Misogyny, aging male writers, and so on

Can you imagine racial attacks on Obama similar to the misogynistic attacks on Clinton? Of course not.

Maybe to the point: I'm reading Phillip Roth's Exit, Ghost, which treats of an elderly famous author who is pitching the woo to an up-to-date upper class Texas girl and Harvard graduate. He grills her closely about her sex life and they talk about books. Well, this is not Roth's finest work, I'll put it that way.

The lamest thing about it, aside from the post-prostate cancer impotence of the hero, is Roth's complete inability to place convincing dialogue in the mouths of any but his Jewish characters, the old guys, the kvetching moms, the street-wise kids, the wryly ironic professional men. So the girl comes off as a totally artificial sex goddess and book lover, kind of like Woody Allen's "Whore of Mensa," but without the hairy legs. Gosh, Mr. Zuckerman, isn't Hemingway just the greatest?  D. H. Lawrence? Like my tits? Want a blow job?" Ha ha ha.

In fact, the whole "voice" is off here, the way it was in Roth's only out and out bad book, from 1967, When She was Good, which is about a blonde who goes insane. Very much of its time.

Just to show that Zuckerman (we know him pretty well by now, don't we, he has inhabited so many of Roth's books) is not just an old lech, we see a tender relationship unfold between him and the wife of a late friend of his who has had brain surgery and is a physical mess, just like him, in spite of which he actually visits her squalid apartment and even kisses her! Gosh, she was a sex goddess herself once, who stole his friend away from his first wife and whom Zuckerman always confused with Anne Frank, although she could not possibly have been Anne Frank.Wow. What a big heart he has, after all. Or is this just confusion? Oh, there's incest mixed up in all this, too, but it is not very interesting incest. Some say incest is  best, but not in this case. Well, I'm not finished, so there may be some juicy revelations toward the end.

I'll let you know.

Update: Exit, Ghost, is really really bad, as bad as When She was Good.

Here is Clive James in the NYT Book Review going on about what a great novel Exit, Ghost is.

Christopher Hitchens redeems himself in this great takedown of Exit, Ghost.

Comments

[gerry rosser]

There's something about Philip Roth's writing that I just can't be bothered with. Ditto some other critics' darlings such as John Updike, John Barth, and that whole generation of "serious" writers. Maybe I'm just a dimwitted member of the boobocracy.

[Hattie]

I think it's a generational thing. We pre-boomers were very parent dominated and repressed. The 60's was the return of the repressed for us. Those of us who rebelled had a horrible time with our parents, and the ones who did not rebel are the elderly dullards of today. This was before the advertisers caught on to using rebellion as an advertising ploy. We had to fight very hard for ourselves, and that has scarred us.
My favorite living writers were born in the 20's and 30's. Great writing is born out of family turmoil. That's why Jonathan Franzen is about the only (youngish) contemporary writer I like. Most of what's written now is tripe. This latest novel of Roth's is full of problems, because he is making the big mistake of succumbing to the Age of Tripe instead of sticking to the kind of work he is so good at.
Women writers I admire are Marge Piercy, Carol Shields, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and Joyce Carol Oates.
Oh, and the personal info thing does not even work for me. I have just been to lazy too look into this, but I'll get around to it.

[Brandon]

"That's why Jonathan Franzen is about the only (youngish) contemporary writer I like."

Best known as the guy who dissed Oprah:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Franzen

[gerry rosser]

I'm not much for "generational" stuff myself. I think we are all individuals who bumble our way along. The "generation" stuff is for the press who struggle to find anything to say. I was listening to an XMPR interview with an author (and editor of Details magazine) wherein he discussed his book "X Saves the World." Hey, there is/was no "Generation X," there is/was no "Baby Boomer Generation," or any other "generation" in the sense of intellectual/cultural uniformity. It's all crap to me.

That said, I understand your point, but am lost when you refer to Roth and say "the kind of work he is so good at." He's always been just plain boring, to me (as are the others of his sort of "books about nothing" genre. They could have written the godawful Jerry Seinfeld show.

[Hattie]

You make good points, Gerry. And I don't really disagree with you. Roth's subject matter is often repellent to me. Many women find him completely offensive. Perhaps it's his wrongheadedness that fascinates me so much. But I feel that I need to know what goes on in the minds of men like him, because I have had to deal with a lot of them in my life. My husband is not like that, thank goodness. But knowing what men of his kind are like has saved me from intimate involvement with them. How else do I find out what's going on with such men if not through fiction? When they hide so many of their activities from women? A lot of women choose denial, but that's not my way. So part of my thinking about Roth is pragmatic.
What is unique about fiction, as opposed to any other art form, is that good fiction exposes the inner and outer person at the same time so that motivations are revealed. In everyday life we strive to hide our agendas, our personal shames, and so on. Roth shows his hero's flaws in obsessive (you might say excessive) detail.
And I know I downplay the individual in my thinking as compared to the social forces that work on us. But it really is different to have memories of WW II, which ended when I was five years old. It was not at all clear that we would win. We lived in California, and for all we knew the Japanese would be pulling themselves up on the shore at any time. The whole country was mobilized to win the fight. That is very different from today, when most of us ignore the Iraq War, most of the time.

[Brandon]

Remember King Wenclas? He doesn't care for Franzen.

http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/2004/10/exclusive-debate-with-franzen.html

And he is best known for spurning Oprah's Book Club endorsement, supposedly because the Book Club logo on the jacket would put off male readers.
http://www.mobylives.com/Oprah_v_Franzen.html

[Hattie]

Yes, yes, there are a lot of reasons to dislike Franzen. But that doesn't mean his critics are better writers than he is. And Oprah is not god, even though she thinks she is.
Did we ever discuss King Wenclas? I don't know anything about him.

[Brandon]

An excellent article from The Complete Review--
http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol3/issue1/oprah3.htm--
takes on both people and concludes: "We can only implore you: read the book -- or another book, or many books. And ignore the personalities. (And, yes, we are aware of the irony of writing a piece that focusses almost entirely on the personalities and says almost nothing about the book ....)"

I'll probably check out the book sometime.

We discussed King Wenclas a few years ago. I exchanged magazines with him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wenclas

As for Oprah, I neither idolize nor loathe her. This is the website of a UHH professor who contributed to an anthology about her.

http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~english/faculty/richardson.html

[Brandon]

This article reveals how much of a cultural force is Oprah.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/01/20/1137553745680.html

Oprah, in fact, far from swimming with the perceived tide of mainstream America, has often swum against it. ...
As racial minorities struggle to break into the mainstream, Oprah is black, proud and a force no one can ignore. Oprah is also a woman in a man's world but a strong woman whom no man dare cross.

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, into the poorest possible circumstances. Her home town was Kosciusko, Mississippi, in the era before civil rights when black Americans could be killed in the Deep South for trying to vote. ...

Franzen's critics may or may not be better writers than he, but no other author receiving the OBC endorsement has griped about it.

[Hattie]

Hmm. Maybe Oprah is god, after all. Imagine overcoming a start in life like that and becoming who she is.
Something to ponder.