Comments on: Philip Roth wins the Booker Prize: Carmen’s Complaint

By: Philip Roth wins the Booker Prize: Carmen’s Complaint « Velvet Coalmine

Philip Roth wins the Booker Prize: Carmen’s Complaint « Velvet Coalmine — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:08:20 +0000

[…] now outdated post written for Bad Reputation. Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn’t want to shake hands with him. – Jacqueline […]

By: Rhian Jones

Rhian Jones — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:46:55 +0000

In reply to Rob. That's one of the two essays linked in the last paragraph! DFW is an excellent critic.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:43:19 +0000

In reply to Pet Jeffery.

The age-based essentialism is not without consequences.

I read quite a lot of books widely viewed as “for children”. And have noticed that (with a few exceptions, such as the Alice books) publishers seem to have a lot less respect for the textual integrity of books they regard as “children’s” than those they perceive as aimed at an adult market. Old “children’s books”, when reprinted in recent years, are very often abridged, censored or otherwise changed.

By “otherwise changed” I have in mind such things as updating pre-decimal money.

Currently, I’m reading Noel Streatfeild books, and previous experience has led me to seek early editions of these, rather modern paperbacks. Just now, a slightly scruffy first edition (1944) of “Curtain Up” rests by my bedside.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:27:38 +0000

In reply to Rob. On a gut feeling about these writers, I have read not a word of Roth, Updike or Mailer. I'm rather pleased to see my gut feeling confirmed.

By: Pet Jeffery

Pet Jeffery — Mon, 23 May 2011 12:46:21 +0000

I wonder whether it might be profitable to consider gender essentialism in a wider context. There is also an age-based essentialism: the idea that books about children are exclusively for children.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 23 May 2011 12:43:48 +0000

I can’t think of Roth anymore without thinking of the start of a particular David Foster Wallace essay. “Mailer, Updike, Roth – the Great Male Narcissists who’ve dominated postwar American fiction are now in their senescence, and it must seem to them no coincidence that the prospect of their own deaths appears backlit by the approaching millennium and online predictions of the death of the novel as we know it. When a solipsist dies, after all, everything goes with him.”

By: Miranda

Miranda — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:18:39 +0000

In reply to Russell.

The big irony for me when I read about the Booker row is that my mum is the biggest Roth fan I’ve ever met! She owns everything he’s done and raves about The Human Stain.

Which doesn’t mean he isn’t very …mantastic. But Calill’s aren’t down to some innate womanly inability to enjoy him, that’s for sure. The suggestion in the press to that effect is bizarre.

By: Russell

Russell — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:05:10 +0000

In reply to Miranda.

I’ve often considered what makes a “believable” male or female character in the works of my favourite authors. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s realistic motivations and emotional responses regardless of gender; it’s how the characters deal with those that matters.

But my opinion is probably invalid as I only read “trashy” fantasy books and never read anything “worthwhile” anyway.

(those quote marks are there for a reason)

By: Miranda

Miranda — Mon, 23 May 2011 09:59:06 +0000

In reply to Russell.

Yeah.

It’s funny. Sebastian Faulks has an army of fawning fans who say things like “you write women SO believably!”

Which may be true, but the implications of it – in both directions, as you say – make me cringe.

Certainly there are modes of behaviour that are socially acceptable for men and for women, and a writer could observe these. But surely that takes one only halfway to a believable character anyway.

By: Russell

Russell — Mon, 23 May 2011 09:42:57 +0000

Is this perhaps an example of the essentialist arguments cutting both ways? I don’t wish to be too controversial, but as a man I’ve been told on a few occasions that I shouldn’t write about, think about, talk about, try to understand various experiences which are regarded as traditionally female, since there’s no way for me as a male to sympathise. Now, it seems some women are being told not to criticise Phillip Roth because they are not men. Both arguments seem like the worst kind of rubbish to me (creative excercise is about imagination, not experience)!