Three days away from the Internet is a Cold Turkey everyone should have once in a while. (Well, I did read they Sunday NYT – a difficult chore without being able to respond.) Blogging to resume shortly.
Speaking of the NYT, it was interesting (and encouraging) that the editors for their newly spruced-up Book Review chose liberal hawk Paul Berman to review The Plot Against America – Philip Roth’s imagining of a Nazi take-over of America via the election of Lindbergh. The review, which is extremely long for the Times, at least long for previous regimes, starts out an apparent rave, yet ends with some qualms. Berman seems to be pointing to a strain of self-pity in Roth in his choice of this material at a time when anti-Semitism is everywhere but America, indeed when America seems the bastion against it. I will hold my fire, since I haven’t read the book. [That’s never stopped you before.-ed. Somehow I knew you’d say that.] But I will get to it. I regard Roth as our indespensable author, although my favorites among his novels – The Counterlife and The Ghost Writer – are idiosyncratic.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member