Word: jewishes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Duke Wolff, a confidence man, conducted all his affairs close to the edge, masquerading as a WASP, a Yale graduate, an aeronautical engineer with the proper degrees from--of all places--the Sorbonne. He unscrupulously altered his give-away Jewish name the same way he adjusted his resume--as it suited his needs. When his creditors threatened to blow his cover, he skipped town, cruising indifferently from Manhattan extravagance--lunching at Club 21 and collecting forged membership cards from places like the New York Racquet Club--to boarding house sleaziness in Atlanta, and at last to a dishonorable...
...aging mentor, newly popular short story writer E.I. Lonoff, whom he has never met. Here he embarks on an intellectual journey to discover both the mystery behind Lonoff's ghost-like absence from the "real world" and the secret to Lonoff's uncanny ability to characterize the Jewish anti-hero in his stories. Along the way, Nathan encounters Hope, Lonoff's lonely, bitter and jealous wife, and the enchanting Amy Bellette, his precocious and loving student...
MASTURBATING HEROES dot Philip Roth's novels like so many used kleenex on the floor. But his 11th book, The Ghost Writer, would not be lightly tossed aside. It delves into the mind of a Jewish writer and surfaces only after revealing the harsh compromises that must be made to attain great stature as an author. One imagines Roth secreting himself one night in I.B. Singer's bedroom closet all the while scribbling a short story about what he sees. In the morning he discovers in his lap a small masterpiece, part autobiography, part fancy; but it is the whole...
...writer's self-sacrificial nature, insistent Jewish guilt, and sexual desire all torment Roth's hero, a young short story writer named Nathan Zuckerman. Nathan's dilemma concerns the purpose of his art: is his ultimate responsibility to himself or his Jewish heritage? Even the writer of the Bible must have paused to consider the personal and social consequences of his creation. In the end, Nathan, like Roth, chooses to write for himself and let the kleenex fall where they may. "There is obviously no simple way to be great," says Nathan...
...protagonist, Nathan reveals an even more intriguing mind. He is the young, modern Jew, acutely aware of the horror of the Holocaust yet eager to spare his writing any Jewish self-pity. His stories are icy, even mean, much to his parents' chagrin. Nathan's battle with his family over a story they deem insulting to Jews must echo a similar fight Roth himself waged with his relatives over Portnoy's Complaint...