In the present paper I wish to explore the narrow borderline between history and fiction in Aharon Appelfeld’s The Age of Wonders (1978) and Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock (1988). Could Appelfeld’s ...Age of Wonders, a seemingly realistic novel about the Holocaust, be at once what Sartre called “a literature of extreme situations” and belong to the fantastic genre? If we accept Todorov’s definition of the latter as “an hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event”, it is precisely the absence of any supernatural events, emphasized by the empty page separating Appelfeld’s protagonist’s childhood and adulthood that raises the question weather the Holocaust, never explicitly represented in the novel, could be interpreted as the apocalyptic “age of wonders”. In contrast, Roth’s musings about Jewish history in the 20th century in his Operation Shylock are structured as a re-appropriation and a parody of the classical fantastic genre, where Appelfeld, as well as Roth himself, are set as fictional characters and doppelgängers of themselves. In both works, the authors show the fallacy of realism to represent history, and in transcending the so-called “factual” realm, blur the boundaries between history and fiction, autobiography and auto-fiction.
Political Initiation in the Novels of Philip Roth exemplifies how literature and, specifically, the work of Philip Roth can help readers understand the ways in which individuals develop their ...political identity, learn to comprehend political ideas, and define their role in society. Combining political science, literary theory, and anthropology, the book describes an individual's political coming of age as a political initiation story, which is crafted as much by the individual himself as by the circumstances influencing him, such as political events or the political attitude of the parents. Philip Roth's characters constantly re-write their own stories and experiment with their identities. Accordingly, Philip Roth's works enable the reader to explore, for instance, how individuals construct their identity against the backdrop of political transformations or contested territories, and thereby become initiands—or fail to do so. Contrary to what one might expect, initiations are not only defining moments in childhood and early adulthood; instead, Roth shows how initiation processes recur throughout an individual's life.
Philip Roth is widely acknowledged as one of the defining authors in the literature of post-war America. Yet he has long been a polarising figure, and throughout his career he has won the disapproval ...of an extremely diverse range of public moralists – including, it would seem, the Nobel Prize committee. Far from seeking to make Roth a more palatable writer, this book argues that his interest in transgressing the “virtue racket”, as one of his characters put it, defines his importance. Placing the unruliness of human passions at the heart of his writing, Roth is the most subtle exponent of a line of thinking that descends from Nietzsche, and which values the arts for their capacity to scrutinise life in an extra-moral way. This book explores the depth and richness of insight that Roth’s fiction thereby generates, and defines what is at stake in his challenge to widely-held assumptions about the ethical value of literature. As well as examining how Roth emerged as a writer and his main lines of influence, it considers his impact on questions about the nature and value of tragedy, the relevance of art to life, the relationship between art and the unconscious, the idea of a literary canon, and how fiction can illuminate America’s complex post-war history.
Philip Roth Brauner, David
2007., 20130719, 2007, 2007-07-01, 2013-07-19
eBook
This is a groundbreaking study of the most important contemporary American novelist, Philip Roth. Reading the author alongside a number of his contemporaries, and focusing particularly on his later ...fiction, this book offers a highly accessible, informative and persuasive view of Roth as an intellectually adventurous and stylistically brilliant writer who constantly reinvents himself in surprising ways. At the heart of this book are a number of detailed and nuanced readings of Roth’s works both in terms of their relationships with each other and with fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Pynchon, Tim O’Brien, Brett Easton Ellis, Stanley Elkin, Howard Jacobson and Jonathan Safran Foer. Brauner identifies as a thread running through all of Roth’s work the use of paradox, both as a rhetorical device and as an organising intellectual and ideological principle.
The first comprehensive assessment of Philip Roth's later novels, Mocking the Age offers rich and insightful readings that explore how these extraordinary works satirize our contemporary culture. ...From The Ghost Writer to The Plot Against America, Roth uses humor to address deadly serious matters, including social and political issues, psychological problems, postmodern concerns, and the absurd. In her clear and extensive analyses of these works, Elaine B. Safer looks at how Roth's approach to the comic incorporates the self- deprecating humor of Jewish comedians, as well as the humor of nineteenth- century Eastern European Jewish storytellers and such twentieth-century writers as Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow. Filling the void on critical examinations of Roth's later work, Safer's book provides a thorough appraisal of Roth's lifetime accomplishment and an essential evaluation of his comic genius.
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