roseyviolet's Journal

So, for the past couple of years now, I’ve been on kind of a Philip Roth bender. I’m not sure exactly how it started — I think it was probably The Plot Against America that got me started. That or The Human Stain; I read them both fairly early in the process. Anyway, unlike most of the authors I’ve gotten “into” over the years (P.G. Wodehouse being the notable exception) Roth is prolific enough that I’ve been able to keep reading him on and off for the last two years at a rate of a book every few months or so without even coming close to running out. Without even skimming the surface, really. And credit where it’s due, the man can fucking write. And write and write and write and write. I’ll admit, some of the more recent stuff is like, okay. The Pulitzer is all very well and nice, Phil, but seriously. An editor? I’m just saying. Beyond a certain point in Operation Shylock I just started pissily turning pages until I sensed a change in subject, and even then it was like, Shut up already, we GET it. And for what it’s worth, speaking as a gyno-American, in the face of some of his later, and less ironic ~~rant~~ ~~rambl~~ musings about anti-Semitism, it’s kind of difficult not to think, on occasion, “Oh. Huh. You mean, kind of the way you feel about WOMEN?!?” But that having been said, you have to admit, the guy knows his trade.

Now, I haven’t been reading the books in any kind of order or anything (which is probably for the best, because by and large I’ve liked the earlier books — the ones I suspect his publishers could be more insistent upon his listening to his editors on — much better, and if I’d read them at all chronologically I probably would have ended up disappointed. Mostly it’s been a matter of going into a book store, and whichever titles they have in stock that I haven’t read yet, grabbing the one whose jacket blurb most appeals to me at the moment, and this past week, I finally picked up Portnoy’s Complaint. Now, I had actually already that one years ago, and by “years ago,” I mean at a truly absurdly, stupidly, jaw-droppingly inappropriately young age. Like, eleven. Or, okay, maybe thirteen, but seriously, like, scandalously young for a nice little blonde girl from the suburbs of Long Island. What can I say? I was a remarkably advanced child. Why, by the age of fourteen, I was already masturbating at a twelfth grade level. Or so my English teacher told me. Ba-dum-bum. Ew!

Okay, so in all honesty, if you had asked me a week ago, I would have openly admitted to having only skimmed it for the dirty parts, because I would have assumed that that was what I had done. But in re-reading this thing, like, three decades later, I realize now that not only had I in fact read it cover-to-cover, every last word, but that those words stayed with me; imprinted themselves in me, in my pores, with such tenacity that after a single reading — in freaking middle school! — I find myself now recalling entire sections from memory. And not just the hot parts, either, but whole long comic runs, turns of phrase, descriptive passages, from every section of the book. There were moments where, if asked, I could probably have set the book down and recited most of a given paragraph from memory, and not missed more than a word or two here or there. For real, this has been one of the most extraordinary reading experiences of my life. I mean, it’s pretty rare for me to sit down and write a page or two on the subject of what I’m reading, let alone how I feel about what I’m reading (unless what I’m feeling is frustration or annoyance). On the one hand, I’m astonished at the power of my own memory, but on the other, I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that I’m only discovering, at this late date, that the fame and staying power of this book is due not to its shock value, but to the sheer brilliance of the writing. Aside from being one of the funniest books ever put into print (one particular section had me laughing out loud, so hard and so uncontrollably I was afraid I was going to re-injure my back, for a solid page and a half), but the writing itself is so utterly brilliant and so, I realize now, influential; I can only compare it to what it would be like for a thirty-year-old comedy writer who had never previously encountered them to stumble on a Monty Python marathon while innocently channel-surfing at three in the morning. To just blunder unsuspectingly into the source of everything you yourself have been doing your entire “artistic” life, influenced without even realizing it by people who had themselves been influenced by the people who had been influenced by the Original. Freaky, and a little bit humbling.

I don’t really have a point to make here, I guess; just an observation about how sometimes life throws you these funny little surprises to keep you on your toes. But if you haven’t read this book in a while — or ever — I can’t recommend it highly enough. And if you’ve been putting it off because you’re afraid for some reason that it might feel dated or not live up to your memory/expectation, don’t be. Aside from a couple of John Lindsay jokes, you’d never know it hadn’t been written last year (which is another thing that pleasantly surprised me), so go for it.

And I guess that concludes my report on “What I Read During My Fifth Grade Summer Vacation.” Next Week: The Borrowers Afield!

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