In the author’s own confessional vein, I must admit: I don’t understand Roth’s allure. At all. I’ve got 25 pages left in his latest, Indignation, and by gum the only thing keeping me on task is the promise that the main character dies young. This reveal comes courtesy of the character himself. Yes, the young man is in fact narrating the story of his teenage life from the grave.

It didn’t work in American Beauty and it doesn’t work here.

What amazes me most about this “technique” is not that a man best known for writing about masturbation would use it in the first place. Obviously, Roth is used to hooky premises. Rather, what really rankles is that the book been so well reviewed! Marcus Messner is a bore and an egotist. Yet another Zuckerman-esque mirror image of the author himself. What about this young man–aside from the fact that his life will be cut short (mercifully, for readers)–is supposed to draw me in? 

My criticisms have been met with interesting responses. I’ve been told the equivalent of “You’re not Jewish. You can’t understand.” Or “You won’t appreciate it without a penis.” Ah, so, with a circumcized penis I’d say it smacks of brilliance. Without the requisite reading “tool,” all I see in Roth’s books is bad writing.

I’d be tempted to let it go at that, if I hadn’t been so affected by another circumcized teen male in literature: Holden Caulfield. Now here’s an equally confused, sexually inexperienced, philosophically floundering, prideful kid. Yet he’s endearing. And the world surrounding him is worth wasting time on/in/around. Salinger may have dropped out of society, but he didn’t leave Philip Roth his crown.  

I’ll plow through the remaining pages of Roth I have left, all the while congratulating myself for taking it out of the library–heaven knows what I’d do with it on my shelf. (Speaking of which: any ideas on the choice of cover “art?” The Irish flag? Meaning what, exactly?) Once I’m done with this novel, though. I’m done with Roth in his whining entirety.

Sorry, Nathan Zuckerman, but life is too short for your trials and tribulations. Today may be the first day of the rest of my Roth-free life. A perfect day, in fact, for bananafish.