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Do You Just Love Philip Roth? Brett Ashley Kaplan Do You Just Love Philip Roth? Brett Ashley Kaplan o, do you just love Philip Roth?” I sera mon dernier livre.”) predated the by Rankin and Kellogg and considered “ didn’t quite know what to say, a little spectacular Roth@80 conference. Of course, one of the crown jewels of Newark civic Ssurprised by the question, coming as the planning of the conference predated architecture in 1901. The day ended with it did out of the near darkness from a New- his surprise retirement (and just as a side a reception, a series of talks by writers and Yorkese-speaking stranger at a movie theater. note many people at the conference fully friends of Roth and then Roth himself, Granted, the film was Philip Roth: Unmasked expect Roth to write another novel). So followed by a birthday toast and cake. All of and the venue was Film Forum (the venerable there was much reference made to this new these took place at another crown jewel of and wonderful theatre on Houston in NYC turn in his long career. The first day of the Newark’s former glory, the Newark Museum, that has been around almost as long as me), conference, on March 18, 2013 at the Robert which opened in 1909, and is enhanced by so I perhaps should not have been all that Treat Hotel in Roth’s hometown of Newark, a capacious and elegant courtyard. At the surprised. I answered something like “Well, it’s followed a traditional academic format with library a carefully curated exhibit about complicated, love isn’t quite the right word.” simultaneous sessions of panels consisting Roth ringed the second floor. Photographs I was feeling shy and didn’t want to reveal of Roth in his military garb, Roth as a young that I was a “Roth scholar,” or that I was on boy, Roth with Ben-Gurion, Obama, and my way to a Roth conference in honor of the Clinton, Roth’s parents and grandparents, great writer’s eightieth birthday, or that I was and so on were paired with apt quotations about two-thirds of the way through writing from Roth’s works. Then, we gathered a book on Roth. My interlocutor replied: “He’s into three big busses and set off on a tour a bit of a misogynist.” “So, you don’t love of Roth’s Newark. Our tour guide was Liz him?” I queried. She nudged her mate (a man) Del Tufo, the president of the Newark with her elbow, cocked her head to the left, Preservation and Landmarks Committee, and said, “He does.” The lights dimmed even who is dedicated to resurrecting or at least further and just before the film began one of delaying the destruction of some of the the cute queer boys behind me said, “I’ve read great dinosaurs of the Newark of Roth’s like seven Philip Roth novels and after a while era. And they deserve all the attention they all start to blur together.” they can garner. On the tour, in addition So, do I love Roth, and do you? Well, to stopping at Roth’s former home, Roth’s as I told my neighbor at the Film Forum, high school, and other points of Rothian it’s complicated. I have been reading and interest, we passed many marvelous old working on Roth for many, many years (first mansions with boarded up windows, book? Portnoy’s Complaint, read in Murray surrounded by barbed wire, and looking Baumgarten’s Jewish American Literature very sorry indeed. The day ended with a course at UC Santa Cruz around 1987). I have reception, a series of talks by writers and been very, very frustrated at times not only Philip Roth’s childhood home. Photograph by friends of Roth, and then Roth himself, with his problematic (this overused word is an Michael Kimmage. followed by a birthday toast and cake. All of understatement) representations of women these took place at another crown jewel of but also with his attacks on feminists, his of two or three papers. I heard some excellent Newark’s former glory, the Newark Museum, queasy-making depictions of queer women, essays on queering Roth (David Brauner), which opened in 1909, and is enhanced not to mention the totemic manner through Roth’s Newark (Michael Kimmage), Roth and by a capacious and elegant courtyard. which black characters are consistently Joyce (David Stone), Death and Roth (Debra Before the conference I was deeply plunked throughout his texts (more on all of Shostak), and many other wonderful essays worried that the question “so, do you love this in my book, Jewish Anxiety: Philip Roth). by established and emerging scholars, as well Roth,” would be answered with an unqualified Not to mention the fact that, were I to review as looser roundtable discussions by Aimee yes by everyone there, that there would be his entire oeuvre (ok, at time of writing I Pozorski, Pia Masiero, Dean Franco, Bernard general unruffled sycophantic attachment, am a few shy of having read all thirty-one Rogers, Benjamin Schreier, Ezra Cappell, and and that my complicated, ambivalent, novels) I would say his prose is full of brilliant others. It was marvelous to be in the same relationship with Roth would have to be sentences, turns of phrase, and released room with so many other people who inhabit quashed. Despite the fact that we were all neuroses, but he should have redacted and the same imaginative headspace and who scholars, one possibility floated when we condensed more, and written less. As Roth can understand any reference to (or any joke were wondering what we might say if we himself told us at the conference, “I’m far about) any moment in any of Roth’s novels. were granted the opportunity to shake from liking all the pages I’ve written.” So, do The second day of the conference, on Roth’s hand was “I’m a fan of your work.” I love Roth? Yes, most of his prose I love. the day of Roth’s eightieth birthday, had For the record, I blew my chance to Roth’s announcement in Les inrocks an entirely different flavor. It began at the shake his hand because of my sneakers. that he was retiring from writing (“Némésis glorious Newark Public Library, designed When I arrived at the museum, Roth was FALL 2013 69 standing there, chatting with someone and agree with myself about the third . or that she had told the story of him flinging that was my chance. But I was wearing jeans rather, I can’t decide, or rather I have been so himself down on the grass and noting that and sneakers, so felt wrongly attired for the aggrieved for so long, so pissed off so often, the author of Portnoy’s Complaint doesn’t need moment. What would I have said anyway? that I can’t believe I am even struggling to to be thought of as any more childish. Roth “I have been frustrated by your work for articulate what is problematic about gender then began by speaking about all he would decades.” “Your prose is glorious and brilliant in Roth. Claudia Roth Pierpont’s suggested not speak about, using the rhetorical trope but I wish you’d written less.” “Reading that many of Roth’s female characters are of proslipsis. (Just as I was making a note to Sabbath’s Theater made me want to sequester more complex than is often noted. Pierpont myself to email someone from my former my two little girls to keep them safe from thickly described George Ziad’s wife, Anna, rhetoric department to find out what this the likes of Mickey Sabbath with all his from Operation Shylock, then noted that trope was called Roth announced that his admiration for his ancient Italian teacher when she asked Roth about her he said he friend Alain Finkelkraut had told him it was with the twelve-year-old girlfriend!” “What wanted to “reverse the stereotype.” Yet Roth either paralipsis or proslipsis.) Each of the do you think of the current title of my describes Anna as a “tiny, almost weightless moments of proslipsis was amplified and book, Jewish Anxiety: Philip Roth?” “What is woman” whose “intense and globular” eyes made visceral by the memories of the tour. Jewish Anxiety?” I mean, really what could were “set like a lemur’s in a triangular face As Roth told us he wouldn’t tell us about I possibly have said in one sentence that not very much larger than a man’s fist” (140). riding his bike to the Weequahic branch of would encapsulate all that ambivalence and This description seems to defy the thick one the library and returning home with a basket confusion? By the time I had donned my Pierpont wanted to cull from it; not only is full of books, I could see in my mind’s eye conference dress, Roth had been whisked she literally “anorexic” (140) but the scalar the route he would have taken through the away for the VIP dinner and then, later, he comparison of her face with a man’s fist “tidy” (this was our tour guide’s word) single was preceded by a fragment of the band from seems to make her ripe for a punch. Pierpont family homes of his childhood haunts. Then, Weequahic High School and surrounded by went on to tell us that, in a “snippy” mood, after describing all the things he would well-wishers, TV cameras, etc. The reception she phoned Roth to complain about Jamie not describe from the Newark of the 1940s, before Roth’s speech included such literati in Exit Ghost because with her expensive he closed by reading sections from a long as Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, cashmere sweaters casually slung over passage from Sabbath’s Theater (694–711), Nicole Krauss, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and lingerie “she’s kind of perfect.” Roth replied: among Roth’s most marvelous novels.
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