone is distracting Marcus from straight-A's: from fraternity members (of both the Jewish frat and non-denominational frat of Wineburg College) trying to get him to rush their frats, dormitory bunkmates that drive him crazy with their insolent behavior, a mystery "blow job queen" of a female classmate Olivia trying to inveigle herself into his life. Even the Dean of Students keeps calling Marcus to his office to sort out what's getting his goat.
As I've found in the past, when Roth reins in the length of his novels, the quality of his prose generally seems to jump upward. That's pretty much the case here. Solid,breezy storytelling, just enough heft to keep you thinking about what you've just read without bashing your skull in with needless exposition. This is not the best Roth I've read, but I was still plenty satisfied.
May 27, 2018
«Non scherzare, Markie. Non scherzare su tuo padre. Questa cosa ha tutte le caratteristiche di una tragedia.»
Nella serie degli ultimi libri � la fase tarda di Roth � che ha portato all’attuale silenzio, questo è uno di quelli buoni. Probabilmente non all’altezza del periodo d’oro ma pur sempre una lettura coinvolgente, dal ritmo incalzante e con alcuni momenti straordinari (su tutti, il primo colloquio con il decano della sezione maschile e le descrizioni del lavoro nella macelleria kosher del padre).
Serietà, rigore, responsabilità, veemenza, e quindi indignazione segnano Marcus Messner, un bravo ragazzo ebreo di Newark («Ecco cosa imparavo da mio padre e cosa mi piaceva imparare da lui: si fa quel che va fatto»), che passa dal piccolo college locale ad uno più grande, nel cuore del mondo gentile, a Winesburg nell’Ohio (chiaro omaggio a Sherwood Anderson), per liberarsi dalla sorveglianza dell'amato padre, diventato insopportabilmente ossessivo negli anni della guerra di Corea, che incombe con il suo orrore.
L'ossessione del padre rimanda anche all'ossessione della vecchiaia di Philip Roth per l’ossessione americana anni Cinquanta.
Il titolo viene dall’inno cinese, imparato da bambino, quando i ragazzi imparavano gli inni delle forze armate e anche quelli degli alleati nella seconda guerra mondiale, come appunto i cinesi, diventati ora i nemici in Corea. Inno che Marcus canta dentro di sé come una barriera durante le funzioni religiose (alle quali è costretto ad assistere e che rifiuta totalmente, da «fervente ateo» seguace di Bertrand Russell) e dal quale estrae in particolare la parola indignazione: «la più bella parola della nostra lingua».
Abbastanza presto, senza accenni precedenti, si assiste alla .
E alla fine
Sono proprio la serietà e l'intensità e la responsabilità che portano inevitabilmente alla tragedia.
E - al di là dei brani da antologia citati prima - segno della grandezza di Roth direi che rimane la capacità di farci provare contemporaneamente ilarità e ansia; e di farci partecipi - di nuovo, nello stesso tempo - sia della ricerca di rigore di Marcus sia dell'esplosione del suo desiderio, dello sfrenamento della sessualità e dell'individualità.
Nella serie degli ultimi libri � la fase tarda di Roth � che ha portato all’attuale silenzio, questo è uno di quelli buoni. Probabilmente non all’altezza del periodo d’oro ma pur sempre una lettura coinvolgente, dal ritmo incalzante e con alcuni momenti straordinari (su tutti, il primo colloquio con il decano della sezione maschile e le descrizioni del lavoro nella macelleria kosher del padre).
Serietà, rigore, responsabilità, veemenza, e quindi indignazione segnano Marcus Messner, un bravo ragazzo ebreo di Newark («Ecco cosa imparavo da mio padre e cosa mi piaceva imparare da lui: si fa quel che va fatto»), che passa dal piccolo college locale ad uno più grande, nel cuore del mondo gentile, a Winesburg nell’Ohio (chiaro omaggio a Sherwood Anderson), per liberarsi dalla sorveglianza dell'amato padre, diventato insopportabilmente ossessivo negli anni della guerra di Corea, che incombe con il suo orrore.
L'ossessione del padre rimanda anche all'ossessione della vecchiaia di Philip Roth per l’ossessione americana anni Cinquanta.
Il titolo viene dall’inno cinese, imparato da bambino, quando i ragazzi imparavano gli inni delle forze armate e anche quelli degli alleati nella seconda guerra mondiale, come appunto i cinesi, diventati ora i nemici in Corea. Inno che Marcus canta dentro di sé come una barriera durante le funzioni religiose (alle quali è costretto ad assistere e che rifiuta totalmente, da «fervente ateo» seguace di Bertrand Russell) e dal quale estrae in particolare la parola indignazione: «la più bella parola della nostra lingua».
Abbastanza presto, senza accenni precedenti, si assiste alla .
E alla fine
Sono proprio la serietà e l'intensità e la responsabilità che portano inevitabilmente alla tragedia.
E - al di là dei brani da antologia citati prima - segno della grandezza di Roth direi che rimane la capacità di farci provare contemporaneamente ilarità e ansia; e di farci partecipi - di nuovo, nello stesso tempo - sia della ricerca di rigore di Marcus sia dell'esplosione del suo desiderio, dello sfrenamento della sessualità e dell'individualità.
January 31, 2021
Splendido, splendido, splendido. Con una prosa che si legge tutta d'un fianto e una maestria narrativa che rammenta la prova de "La macchia umana", attraverso le vicissitudini di Marcus Messner, il protagonista, Roth sa elevare un intenso grido di libertà e porre l'accento sulla costante guerra e ribellione che, prima o poi, così come travolge le istituzioni marcatamente repressive, non può non rjversar la propria furia anche sulle moralistiche s ipocrite convenzioni sociali. Qualunque ne sia il prezzo. Stupendo.
March 19, 2016
It wouldn't be a Philip Roth book without some raining semen.
This time the splooj comes not from a chronic masturbator, but a lil goodie two-shoes named Markie Boy. Him, and a couple of frat dooshbegs that raid the girls' dorms at a small college in a display of human atrocity similar to the Apache ambush in Blood Meridian. Marcus is like the Anti-Portnoy, repressed instead of indulgent. Both of them come from strict Jewish households and both have parents that have inculcated them with extreme neuroses. DOESN'T IT SOUND FUN, KIDDIES?!
God knows why Roth wrote this book. He wrote a page a day (how many words is a page?) for about sixty years and then he quit. What an artíste. I vascillated between hating this book, liking it, thinking the writing was good, thinking the writing sucked. Roth writing as Marky boy wasn't quite believable (I mean who calls their own cock a penis? What a tool.) Then it ended and I still don't quite know what to make of it. Can't tell if it was just Roth going through the motions or if it just flat out sucked. Roth is a good enough technical writer in any event to make the book a quick read.
I bet if you turned this in for a college project you'd get an A-.
This time the splooj comes not from a chronic masturbator, but a lil goodie two-shoes named Markie Boy. Him, and a couple of frat dooshbegs that raid the girls' dorms at a small college in a display of human atrocity similar to the Apache ambush in Blood Meridian. Marcus is like the Anti-Portnoy, repressed instead of indulgent. Both of them come from strict Jewish households and both have parents that have inculcated them with extreme neuroses. DOESN'T IT SOUND FUN, KIDDIES?!
God knows why Roth wrote this book. He wrote a page a day (how many words is a page?) for about sixty years and then he quit. What an artíste. I vascillated between hating this book, liking it, thinking the writing was good, thinking the writing sucked. Roth writing as Marky boy wasn't quite believable (I mean who calls their own cock a penis? What a tool.) Then it ended and I still don't quite know what to make of it. Can't tell if it was just Roth going through the motions or if it just flat out sucked. Roth is a good enough technical writer in any event to make the book a quick read.
I bet if you turned this in for a college project you'd get an A-.
January 14, 2018
Fa veramente star male pensare al " terribile, incomprensibile modo in cui le scelte più accidentali, più banali, addirittura più comiche, producono gli esiti più sproporzionati".
Questo romanzo è un invito a vivere fuori dalle convenzioni e dalle scelte bigotte. Un invito a vivere la vita nella sua pienezza, perchè la vita è un attimo.
Ma com'è che in gioventù si è così intransigenti tanto da non capire che le cose non sono o nere o bianche ma esistono infiniti toni di grigi?
Perchè si sposano i principi a volte in maniera miope e questo impedisce di essere felici?
Una lettura amara amara.
Questo romanzo è un invito a vivere fuori dalle convenzioni e dalle scelte bigotte. Un invito a vivere la vita nella sua pienezza, perchè la vita è un attimo.
Ma com'è che in gioventù si è così intransigenti tanto da non capire che le cose non sono o nere o bianche ma esistono infiniti toni di grigi?
Perchè si sposano i principi a volte in maniera miope e questo impedisce di essere felici?
Una lettura amara amara.
August 26, 2016
A diverting but hollow novel about Marcus, a butcher’s son encountering various problems in his first term at college. The strongest moments in the book are the touching father/son scenes in the first section, followed closely by the comedic bouts of hauteur exchanged between Marcus and the Dean of the college in the latter part. But please excuse, humble reader, the clanging Kosher butcher/Korean war metaphor, the unconvincing “disturbed� love interest, the shamblingly overwritten and ludicrous climax, and the awkward lapses in narrative POV as the narrator becomes Roth chatting to himself. Also excuse the pages of blatant dialogue padding, the parodic Jewish mother, Marcus’s perpetual dullness, and those many scenes stating the bleeding obvious. And “Part Two� (eight pages long) contains some of worst writing I have read since Sorrentino did it on purpose. I am indignant.
November 20, 2019
"I did that because I like you so much."
� Or, if you will, Fellatial Fiction, Fine and Furious
(One of Roth's so-called "short, devastating, sex-and-mortality novels�)
Marcus Messner, a Jewish kid from Newark, son of a kosher butcher man, says he used to be "the nicest boy in the world," until he goes to Winesburg College (a fictional nod to Sherwood Anderson's short story collection), a small Lutheran college in Ohio (maybe south Ohio in hillbilly country). He has fled his overprotective father and intends to focus on his studies. His goals at 19 in 1951 are to be valedictorian and "to have intercourse before I died."
He becomes infatuated with Olivia Hutton, a gorgeous Christian girl, daughter of a doctor. He asks her on a date and is surprised she accepts. After a nice dinner, he is surprised when she fellates him. Roth, at 74, hit the nail on the head (pardon the pun) of college males' duplicity between what they want from co-eds and when they get it. The novel covers pages and pages on Marcus' "mind-blowing" memories of the fellatio. He wonders if Olivia's actions were caused by "abnormality," or her parents' divorce. Concluding that "I, who should have been the most satisfied man in all of Winesburg, was instead the most bewildered. How could such bliss befallen me be such a burden?" Olivia, who he finds out was a survivor of a suicide attempt, tells Marcus some time later that, "I did that because I like you so much."
After suffering an illness for which he must be hospitalized, Marcus decides to take a stand against being forced to attend chapel with Christian hymns and sermons, not because he was Jewish but because he was an "ardent atheist." He thinks back to grade school on a song he and his classmates were taught as the national anthem of China, a WWII ally but an enemy during the ongoing Korean War: "Arise, ye who refuse to be bondslaves!... Indignation fills the hearts of all of our countrymen. Arise! Arise! Arise!"
He risks being expelled from school which will mean a certain conscription into service in the Korean War. Disclosing any more would risk spoiling the plot.
An intriguing, thoughtful short novel.
� Or, if you will, Fellatial Fiction, Fine and Furious
(One of Roth's so-called "short, devastating, sex-and-mortality novels�)
Marcus Messner, a Jewish kid from Newark, son of a kosher butcher man, says he used to be "the nicest boy in the world," until he goes to Winesburg College (a fictional nod to Sherwood Anderson's short story collection), a small Lutheran college in Ohio (maybe south Ohio in hillbilly country). He has fled his overprotective father and intends to focus on his studies. His goals at 19 in 1951 are to be valedictorian and "to have intercourse before I died."
He becomes infatuated with Olivia Hutton, a gorgeous Christian girl, daughter of a doctor. He asks her on a date and is surprised she accepts. After a nice dinner, he is surprised when she fellates him. Roth, at 74, hit the nail on the head (pardon the pun) of college males' duplicity between what they want from co-eds and when they get it. The novel covers pages and pages on Marcus' "mind-blowing" memories of the fellatio. He wonders if Olivia's actions were caused by "abnormality," or her parents' divorce. Concluding that "I, who should have been the most satisfied man in all of Winesburg, was instead the most bewildered. How could such bliss befallen me be such a burden?" Olivia, who he finds out was a survivor of a suicide attempt, tells Marcus some time later that, "I did that because I like you so much."
After suffering an illness for which he must be hospitalized, Marcus decides to take a stand against being forced to attend chapel with Christian hymns and sermons, not because he was Jewish but because he was an "ardent atheist." He thinks back to grade school on a song he and his classmates were taught as the national anthem of China, a WWII ally but an enemy during the ongoing Korean War: "Arise, ye who refuse to be bondslaves!... Indignation fills the hearts of all of our countrymen. Arise! Arise! Arise!"
He risks being expelled from school which will mean a certain conscription into service in the Korean War. Disclosing any more would risk spoiling the plot.
An intriguing, thoughtful short novel.
January 26, 2023
“Is that what eternity is for, to muck over a lifetime's minutiae? Who could have imagined that one would have forever to remember each moment of life down to its tiniest component?� ~Philip Roth, Indignation
You can be a good person, a respectful citizen, an obedient child, a straight-A student, a faithful lover, and still sometimes your life goes to complete shit. 19 year old Marcus Messner's short but eventful odyssey, layed out in exquisite detail, does just that.
Written in first person, I couldn't help but hear Marcus in my head voiced by a young Jerry Lewis or a pre-pedo Woody Allen. Some of it (a lot of it) is hysterically funny. Is it a tragic comedy, or a comic tragedy? I'm undecided. What I'm sure of is that Philip Roth is a national treasure, and that Indignation will, from this day forward, be listed among my all-time favorite novels.
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach � that it makes no sense.� ~Philip Roth, American Pastoral
You can be a good person, a respectful citizen, an obedient child, a straight-A student, a faithful lover, and still sometimes your life goes to complete shit. 19 year old Marcus Messner's short but eventful odyssey, layed out in exquisite detail, does just that.
Written in first person, I couldn't help but hear Marcus in my head voiced by a young Jerry Lewis or a pre-pedo Woody Allen. Some of it (a lot of it) is hysterically funny. Is it a tragic comedy, or a comic tragedy? I'm undecided. What I'm sure of is that Philip Roth is a national treasure, and that Indignation will, from this day forward, be listed among my all-time favorite novels.
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach � that it makes no sense.� ~Philip Roth, American Pastoral
June 2, 2013
След като останах толкова неприятно изумена от ''Гърдата'', се чудя как изобщо хванах друг роман на Филип Рот доброволно. За мое щастие тази случайност се оказа щастлива.
''Възмущение'' ме накара да чета припряно и лакомо. И ми припомни ''Къде си, Аляска'' по много странен начин, показвайки много ясно разликата между писателя и Писателя. И двете истории разглеждат първата колежанска година на сравнително затворено и добре възпитано момче, което е единствено дете в семейство от средната класа. И двамата така и не се вписват добре в новата среда или не искат да го направят. И двамата се влюбват в странни особнячки с кофти семейства и емоционални проблеми. Филип Рот обаче умее да прави онова, на което Джон Грийн все още не се е научил - да развива многопластови герои. Вярно е, че таргет-читателите на двамата е съвсем различна, но и без това не смятам да правя сравнение между двата романа.
Маркъс, главният персонаж в романа на Рот, е 19-годишен евреин, силно потискан от баща си, който пък започва да развива параноя в тийнейджърските години на сина си, свързана основно с бъдещето му. Дори след като Маркъс заминава да учи в колеж, той продължава да чувства мощната лапа на баща си върху своето рамо. Затова решава да се премести в по-далечен колеж. Което пак не се оказва достатъчно (или пък необходимо), защото нищо не се решава толкова лесно само с едно бягство. Страховете и комплексите са си страхове и комплекси, където и да идеш.
Историята е разказана през очите на сина и неговата гледна точка е ясна, а позицията му по различни въпроси е добре обоснована. Като цяло Маркъс е перфектно изплетен герой. Нищо чудно някъде из бюрото на Рот да има огромна папка-досие за живота на героя му, в която е описана всяка секунда живот, всеки детайл от съществуването му, така че в романа да няма празна дупка. И така наистина няма.
"Възмущение'' e изключително премерен и интелигентен роман, жив и плътен.
След него изпитвам желание за четене на Пол Остър, Джон Фаулз или пък отново Филип Рот.
Желание за четене изобщо.
''Възмущение'' ме накара да чета припряно и лакомо. И ми припомни ''Къде си, Аляска'' по много странен начин, показвайки много ясно разликата между писателя и Писателя. И двете истории разглеждат първата колежанска година на сравнително затворено и добре възпитано момче, което е единствено дете в семейство от средната класа. И двамата така и не се вписват добре в новата среда или не искат да го направят. И двамата се влюбват в странни особнячки с кофти семейства и емоционални проблеми. Филип Рот обаче умее да прави онова, на което Джон Грийн все още не се е научил - да развива многопластови герои. Вярно е, че таргет-читателите на двамата е съвсем различна, но и без това не смятам да правя сравнение между двата романа.
Маркъс, главният персонаж в романа на Рот, е 19-годишен евреин, силно потискан от баща си, който пък започва да развива параноя в тийнейджърските години на сина си, свързана основно с бъдещето му. Дори след като Маркъс заминава да учи в колеж, той продължава да чувства мощната лапа на баща си върху своето рамо. Затова решава да се премести в по-далечен колеж. Което пак не се оказва достатъчно (или пък необходимо), защото нищо не се решава толкова лесно само с едно бягство. Страховете и комплексите са си страхове и комплекси, където и да идеш.
Историята е разказана през очите на сина и неговата гледна точка е ясна, а позицията му по различни въпроси е добре обоснована. Като цяло Маркъс е перфектно изплетен герой. Нищо чудно някъде из бюрото на Рот да има огромна папка-досие за живота на героя му, в която е описана всяка секунда живот, всеки детайл от съществуването му, така че в романа да няма празна дупка. И така наистина няма.
"Възмущение'' e изключително премерен и интелигентен роман, жив и плътен.
След него изпитвам желание за четене на Пол Остър, Джон Фаулз или пък отново Филип Рот.
Желание за четене изобщо.
August 7, 2019
A brilliantly written story, very funny in parts although ultimately it's a pretty grim tale. Marcus Messneer goes off to an American provincial college to escape his domineering father and to plot a course to avoid being drafted to fight on the front line via Korean War draft. Whilst at college he falls in love for the first time and has bitter rows with just about everyone he comes into contact with. He 's doomed from the start and it's no surprise when Marcus meets and untimely end. What saves this book is the fantastic writing of Roth. A gem of a book.
June 5, 2018
«گفتم: «نمیدان� چطور راحت باشم.» من همیشه روی خودم کار میکرد�. همیشه دنبال هدفی بودم. و اکنون هدف اولیویا هاتن بود.»
شورش برای استقلال، و مقابله با سنتها� مذهبی و مقررات خشک دانشگاهی. انجمن شاعران مرده� دو.
شورش برای استقلال، و مقابله با سنتها� مذهبی و مقررات خشک دانشگاهی. انجمن شاعران مرده� دو.
September 21, 2024
الكثير من الأشياء تؤدي الى غضب الإنسان في هذه الحياة، لكن السخط شيء مختلف، شيء لا يحتوي على الغضب، بل هو مجموعة تراكمات فجة تتزايد يوماً بعد يوم ، يمكن أن يقتلك هذا أو أن يجعل منك ثائراً متمرداً نزقاً إلى أبعد حد، السخط يأكل الإنسان، عكس الغضب الذي يجعلك تفكر فيما بعد في أفعالك، انه شيء مؤقت ..
يثير روث في هذه الرواية عدة تساؤلات ربما من أبرزها، ما قيمة أن نحكم على تصرفات الناس، إذا كان قد حدث كهذا فإنه لم تحصل المصيبة الفلانية مثلا، هذا السؤال الذي يستبيح افعال الانسان ويحطمها في نفس الوقت، اذا ما قيمة ان تلوم شخصا على فعل بسيط في سلسلة أحداث كبيرة قد تؤدي أو لا تؤدي في النهاية إلى نفس المصير، لعبة القدر، السخط الذي ينمو مع مرور الوقت، هذا الكبت الذي يجري في نفوس الناس، يجعلهم اكثر حساسية، ومقتاً ومراوغة لكل الأشياء، يجعلهم لا يتقبلون الآخرين بالرغم من ادعاءهم ذلك، منغلقين متهاوين في داخلهم، يضجرهم الآخرون، يستفزهم الأفعال والاختلافات ، الشخص الساخط هو أكثر شخص مدعاة لأن لا يرحب بأي شخص في حياته، يكتب روث هنا عن مصير الانسان، عن الأبوة الخاطئة، عن الكبت والمشاعر الرديئة التي تخرج في الوقت الخطأ، يكتب عن العصبية الفكرية بكل اتجاهاتها، عن الجنس والحرية وامكانية ان يحصل الانسان على الملذات كونها ملذات فحسب والتي تؤدي في نعاية المطاف الى الشك والكراهية والضياع في متاهة نفسية وعقلية، كل ما يحتويه هنا سخط وأماكن مدفونة من شخصية أي انسان ممكن أن تنبعث على شكل حطام أو رذيلة وربما موت أو فشل يحول طاقات الإنسان إلى ثقب أسود يبتلع فيه كل شيء ..
يثير روث في هذه الرواية عدة تساؤلات ربما من أبرزها، ما قيمة أن نحكم على تصرفات الناس، إذا كان قد حدث كهذا فإنه لم تحصل المصيبة الفلانية مثلا، هذا السؤال الذي يستبيح افعال الانسان ويحطمها في نفس الوقت، اذا ما قيمة ان تلوم شخصا على فعل بسيط في سلسلة أحداث كبيرة قد تؤدي أو لا تؤدي في النهاية إلى نفس المصير، لعبة القدر، السخط الذي ينمو مع مرور الوقت، هذا الكبت الذي يجري في نفوس الناس، يجعلهم اكثر حساسية، ومقتاً ومراوغة لكل الأشياء، يجعلهم لا يتقبلون الآخرين بالرغم من ادعاءهم ذلك، منغلقين متهاوين في داخلهم، يضجرهم الآخرون، يستفزهم الأفعال والاختلافات ، الشخص الساخط هو أكثر شخص مدعاة لأن لا يرحب بأي شخص في حياته، يكتب روث هنا عن مصير الانسان، عن الأبوة الخاطئة، عن الكبت والمشاعر الرديئة التي تخرج في الوقت الخطأ، يكتب عن العصبية الفكرية بكل اتجاهاتها، عن الجنس والحرية وامكانية ان يحصل الانسان على الملذات كونها ملذات فحسب والتي تؤدي في نعاية المطاف الى الشك والكراهية والضياع في متاهة نفسية وعقلية، كل ما يحتويه هنا سخط وأماكن مدفونة من شخصية أي انسان ممكن أن تنبعث على شكل حطام أو رذيلة وربما موت أو فشل يحول طاقات الإنسان إلى ثقب أسود يبتلع فيه كل شيء ..
November 23, 2016
Great book, it's one of those books that leaves you wondering of all the "what if's". Things could have turned out different.
June 24, 2024
Because other people’s weakness can destroy you just as much as their strength can. Weak people are not harmless. Their weakness can be their strength.
*
Yes, the good old defiant American “Fuck you,� and that was it for the butchers son, dead three months short of his twentieth birthday—Marcus Messner, 1932-1952, the only one of his classmates unfortunate enough to be killed in the Korean War, which ended with the signing of an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953, eleven full months before Marcus, had he been able to stomach chapel and keep his mouth shut, would have received his undergraduate degree from Winesburg College—more than likely as class valedictorian and thus have postponed learning what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way ones most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.
*
Yes, the good old defiant American “Fuck you,� and that was it for the butchers son, dead three months short of his twentieth birthday—Marcus Messner, 1932-1952, the only one of his classmates unfortunate enough to be killed in the Korean War, which ended with the signing of an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953, eleven full months before Marcus, had he been able to stomach chapel and keep his mouth shut, would have received his undergraduate degree from Winesburg College—more than likely as class valedictorian and thus have postponed learning what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way ones most banal, incidental, even comical choices achieve the most disproportionate result.
April 1, 2015
Ho letto in qualche commento che Markus Messner, il protagonista di Indignazione, sia in un certo senso avvicinabile a Holden Caufield: anche lui un’anima pura, un idealista “indignato� che si scaglia contro il mondo bigotto degli adulti americani. Markus è uno studente modello, sempre primo nei voti, figlio devoto di un padre ebreo macellaio kosher che lo adora, tanto da esasperarlo con i suoi soffocanti controlli fino a spingerlo ad allontanarsi dal college che frequenta a Newark, dove è nato e vissuto, per trasferirsi a Winesburg, nel cuore dell’America più provinciale e tradizionalista. Da lì inizieranno i problemi per lui che ha le idee chiare su cosa vuol fare e chi vuole diventare, desidera soltanto studiare e laurearsi in giurisprudenza, non si inserisce nell’ambiente delle confraternite del college, non vuole partecipare alla squadra di baseball, non riesce a condividere la stanza con chi lo importuna o gli impedisce di studiare e soprattutto inizia una relazione con Olivia, una studentessa che per la sua famiglia è agli antipodi della donna ideale, è figlia di divorziati, ha problemi psichiatrici ed ha tentato il suicidio. Olivia non ha remore sessuali come la maggior parte delle ragazze del college nell’anno 1951, e tutto ciò provoca in Markus una reazione forte di rifiuto verso la bigotteria del college, del suo corpo dirigente e degli studenti, una “indignazione� che lo lascerà tragicamente in solitudine e che, per circostanze beffardamente banali, lo consegnerà in balia dell’evento terribile in corso in quegli anni, la guerra di Corea, che tante morti ha causato all’America.
Ebbene, più che ad Holden Caufield Markus mi ha fatto pensare alla tragica figura di un eroe mitologico, al grande Achille figlio di Peleo, eroe puro e indistruttibile che muore per una banale ferita al tallone, ed “all’incomprensibile modo in cui le scelte più accidentali, più banali, addirittura più comiche, producono gli esiti più sproporzionati�: un argomento su cui riflettere, un esempio di vita da cui trarre mille spunti , uno dei tanti romanzi di Philip Roth che lasciano il segno.
Ebbene, più che ad Holden Caufield Markus mi ha fatto pensare alla tragica figura di un eroe mitologico, al grande Achille figlio di Peleo, eroe puro e indistruttibile che muore per una banale ferita al tallone, ed “all’incomprensibile modo in cui le scelte più accidentali, più banali, addirittura più comiche, producono gli esiti più sproporzionati�: un argomento su cui riflettere, un esempio di vita da cui trarre mille spunti , uno dei tanti romanzi di Philip Roth che lasciano il segno.
January 13, 2018
Un amico me l'aveva detto
... è terribilmente vivo
desolante in alcuni brani,spietato in altri e malinconico, anche.
In Indignazione 'è l' inesperienza ,la stoltezza,la resistenza intellettuale,la scoperta sessuale il coraggio e i passi falsi di un ragazzo .
C'è il terribile e incomprensibile modo in cui le scelte più accidentali e banali ,possono produrre conseguenze tragiche, gli esiti più sproporzionati.
Un passaggio che mi è piaciuto molto:
Cerca di essere piu' grande dei tuoi sentimenti.Non sono io che te lo chiedo,ma la vita.Altrimenti finirai spazzato via dai tuoi sentimenti.Spazzato via senza poter piu' tornare indietro.
I sentimenti possono essere il piu' grande dei problemi.
I sentimenti possono giocare gli scherzi piu' crudeli.
à.
... è terribilmente vivo
desolante in alcuni brani,spietato in altri e malinconico, anche.
In Indignazione 'è l' inesperienza ,la stoltezza,la resistenza intellettuale,la scoperta sessuale il coraggio e i passi falsi di un ragazzo .
C'è il terribile e incomprensibile modo in cui le scelte più accidentali e banali ,possono produrre conseguenze tragiche, gli esiti più sproporzionati.
Un passaggio che mi è piaciuto molto:
Cerca di essere piu' grande dei tuoi sentimenti.Non sono io che te lo chiedo,ma la vita.Altrimenti finirai spazzato via dai tuoi sentimenti.Spazzato via senza poter piu' tornare indietro.
I sentimenti possono essere il piu' grande dei problemi.
I sentimenti possono giocare gli scherzi piu' crudeli.
à.
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