http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/philip_roth_im_done/

To keep things sportsy, there was a review in the New York Review of Books three or four years ago that compared Roth to a pitcher who lost his fastball but learned to be a crafty finesse guy. That sounds almost about right to me, though I'll put the Zuckerman trilogy, specifically The Human Stain, right up there among his fiery best, though Portnoy's Complaint is really on a level all its own.

The last book of his I read was Indignation, which, while it had its moments (specifically when our protagonist, here as always a nice Jewish boy gone bad from the streets of Newark, gets an hj in a hospital bed from his goyish girlfriend and unloads on an unwitting nurse), falls victim to the sinking feeling you get with late-era Roth, that you've seen this movie before. I'm not just using a figure of speech: the aforementioned hospital scene might have been in an American Pie movie.

So I'm kinda glad he's going out on his own terms and not just ending his career with his death. I'll try to catch up with the books I missed now that this is it. I hope he has a nice retirement. One of the greatest American authors, and one of my top five authors, no question.

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that sux

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That Zuckerman trilogy is fantastic. American Pastoral is among the best books I have ever read and The Human Stain gave me new respect for Roth. I read Portnoy's Complaint and hated it. I only picked up The Human Stain because my wife didn't believe me that a book existed with that title and my response was "not only does it exist, but I'm ordering it and reading it."

A little too much whacking off in Roth, but The Human Stain was really good, though I wanted to scream through half of it. It reminded me (thematically) of Light in August. I liked the alternate history one....why can't I think of the title....anyway, it wasn't like his other books.

Never read American Pastoral, though I have had the book for twenty years. I think I'll pick it up.

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Portnoy's Complaint was on our bookshelf when I was a kid and my sister and I both knew it was taboo for us. My mother was a voracious reader but I'm not sure she ever got all the way through the book. I don't think she could really relate to the Jewishness of Roth's writing.

Roth is like Donna Tartt in that they're both obviously very knowledgeable about literature and they want to make sure you know it.

I think it's interesting that Roth and Neil Simon are roughly the same age and they both write semi-autobiographically and their work is heavily informed by their experience as Jews in America, yet Roth is a Boomer icon and Simon seems to have been writing for the WWII generation.

I had to look up when they were born and Roth was in 1933 and Simon in 1927. Those six years may have made all the difference in ethic and worldview. My mother and father were born in 1936 and 1925 respectively and the disparity in the way they viewed the world and their place in it was like a vast ocean.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The Plot Against America, which supposes a Charles Lindbergh presidency during WWII. I didn't really like it, precisely because it wasn't like his other books. Not enough whacking off!

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I can't remember whom it was, but another writer said, "I respect Phillip Roth, but I'll never shake his hand."

Yeah, it had a totally different feel . . . but it did give me a slow burn of dread, and the entire moral situation is something I think about a lot. I was on an alternate history kick about four years ago . . .

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It came out in the mid-2000s, so I'm certain that there was a "Bush is Hitler" subtext.

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Gave us a great IRA.

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There was a TV series about it a couple of years ago. It wasn't particularly memorable because I don't particularly remember it. I think I really wanted to like it but it just didn't hit.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

We had this same conversation, almost note for note, a few years ago.

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