Roth’s mid-seventies spit in the eye to his dead wife. This is an uncomfortable book when you learn how much of this is taken directly from Roth’s own life – (that dude is gross) – but it is funny. And very well written.
The book itself is basically the same story told sixteen different ways: this bitch tricked me into marrying her then wouldn’t give me a divorce and made me miserable but thank God she got in a car accident and died. By page five you have the basic plot points, the remaining 350 are a never ending vortex of specifics, points of view, repetitions….it is almost like some sort of Eastern religious exercise.
Anyone looking for material to charge Philip Roth with hatred of women or at least a “serious problem” with women can start right here. Not one woman in this book is anything other than a castrating bitch or a dimwit. Why read such stuff? Well, like I say, it is funny. And the specifics are fascinating – mid-60s coeds and Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side and Wesleyan and Princeton and so forth. And it is interesting – just how a good writer can get you to sympathize, heck, empathize with finally caving in and beating your wife. (“Beating a woman,” as Roth’s narrates, “that’s almost as bad as beating a child.” I’d say lumping in women as equals to children is pretty bad, too.)
I feel a little scummy recommending this book – but yet I do.
