Word: reader
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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THERE IS NO reality in Phillip Roth's new novel. The Counterlife is a story with so many U-turns and abrupt stops that it leaves the reader befuddled about what to believe or not to believe about Roth's fictional world. Roth, an old master, has created a story without the traditional beginning, middle and end, and by doing so he provides insight into...
...novel the reader is rudely awakened from his pleasant position in front of the fire, curled up with this good book, to discover that what he has been reading is a complete lie. The novel by Roth is a book about Nathan writing a novel...
...twist in The Counterlife is more confusing and shocking than the old "Alice has been dreaming" ploy, because Roth plays with the reader's fundamental desire to accept the world on the pages of the book. It somehow leaves the reader with an empty feeling to discover that Roth has published a novel written by one of his fictional characters. Yet this duality provides an insight into Roth's own mind...
ROTH IS A person divided, and the cause of this schism in his personality shouldn't surprise the reader. In writing about the life of Jews in the U.S., Roth confronts head on his own split between his origins in a Jewish ghetto in New Jersey and the urbane literary worldliness that he has now developed. The Counterlife doesn't stray far from its literary antecedents set in and around Newark, New Jersey, but there is a sense that Roth is uprooted...
...reminiscence. Allen wanders through such barren terrain in Radio Days, a series of vignettes drawn from his boyhood during the glory days of radio. Time progresses, but to no discernible end. While the vignettes are not quite incomprehensible, they certainly are not laden with meaning, either. Kind of like Reader's Digest...