This lengthy (807 pages, plus
acknowledgements, notes, and an index) biography of the esteemed late American
author Philip Roth is fascinating, perceptive, and illuminating.
As one who has
read all of Roth’s books, I enjoyed learning about his writing method, along
with who and what influenced him. Blake Bailey, the author of this deeply
insightful and brutally frank biography, makes it clear, that, despite Philip
Roth’s lifetime of denial, he was, more often than not, the main character in
each of his works of fiction.
As I read Philip
Roth, the Biography, I connected to the great novelist in ways that I have
never been able to do while reading his voluminous output of fiction. Even as I
learned about his numerous faults, including his inability to accept criticism,
I could not help but continue to admire Philip Roth, both as a writer and as an
individual.
I
always enjoy reading well-written biographies, especially those about writers
and artists. Besides the fact that Philip
Roth, the Biography reads like a fast-moving work of fiction, it provides a
great deal of insight into the mind of a great writer, one whose body of work
will remain part of the American canon well into the future.
Blake Bailey
offers an open window into the life of a man who, despite the fact that he was
world famous, had always been and, to a certain extent, remains an enigma.
Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.
Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain.
Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike…
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison,
which was first published in 1970, is a short, utterly astounding, beautifully
crafted novel. As with Morrison’s other works of fiction, The Bluest Eye reveals in stark, sometimes harsh, occasionally exquisite
detail, the hardships and traumas suffered by her characters.
Morrison
won the Pulitzer
Prize for Beloved; she was awarded
the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1993.
The
Bluest Eye takes place mostly in
Lorain, Ohio, Morrison’s own hometown. As such, it is semi-autobiographical,
while, at the same time, offering a window into the struggles of countless
other African Americans living in post-World War II America.
Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.
Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.
Stones from the Riverimagines
the life of Trudi, a girl with dwarfism, during the period of time from the
end of World War I through the years of the Third Reich in the fictional
town of Burgdorf, Germany.
More than anything else, Trudi, who is raised by a
loving, understanding father and basks in the warmth of others in her small
town, wishes to grow. As a child and a young woman she spends hours each day in
futile attempts to lengthen her body, ultimately coming to the realization that
she will always be who she is.
During the course of this beautifully written, evocative
novel Trudi experiences a short, heady period of romantic love, followed by
years of loneliness and regret. In the end, she comes to understand that she and
she alone is responsible for the direction of her life and the degree of
happiness and satisfaction that she experiences.
An epic novel charting the course of German history in the first half of the twentieth century follows Trudi Montag, a dwarf who serves as her town's librarian, unofficial historian, and recorder of the secret stories of her people. 20,000 first printing.
On a gray October afternoon, Grayson Simmons
discovers something surprising about himself. That revelation doesn’t just
upset the applecart, but smashes it to pieces, forcing him to decide how to
reconstruct his life.
Grayson wonders what it means to be a member of one so-called “race” or
another. Who is Black? Who is white? Is a person who is the product of an
African-American father and a white mother, Black, white, or something else?
During the course of Excavating the Truth Grayson learns about the
violent death of the young man who had been his father. That, followed by a
great deal of soul searching, forces him to conclude that, even though one's
skin tone should not matter, in twenty-first century America it still does.
