Saturday, December 17, 2005

The Great American Novelist

Back in the early 1970s, I set out to read Philip Roth's ouervre. I had just seen the film version of Goodbye, Columbus and I was curious about this Jewish writer from New Jersey. I began with Goodbye, Columbus (1959), and moved on — in order — to Letting Go (1962), When She Was Good (1967), Portnoy's Complaint (1969), Our Gang (1971), The Breast (1972), The Great American Novel (1973), and My Life As a Man (1974). By, 1974, I was tired. Roth has gone on to write and write and write: 24 novels and books. The last Roth book I read was Patrimony: A True Story (1991). It is a bittersweet account of Roth's reconnection with his dying father. I bought copies of the book and gave them to my son and my daughter. Of all of Roth's novels (that I've read), my favorite is The Great American Novel. A good baseball story is hard to beat. If this is (fair & balanced) literary criticism, so be it.


[The Guardian]
'It no longer feels a great injustice that I have to die'
By Martin Krasnik

In a rare interview, Philip Roth, one of America's greatest living authors, tells Danish journalist Martin Krasnik why his new book is all about death - and why literary critics should be shot.

Philip Roth rarely gives interviews, and I quickly find out why. It is not that he is unpleasant or rude; he just cannot be bothered with answering the same questions, over and over again. "What do you want to talk about?" Roth asks, as he sits down. Already I sense that this will be a difficult job. In September, the New York Times interviewed Roth about his work being published by The Library of America. Only two other authors (Eudora Welty and Saul Bellow) have achieved this honour while still alive. But Roth would say practically nothing to the Times's increasingly desperate journalist.

My photographer's name is Flash Rosenberg, and she really tries to help me. She says that she just returned from Berlin, where they called her Blitz (German for flash). Roth does not laugh. He looks at her with an empty stare while she jumps around taking pictures. She takes a Polaroid photo of him and inserts it into one of those souvenir snow globes. Roth turns it upside down, and the snow falls silently upon his head.

"It looks like I have a huge dandruff problem," he says in a low, slow voice. "That poor guy really needs a strong dandruff shampoo."

"I always use that trick to make people smile," Flash says.

"I don't smile."

There is a long, agonising pause.

"Why don't you smile?" I ask.

"There once was this photographer from New York. 'Smile,' she always said. 'Smile!' I couldn't stand her or the whole phenomenon. Why smile into a camera? It makes no human sense. So I got rid of both her and the smile."

"Do you ever smile at all?"

He looks at me. "Yes, when I'm hiding in a corner and no one sees it."

We are sitting in a backroom of Roth's literary agency in midtown New York. The room is full of books by Salman Rushdie. "It's probably wisest to place the Rushdie room in the back," Roth says - without smiling. He has arrived from his home in rural Connecticut to give an interview about The Plot Against America, which was published in America and Britain a while back, but is only just being published in my home country of Denmark. The book imagines Charles Lindbergh, king of the skies, winning the presidential election in 1940 and establishing an alliance with Hitler.

"I got the idea when I read an autobiography by an American historian. In a footnote he mentioned that the right wing of the Republican Party had made an attempt to nominate Lindbergh in 1940. I didn't know that. I remembered that my family supported Roosevelt, and that everyone around me hated Lindbergh. The whole neighbourhood was Jewish, and everyone worried about his extremely critical attitude towards Jews."

Jews appear everywhere in Roth's books, but this one seems to be Roth's great Jewish history. "Jewish?" he says. "It's my most American book. It's about America. About America. It's an American dystopia. You would never tell Ralph Ellison that Invisible Man is his most Negro book, would you?" He looks at me. "Would you?"

"Maybe not ..."

"Those kinds of considerations are newspaper cliches. Jewish literature. Black literature. Everyone who opens a book enters the story without noticing these labels."

"But you are seen as an American-Jewish writer. Does that mean anything to you?"

"It's not a question that interests me. I know exactly what it means to be Jewish, and it's really not interesting. I'm an American. You can't talk about this without walking straight out into horrible cliches that say nothing about human beings. America is first and foremost ... it's my language. And identity labels have nothing to do with how anyone actually experiences life."

I am now talking as quietly as him. Whispering, I say that he himself writes about identity in his books. In Operation Shylock it is about who is a Jew. In The Plot Against America, it is about who is American.

"But I don't accept that I write Jewish-American fiction. I don't buy that nonsense about black literature or feminist literature. Those are labels made up to strengthen some political agenda."

It takes all my strength to ask the next question: about Roth - and Roth. He appears in many of his books - as a boy or an adult author. And then there is his alter ego, the author Nathan Zuckerman. So where does the real Philip Roth end, and where does literature begin? The real Philip Roth looks at me, impatiently, as if I am being stupid.

"I just don't understand that question," he says. "I don't read or perceive books in that way. I'm interested in the object, the ... the thing, the story, the aesthetic jolt you get from being inside this ... thing. Am I Roth or Zuckerman? It's all me. You know? That's what I normally say. It's all me. Nothing is me."

Then the ice breaks. I have brought to the interview copies of The Dying Animal and The Human Stain - two books about the relationship between an older man and a young woman. Why does that interest him? "Because it exists," he says. I tell him about a huge scandal in Denmark in which a 68-year-old author has just been stripped of all honour. His crime: he wrote openly about a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old black girl in Haiti - the daughter of his servant. Punishment: public crucifixion, which can be really nasty, even in progressive Denmark. Roth wants to know everything about the story, every little detail. Then he says: "That author asked for it. Did he really write about how he had sex with the girl in his master bedroom? Yes, that's interesting. It turned political. If it was an affair with a 25-year-old student at the university in Port-au-Prince, it wouldn't have been a problem."

I tell him that interviewing him can be extremely difficult - like climbing an iceberg without clothes on.

"Well, I wasn't put on this earth to make your life easy. Ha!" His laughter is like a proclamation - no smile, just "Ha!"

"Maybe we shouldn't be talking about literature at all," I say.

"Ha, ha," he says. "Now you're talking! I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk. Fairytale talk. As soon as you generalise, you are in a completely different universe than that of literature, and there's no bridge between the two."

Roth goes and fetches a small black plate - the cover for his new book. It is completely black with a narrow red line framing the title: Everyman. "What do you think about it? It's getting approved today," he says. "It looks as if it's about death," I say. "Yes, you get your money's worth, if you want death. Everyman is the name of a line of English plays from the 15th century, allegorical plays, moral theatre. They were performed in cemeteries, and the theme is always salvation. The classic is called Everyman, it's from 1485, by an anonymous author. It was right in between the death of Chaucer and the birth of Shakespeare. The moral was always 'Work hard and get into heaven', 'Be a good Christian or go to hell'. Everyman is the main character and he gets a visit from Death. He thinks it's some sort of messenger, but Death says, 'I am Death' and Everyman's answer is the first great line in English drama: 'Oh, Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind.' When I thought of you least. My new book is about death and about dying. Well, what do you think?"

"It's black," I say, and ask him if the publisher isn't worried that people won't want to buy it because of the colour. "I don't care," he says. "I just want it my way."

I tell him it looks like a bible. "Ha! Wonderful. Perfect. I think it looks like a tombstone." He waits for me to ask the next question.

"Are you afraid of dying?"

He thinks for a long time before answering. Maybe he thinks of something else. "Yes, I'm afraid. It's horrible." He adds. "What else could I say? It's heartbreaking. It's unthinkable. It's incredible. Impossible."

"Do you think a lot about death?"

"I was forced to think about it all the time when I wrote this book. I spent two whole days in a cemetery to see how they dig the holes. For years I had decided never to think about death. I have seen people die, of course, my parents, but it wasn't until a good friend of mine died in April that I experienced it as completely devastating. He was a contemporary. It doesn't say so in the agreement I signed, I didn't see that page in the contract, you know. As Henry James said on his deathbed: 'Ah, here it comes, the big thing.'"

"Are you satisfied with your life?" I ask.

"Eight years ago I attended a memorial ceremony for an author," he says. "An incredible man full of life and humour, curiosity. He worked for a magazine here in New York. He had girlfriends, mistresses. And at this memorial ceremony there were all these women. Of all ages. And they all cried and left the room, because they couldn't stand it. That was the greatest tribute ..."

"What will the women do at your funeral?"

"If they even show up ... they will probably be screaming at the casket." He looks out of the window, across the buildings of midtown. "You know, passion doesn't change with age, but you change - you become older. The thirst for women becomes more poignant. And there is a power in the pathos of sex that it didn't have before. The pathos of the female body becomes more insistent. The sexual passion is always deep, but it becomes deeper."

"You said that you're afraid of dying. You're 72 years old. What are you afraid of?"

He looks at me. "Oblivion. Of not being alive, quite simply, of not feeling life, not smelling it. But the difference between today and the fear of dying I had when I was 12, is that now I have a kind of resignation towards reality. It no longer feels like a great injustice that I have to die."

I ask him if he is religious. "I'm exactly the opposite of religious," he says. "I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie. Are you religious yourself?" he asks.

"No," I say, "but I'm sure that life would be easier if I was."

"Oh," he says. "I don't think so. I have such a huge dislike. It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion. I don't even want to talk about it, it's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety - and I never needed religion to save me."

I ask him why he keeps writing then, if it's so lonely and full of anxiety? He sighs - loudly.

"There are some days that compensate completely," he says. "In my life I have had, in total, a couple of months of these completely wonderful days as a writer, and that is enough ... It's actually a good question [at this point I silently jump with joy]. You know, it's a choice to be occupied with literature, like everything else is a choice. But you quickly identify with the profession. And that's the first nail in the coffin. Then you struggle across the decades to make your work better, to make it a bit different, to do it again and to prove to yourself that you can do it."

"But you know that you can do it now, right?"

"I have no idea that I can do it again. How can I know? How do I know that I won't run out of ideas tomorrow? It's a horrible existence being a writer filled with deprivation. I don't miss specific people, but I miss life. I didn't discover that during the first 20 years, because I was fighting - in the ring with the literature. That fight was life, but then I discovered that I was in the ring all by myself."

He gets up. "It was the interests in life and the attempt to get life down on the pages which made me a writer - and then I discovered that, in many ways, I am standing on the outside of life".

Translation from the Danish original by Sofie Paisley.

Martin Krasnik is the Foreign Affairs editor (on leave) at the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen. Krasnik currently hosts the Danish television news and debate program, "Deadline."


Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005


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Today's BURNING Question: XM Or Sirius?

I subscribe to a couple of e-newsletters for computer geeks and one of them (focused on Windows) wanders off the reservation once in a while. This time, the item in question provided a comparison between the two flavors of satellite radio: XM and Sirius. The review (in italics below) was posted to a blog operated by the owner and proprietor of Lockgnome for WindowsL Chris Pirillo. What the hell is a Lockergnome? If this is (fair & balanced) comparison shopping, so be it.

[x Windows Lockergnome]
Serious About XM or Sirius?
By Chris Pirillo

Don’t ask me why, but my post on XM versus Sirius has been generating user comments for well over a year now. If you were considering picking up either satellite radio service, I’d recommend reading through the thread. There’s a lot of good advice in there, including this bit that was just posted this morning:

I was a previous owner of both systems and I have completely made the switch to Sirius. First off, I got tired of XM nerfing my favorite channels and replacing them with empty channels. XM may claim they have more channels than Sirius but nearly all of their sports channels (27 MLB channels, the various college conference channels) are offline 20 hours out of a day and they play the following annoying message “The programming for this channel has not started yet”.

Why should I pay to have my favorite channels being relegated to internet only and be given empty programming. Also, Sirius truly covers College Sports, unlike XM. Sirius has 10 - 15 college football games covered every weekend… XM has their ACC game of the week or whatever… I’d rather have the larger selection of games to choose from.

XM’s tendency to eliminate non-mainstream channels has become highly annoying. They remove XM Liquid Metal (Very hard rock) and made it internet only. The removed Special X which was the channel for non mainstream items like William Shatner sings, Leonard Nemoy sings Christmas Carols, Wesley Willis, etc… I believe Special X is now internet only. The also cancelled Discovery Radio, Playboy Radio and replaced them with Golf and Tennis channels.

It just seemed that XM was becoming this SAFE radio medium… which is the same as terrestial radio. I enjoyed XM at first because I could hear genres of music that I can’t hear otherwise, but they continually kill risky or experimental channels.

Sirius has all of those experimental channels and they even have multiple channels of the most popular genres of music. Not to mention, they have more celebrity power in my opinion… it seems that everyone has a show on Sirius… Lance Armstrong, Phil Jackson, Bam Margera, Tony Hawk, Jason Ellis, Jimmy Buffet, Eminem, Martha Stewart, Howard Stern, Jim Breuer, Marky Ramone, Dave Mirra, Bode Miller, and Kelly Slater. These are just the host that I’m aware of, they are always having guest hosts in the studio… Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stones, etc.

On a side note, Sirius has reunited the original MTV VJ’s from the 80s and they DJ the Big 80s station… Nina Blackwood, Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, and Alan Hunter.

Sirius has also made a large investment in Radio Drama as seen on Cinematic Radio for Oscar winning filmakers, Charlie Kaufman, Joel and Ethan Coen to create 2 "made for radio" plays starring the likes of John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Meryl Streep, Marcia Gay Hardin, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hope Davis, and John Slattery.

For me, I want to support a medium that is seizing the moment and opportunity to air cutting edge, experimental and risky programming that I can't hear anywhere else... so Sirius radio was the obvious choice.

For those who want to pay for terrestrial radio, go buy your XM radio. Also, I could care less about the "technology" behind XM vs Sirius. I bought my Sprint cell phone because they are one of two carriers with "next generation" technology... and you know what, it freaking sucks. Unless I'm in a major city, I dont get a signal.. yet my friends with Billy Bob's cellular phone service continue to get a signal in the middle of [nowhere]. So don't come at me with that lame "technology" argument.

Ultimately, its up to you - if you decide to get either satellite radio service. No doubt, some of you were considering this for a holiday present.


Chris Pirillo is a best-selling author and the creator of the award-winning Lockergnome series of online publications.

Copyright © 2005 Lockergnome for Windows


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The Cobra's Take On The Macho Myth

The macho archetype in our culture was created by James Fenimore Cooper. His hero, Natty Bumppo aka Leatherstocking or The Deerslayer or Hawkeye, is the model for all heros that followed. Self-effacing, fearless, and attractive to both men and women. "Come back, Shane!" "Smile when you say that, stranger." "Listen here, Pilgrim." Just as Natty Bumppo was fictional, the characters in film and television are fictional. However, as Richard Hofstadter taught me, myth can affect behavior. The Cobra currently is testing what it means to be a man (Are Men Necessary?) in our culture. When I was in harness at the Collegium Excellens, I loved to talk about Fenimore Cooper and Natty Bumppo. The influence of the tall, silent, heroic stranger on our culture is enormous. Most of my students recognized my reference to the Lone Ranger; none recognized Natty Bumppo. Then, when I got their attention with the Masked Man and his "faithful Indian companion," I asked the class if they knew what Kemo Sabe meant. Blank stares greeted that query. In anticipation of "Brokeback Mountain," I suggested that it was a homoerotic expression given life by "too many lonely nights out on the plains." If this is (fair & balanced) deconstruction, so be it.

[x Monkee Love]
Hot Monkey Love
By Maureen Dowd

As President Bush tries to shake off his dazed look and regain his swagger, he will no doubt dust off his cowboy routine: his gunslinger pose, his squinty-eyed gaze, his dead-or-alive one-liners, his Crawford brush clearing.

But this time, he may want to think twice before strapping on a Texas-shaped belt buckle. W. might inadvertently conjure up images of Bushback Mountain.

The High Plains, one of the few remaining arenas where men were men, may now evoke something more ambiguous, like men with men. After "Brokeback Mountain," pitching that pup tent on the prairie will never seem the same.

Can a culture built on laconic cowboys like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood survive one rough-hewn cowboy crooning to another, as Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist tells Heath Ledger's Ennis Del Mar, "Sometimes I miss you so much, I can hardly stand it," and, "I wish I knew how to quit you"?

The Duke's tough "Pilgrim, you could've gotten somebody killed today and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth" has a different ring than Jake's vulnerable entreaty, "It could be like this, just like this, always."

Hmm. Maybe it's time to take another look at that sway in John Wayne's stride.

Everything will have to be re-evaluated. "High Plains Drifter" now sounds like a guy who might get arrested in a bus station bathroom. And audiences may be ready for "The Good, the Bad and the Bad Hair Day."

For decades, Republicans have had electoral success exploiting the simplistic frontier myth. Ronald Reagan galloped in from the West to rescue Washington. Dick Cheney's aides cast him as the stoic rancher who would blast a shotgun at rustlers if they messed with his cattle.

In 2004, the G.O.P. convention was staged like "The Magnificent Seven," with a gunslinging posse - including Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain - riding in with W. and Vice to save the town from the black hats. Poor John Kerry had to fall back on sailor imagery, skippering a boat into Boston and saluting the crowd with "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." At least he managed not to use the Village People's "In the Navy" as his theme song.

A president who hates dissonance, who prefers a world in black and white, is now confronted by confusing gray shades everywhere he looks.

Hollywood is busy sensitizing - and emotionally layering - archetypal macho guys, including our most famous alpha male. He's still strong and decisive. His back's as hairy as ever. But it's just not the same Kong.

This lovable overgrown monkey is more like the brooding, wounded and steadfast romantic heroes Heathcliff and Rick Blaine. Like Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy, Peter Jackson's big ape goes for gals with spunk. He likes babes who juggle more than jiggle.

This gorilla doesn't go around tossing "gorilla dust," as Ross Perot used to call it, just to get into another alpha's space. He doesn't look for a T. rex simply to rip its jaws apart - he only protects his loved ones. He'd rather hang out on his mountain, enjoying the sunset and watching his gal juggle and do pratfalls.

In a way, the new images of alpha archetypes are subversive precisely because the cowboys and the king of the jungle remain macho even as they become more nuanced.

The latest Kong waits for the blonde to come to him. "This time, he really seems to have the qualities of a hero in a woman's romance - he's distant, he's suffering, he's aloof," says Cynthia Erb, a professor and the author of "Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture."

As the hairy antihero grows more sensitive with each remake, the Ann Darrow character gets more sexual and aggressive. "She goes from a naïve, innocent, screaming, virginal character in the 30's to a sexually free, liberated feminist woman in the 70's," Ms. Erb notes. "In this one, she has the benefits of feminism and is the one who in some ways initiates the courtship. She actually works to earn his interest." And tries to save him.

For all its dazzling digital spectacle, "King Kong" is not as daring as it could be. Peter Jackson could have made Kong a woman. Or, while he was borrowing "Titanic" imagery for the lovers' parting on the Empire State Building, he could have gone all the way and made "Brokeback Island."

Just picture it: Leonardo DiCaprio, blond, doe-eyed and smitten, curled in the ape's epicene yet hairy grip. Kong, swinging both ways.

Maureen Dowd's most recent book is Are Men Necessary?

Copyright © 2005 The New York Times Company


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