Word: roth
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...skepticism about busing involves big cities whose racial makeup allows no possibility of balance. Washington, D.C.'s schools are now 95% black, Newark's 72%, and Detroit's 64%. For years, black and white educators have written integration off as a realistic option for these communities. Now, though. Judge Roth's insistence on an integration plan for the Detroit metropolitan area raises the possibility that other areas may be forced to consider a formal linking of city and suburban schools...
Like a bridge player with an unbiddable hand, drama passes again in Unlikely Heroes: 3 Philip Roth Stories...
...attack on the corruption that language must suffer in American politics. The book's events are told through press conferences. White House strategy sessions, Presidential addresses and network news analyses. In his best two pieces here, "Tricky Has Another Crisis: or, The Skull Session" and "The Assasination of Tricky." Roth has constructed frenzied fugues of political inanities...
There will be those, I suspect, who'll deery Roth--as they've already decried De Antonio--for the simplicity of his attack. To do so is to miss his point. Millhouse and Our Gang are simple, direct attacks because the object of their fury himself chooses to take so simple-minded a tack in his relationship with the American people. In burlesqueing such simplicity. Roth and De Antonio can only hope to force some concern over the degenerate state into which political language has fallen. Our Gang is hardly a partisan effort. Although there is a curiously inconsistent logic...
...Gang is hardly a major addition to Roth's literary output--although I'm sure the House of Random will do its damnedest to make us think otherwise--but it is a most valuable one. For there should be room on the shelves for minor works from major authors. Despite what Mailer would have us believe, to be engage need not be a full time occupation. It's also nice that, in this case, Roth should be the particular example at hand. Those who care to pretend that the seventies are nothing more but the dreadful fifties warmed over need...