Word: rothian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Humbling” comes shortly on the heels of last year’s “Indignation,” a similarly clipped, brutal character study, this time of a younger Rothian hero, Marcus Mesner: the already- (or almost-) deceased narrator who must recount and scrutinize the events that lead to his expulsion from Winesburg College and a death sentence at the front lines of the Korean War. Like in “The Humbling,” the thematic and narrative concerns of that book seemed more important to Roth than the construction of an illuminating or sympathetic...
...life takes. And Coixet has a tendency to linger on some of her scenes, giving them an unnecessary, darkly portentous quality. Some of this story's effectiveness derives from the fact that even severely threatened life often goes waywardly forward, immune to portent. There's also a non-Rothian reconciliatory note - a sort of emotional consolation prize - in Kepesh's relationship with his awful son - that I could have done without...
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