I’ve read this month Updike’s Terrorist and Roth’s American Pastoral. I was slightly disappointed with both, though that may be presumptuous. For some reason I just don’t connect well with Updike. He’s very observant and very good at description but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the ending. I thought he handled the main character very well though and offered a good picture of the pluralism of the contemporary US. Roth’s AP was much bigger in size and scope. It’s a history of Newark and a family therein but really it’s also the history of the US for the first three quarters of the twentieth century. It focuses on immigrant families and industry, on religious relations, and the moral landscape. It is a lament and there’s a lot of anger there; some humour but mostly tragedy. The writing doesn’t quite have the fireworks of Sabbath’s Theatre but it has excellent dialogue. There’s also some good stuff early on about subjectivity (quite Hegelian, I thought). The only reason I was disappointed was because it is so hyped and I’m just not sure it deserves it.
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