Where in the World Is Philip Roth?
Let me make an outright confession: I am a Philip Roth junkie. Each year, I anticipate eagerly a new book by Mr. Roth, who in my humble opinion, is the greatest living American writer. Mr. Roth looks at real life issues, through a lens that is fearless, and addresses some of the real life issues in a fictional setting that consume us all. Who can forget, Alexender Portnay, the insecure boy, a a Jew with smothering parents, and how he discovered masturbating Roth's latest books focus on aging, incontinence and impotence. Philip Roth's voice as gotten better with age, and if the truth be told, his three last books have changed my life. Is that not what a great piece of literature or music is supposed to do? To make us think, examine or ponder about something in a way that we have not done in the past?
Mr. Roth's latest book, Exit Ghost, is a masterpiece. The book deals with such issues as aging, dreaming, allowing one's lustful thoughts to surface, but keep them contained, if not by virtue of physical limitations, than by wisdom that comes with each of us through age. Frankly, when I read a Philip Roth book, I savor it, like a fine piece of aged cheese, and as I get closer to the end, I read slower, and want to hang on to each and every word and not let them go. But Mr. Roth is showing the public, that as he ages, he is becoming even more prolific, and turning out books in great number.
Philip Roth does not give interviews nor does he appear at book signings. He writes good literature, and lets the limelight shine without him being present. He is an intensely private man as well, which makes me wonder if he knows what a great gift his words are to so many people.
Exit Ghost has one of the greatest opening paragraphs that exist in modern literature:
"I hadn't been in New York in eleven years. Other than for surgery in Boston to remove a cancerous prostate. I'd hardly been off my rural mountain road int her Berkshires in those eleven years, and what's more, had rarely looked at a newspaper or listened to the news since 9/11, three years back; with no sense of loss-merely, at the ouster, a kind of drought within me-I had ceased to inhabit not just the great world but the present moment. The impulse to be in it and of it I had long since killed."
I hope a Nobel Prize for Literature is waiting for Mr. Roth, who clearly deserves it.
Let me thank you Mr. Roth, for allowing me to return to the living, once again, to come back to the world and to myself.
Mr. Roth's latest book, Exit Ghost, is a masterpiece. The book deals with such issues as aging, dreaming, allowing one's lustful thoughts to surface, but keep them contained, if not by virtue of physical limitations, than by wisdom that comes with each of us through age. Frankly, when I read a Philip Roth book, I savor it, like a fine piece of aged cheese, and as I get closer to the end, I read slower, and want to hang on to each and every word and not let them go. But Mr. Roth is showing the public, that as he ages, he is becoming even more prolific, and turning out books in great number.
Philip Roth does not give interviews nor does he appear at book signings. He writes good literature, and lets the limelight shine without him being present. He is an intensely private man as well, which makes me wonder if he knows what a great gift his words are to so many people.
Exit Ghost has one of the greatest opening paragraphs that exist in modern literature:
"I hadn't been in New York in eleven years. Other than for surgery in Boston to remove a cancerous prostate. I'd hardly been off my rural mountain road int her Berkshires in those eleven years, and what's more, had rarely looked at a newspaper or listened to the news since 9/11, three years back; with no sense of loss-merely, at the ouster, a kind of drought within me-I had ceased to inhabit not just the great world but the present moment. The impulse to be in it and of it I had long since killed."
I hope a Nobel Prize for Literature is waiting for Mr. Roth, who clearly deserves it.
Let me thank you Mr. Roth, for allowing me to return to the living, once again, to come back to the world and to myself.
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