[x]

Politically and morally, Roth was a mess. What he put Clare Bloom through! But really, shouldn't she have known what was in store for her? Didn't she read his novels?

Nonetheless, Philip Roth was a good writer. The problem was that after you read hundreds of pages about the glove-making industry in Newark, NJ, did you really want to read hundreds more about the parks system or the butcher shops of the same city? Especially since all that is gone now.

I know, they said the same thing about Faulkner. But sometimes "they" were right. You might not have wanted to keep taking those fictional trips to Yoknapatapha county, and it was the same way about Weequahic.

The best comment about Roth came from an (I think) Asian-American reviewer who read The Plot Against America and said that she learned from the book that if FDR had been defeated we would have had concentration camps in the US (think about it a minute).

[miss marmelstein]

Roth is a wonderful writer. Actresses are attracted to writers - you know, they might write a great part for them. Bloom is Jewish, too, so that may have been part of the attraction.

I still love Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Roth and Faulkner were pikers compared to James Michener when it came to writing hundreds of tangential pages.