Philip Roth
Indignazione

This is not a book about Jews although it talks about Jews.

This is not a book about war although it talks about war.

This is not a book about university although it talks about university.

This is not a book about sex although it talks about sex.

This is not a book about family although it talks about family.

This is not a book about sports although it talks about sports.

This in my opinion is a book about self-determination...

This is the fourth book of Philip Milton Roth I have read since he left forever our valley of tears (r.i.p. at the end of May this year), but it is also his 22nd and third-to-last novel written before he permanently laid down his pen, I believe in 2012.

The themes are recurrent I have noticed, which is the relationship Americans have with family,

with sex,

with war,

with work,

with sports,

with education etc. all seen under a let’s say “Jewish” lens and it could not be different given his origins.

The key words of this novel seem to be three: butcher, blowjob and Korea, but in my opinion, they are two: love for oneself and desire for independence from constraints no matter the cost.

The plot can be condensed (without fear of spoiling anything significant) into a few words, which is: in the first person, a dead or nearly dead man tells us how he came to be such even before he reached his nineteenth year, having us travel a journey in the first half of the last century in a puritanical and conformist America that leaves little space for those who want to take liberties from predetermined dogmas unless one is willing to pay personally as our “hero” will do.

Philip Roth manages to engage me with his intriguing way of drawing me once again into that “americanyddish” reality that still exists and perhaps will never cease...

And it goes without saying that I've already started another of his novels, in fact, the last one, “Nemesis” and then I will also read the other twenty books of his that I managed to download into my small great Kindle and nothing or rather no, if I'm lucky I will also review that one...

or rather no n° 2, it was released in Italy but only in 2017 the film of the same name directed by James Allan Schamus in his debut as a director but already a collaborator of Ang Lee, I haven't seen it but I wouldn't mind...