Once in a while...not usually. More so lately, though it sounds like the latest, nsm.(Yay! He's better keeping it simple, in this shikse's opinion.)ETA: It's trippy, I think, that somebody so literary is writing AUs now.(America stays out of or loses WWII. I don't remember...I've only read reviews and thought "Damn! Roth's going AU.") Guess fic's mainstream, now.

I'm not quite 1/2 way through TPAA so it could be that he takes a U-turn into the obscure, but I'm hoping not.

ION, if you haven't read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, get ye to the booke store.

I've hesitated reading Roth before because I was of the mistaken idea that his books were difficult in a Pynchon or Joycean manner. If his other books are like TPAA then I'm obviously wrong.

I find Roth to be very readable. Very funny, sexy, smart, neurotic characters. His writing is lively and rich, but not at all difficult. He's also very thoughtful about politics and history, but not in a dogmatic way.

What Hec Said.Although, should I have a daughter, I probably wouldn't want her to get into Portnoy at thirteen. It probably fucked me up. But I've had a lifelong button for Brainy Jewish Guys. But nobody ever wanted me for a Monkey. Yet.

He's also very thoughtful about politics and history, but not in a dogmatic way.

this is very true of his latest book. At the end of it he actually adds a true chronology about the lives of some of the key politicians and news makers of the 1940s. This brings some reality back to the reader.

I guess I was under the impression that reading Philip Roth was like watching an un-funny Woody Allen movie. If that's not the case, mebbe he is worth trying. (One does get tired of middle-aged men worrying about their sex appeal, moreso when they can fantasize themselves supermodel girlfriends.)

Nutty, who gave you this woefully wrong-headed impression of Roth? 'Cause Ima have to hunt that person down and engage in a little corrrective literary criticism by way of pummeling and ass-thumping.

Of course, I say this as someone who even liked The Breast (okay, maybe not liked, but I thought it was desperately peculiar and never boring), but still.

"What? And he should kiss his mother with that mouth?" Some of it is, but not exclusively. JZ, that was Philip Roth's Alien Cock Tree Story, you should forgive the expression. But mostly, wrod. Dude, no wonder you liked my fic. They're all Philip Roth impressions.

I've had Nutty's impression since reading Portnoy's Complaint. But I have trouble with humor, sometimes.

I still want to write my Portnoy's Complaint. What? That is true of him, but that's not all there is.(It's part of what I like, but I'm a perv.) "Goodbye Columbus" is all literary and heartwarming, kind of. Socially conscious, too. And the later work is not quite as "ooh, sex!"