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Bezig met laden... Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books (origineel 2014; editie 2013)door Claudia Roth Pierpont (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkRoth een schrijver en zijn boeken door Claudia Roth Pierpont (2014)
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Relatively few writers use details from their personal lives in their fiction more than Philip Roth does in his. And that is exactly what makes Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books so potentially fascinating. Roth Unbound is not as much biography as it is literary criticism of one man’s entire writing career. Book by book, Pierpont examines everything written by Roth, from his best known and most successful novels, to his lesser known and least successful ones. What’s more, despite being a personal friend of Roth’s for a decade or so, Pierpont pulls no punches. She points out very clearly what she considers to be problems with many of his books and, in each of these instances, provides a detailed argument to build her case. Readers hoping for details about Roth’s personal life, including how he constructs his novels and comes up with his plot lines will not be disappointed. Pierpont ‘s access to Roth, and his apparent willingness to share intimate details of his past with her for the book, exposes Roth’s past to much second-guessing on the part of readers and critics, alike. It is all part of what makes Philip Roth and his books so special to so many people, but it is also what makes certain segments of society (feminists, in particular) dislike him so intensely. Although I own the entire Library of America collection of Roth’s work, I have not read all of his books yet, and frankly, if I were a reader new to Philip Roth, Roth Unbound might not encourage me to read them at all. Pierpont is just that honest and revealing about the shortcomings of some of Roth’s writing, books in which he was still struggling to find his voice or with which he somehow went completely off track. But she is quick to praise the brilliance of his best work and Roth, after all, is one of the finest and most important writers of the last sixty years. So, do read Philip Roth. Use Roth Unbound to get some insight into the man who wrote the books, what was going on in his life when he wrote them, and into the books themselves. This is an excellent addition to the personal library of any reader of twentieth and twenty-first century fiction. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"The story of Roth's creative life, [which] is not a biography-- though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material--but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art"--Dust jacket flap.
"Philip Roth is one of the most renowned writers of our time. From his debut,Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award in 1960, and the explosion of Portnoy's Complaint in 1969 to his haunting reimagining of Anne Frank's story in The Ghost Writer ten years later and the series of masterworks starting in the mid-eighties--The Counterlife, Patrimony, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, The Human Stain--Roth has produced some of the great American literature of the modern era. And yet there has been no major critical work about him until now. Here, at last, is the story of Roth's creative life. Roth Unbound is not a biography--though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material--but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art. Claudia Roth Pierpont, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has known Roth for nearly a decade. Her carefully researched and gracefully written account is filled with remarks from Roth himself, drawn from their ongoing conversations. Here are insights and anecdotes that will change the way many readers perceive this most controversial and galvanizing writer: a young and unhappily married Roth struggling to write; a wildly successful Roth, after the uproar over Portnoy, working to help writers from Eastern Europe and to get their books known in the West; Roth responding to the early, Jewish--and the later, feminist--attacks on his work. Here are Roth's family, his inspirations, his critics, the full range of his fiction, and his friendships with such figures as Saul Bellow and John Updike. Here is Roth at work and at play. Roth Unbound is a major achievement--a highly readable story that helps us make sense of one of the most vital literary careers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -- Publisher's description. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
Premesso che per apprezzare questo libro bisogna conoscere e amare, se non in toto almeno in buona parte, la produzione letteraria di P.R., si tratta un’opera di spessore, che segue attentamente l’evolvere e il maturare dello scrittore e collega con precisione vita e scrittura, vicende personali e amicizie letterarie. Chiarisce soprattutto molto bene chi è Nathan Zuckerman (o altri alter ego) e i limiti della sua adesione alla personalità e alla vita di P.R. Sarebbe infatti un errore scambiare la voce di un libro per la confessione autobiografica del suo autore ignorando quanto la rielaborazione romanzesca intervenga sul dato biografico.
Due cose sono chiare. In primo luogo, l’autrice, pur ammirando dichiaratamente P.R. (con il quale pur a dispetto del cognome non ha legami di parentela), non si è ‘innamorata’ dell’oggetto della sua indagine al punto di non vederne le, non rare, cadute. Per ogni romanzo esprime la sua valutazione, motivata e argomentata e riporta anche autorevoli opinioni diverse dalle sue. In più di un caso non mi trovo d’accordo (in tutto o in parte) con i suoi giudizi, ma questo è irrilevante. In secondo luogo, alla base del suo lavoro non c’è dilettantismo né improvvisazione, ma una lunga consuetudine con l’autore e una raccolta meticolosa della documentazione che lo riguarda. Dalla prefazione si evince che ha raccolto materiale per otto anni e due ne ha impiegati per la stesura del libro. C’è da crederle perché il risultato lo testimonia. Lettura consigliatissima a tutti coloro che amano quell’autore esuberante, esagerato, problematico, sensibilissimo, dalla penna impareggiabile e soprattutto mai dogmatico che è Philip Roth.
Due note biasimo: la prima per la traduttrice che ha fatto un uso sconsiderato di alcuni termini (negri, negretti, giudei). La seconda per l’autrice: la lista infinità dei ringraziamenti in calce al volume (manca solo il parrucchiere…) è vezzo ridicolo che chi ha scritto questo ottimo testo poteva benissimo risparmiarsi, riducendo l’elenco all’essenziale. ( )