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A review by chrysemys
Indignation by Philip Roth
2.0
The first Philip Roth book I've read, although I did watch the mediocre film based on The Human Stain.
*My first impulse was to describe this as a stream of consciousness work, but it is an actual story. It is, however, quite solipsistic in the tiresome manner of its callow narrator and for that reason, it reminded me a bit (but only a bit) of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. Maybe also somewhat of Catcher in the Rye, although it's been a very long time since I read that one so I can't be sure.
*I had to check the publication date of this work to confirm that it was, indeed, written in the relatively recent portion of Roth's long career. The way that it's written makes it seem like a novel from mid-20th century. Not because it is set in the middle of the 20th century but because of a) the qualities of the narrator and his family and b) the way the narrator expresses himself. I think that the angst of the mid-century Jew was done to death in fiction by the 1970s, in no small part (I gather) by Roth himself. 2008 seems a little late to be dragging something like this to the table, dripping with stereotypes. I don't know how to express this, but the way the narrator thinks about other people in relation to himself seems kind of clueless in an almost sociopathic way. I think this might have been a common way of writing first person narrative in the past, but it is hard to believe this guy's thoughts from a modern perspective.
*I did find the theme of mental illness fairly compelling, especially as filtered through the perceptions of this somewhat unreliable narrator (who may suffer from something of that sort himself.)
*My first impulse was to describe this as a stream of consciousness work, but it is an actual story. It is, however, quite solipsistic in the tiresome manner of its callow narrator and for that reason, it reminded me a bit (but only a bit) of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. Maybe also somewhat of Catcher in the Rye, although it's been a very long time since I read that one so I can't be sure.
*I had to check the publication date of this work to confirm that it was, indeed, written in the relatively recent portion of Roth's long career. The way that it's written makes it seem like a novel from mid-20th century. Not because it is set in the middle of the 20th century but because of a) the qualities of the narrator and his family and b) the way the narrator expresses himself. I think that the angst of the mid-century Jew was done to death in fiction by the 1970s, in no small part (I gather) by Roth himself. 2008 seems a little late to be dragging something like this to the table, dripping with stereotypes. I don't know how to express this, but the way the narrator thinks about other people in relation to himself seems kind of clueless in an almost sociopathic way. I think this might have been a common way of writing first person narrative in the past, but it is hard to believe this guy's thoughts from a modern perspective.
*I did find the theme of mental illness fairly compelling, especially as filtered through the perceptions of this somewhat unreliable narrator (who may suffer from something of that sort himself.)