I do not think that I have read Philip Roth since his first two novels. This 2007 novel has a theme with which I can self-indulgently identify: how does the older person live? The 71 year old protagonist since the age of 60 has eschewed the hectic life of New York and been living in isolation in a rural cabin, reading and writing and listening to music, without television or newspapers. He relinquishes political emotion and "the abiding wish to find out". He quite easily came "to feel completely at home knowing nothing of what was going on". When he temporarily returns to New York for health reasons he meets up with people for whom the outcome of the next election is almost a matter of life or death. He is sympathetic but uninvolved.
A second theme involves the writer who writes the creative work in isolation, free from the demands and negativity of the parasitic world of literary criticism. This too breaks in upon him again in New York in the form of an aggressive young academic who wants to launch his career by writing a literary biography of a neglected author based upon discovered scandal. Our protagonist knew and admired this author and refuses to cooperate or be involved.
Although it sounds suspect and uncomfortable, if not unintentionally funny, there is also a good depiction of being old and afflicted, he with the after-effects of prostate cancer surgery and an elderly female friend with a brain tumour.
Then there are a couple of tiresome aspects. There is the protagonist's obsession with a young woman, a somewhat pathetic self-indulgence given his sexual status, which does not assist the credibility of his other decisions on how to live his life unless we are meant to admire the resilience of human lust. The second aspect is that American style of writing, having escaped the immobile pomposity of Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne and Melville, the tumultuous onward-rushing narrative, not without its own pomposity, something I first discovered in Thomas Wolfe and Kerouac, not to mention Whitman, a style which continues to this day. There can be high moments, but also a gathering sense of chaos and weariness.
Like this review not a great work of art.
Rating: Good/Fair
