7. "On Roth" In response to In response to 5 Wed Jun-26-02 10:32 AM
Janey --
What Roth have you read and not felt? The earlier work is, in my opinion, much better. "Portnoy's Complaint" is one of the few books I've actually laughed out loud while reading. "Goodbye Columbus" is good, too. But I haven't really been able to get into much of his more recent work, and was astonished when "American Pastoral" won the National Book Award. It's just not that good of a novel, in my opinion.
As for the great Jewish writers, I find it interesting that you only mentioned female authors in that list of yours. For my money, any discussion of "Jewish" writers is a farce if any of the following names aren't mentioned:
1) Saul Bellow 2) Vladimir Nabokov 3) Norman Mailer 4) Franz Kafka 5) Isaac Babel 6) Bernard Malamud 7) Arthur Miller
I'm not trying to pick a fight here, Janey, but you really can't eff with that seven.