Newsgroup: it.cultura.libri
Titolo: Roth sulla Library of America [lungo]

La Library of America, se ho capito bene un po' la Pleiade 
d'oltreoceano, i Meridiani ameriggani, ha deciso di pubblicare in 8 (!!) 
volumi l'opera di Philip Roth. Già in vendita i primi due [1]
Il Village Voice ci ha scritto un articolo:
(
http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0540,aviv,68415,10.html
)
Speak, Mammary
When he was good: Philip Roth enters the Library of America
by Rachel Aviv
Shortly after transforming into a 155-pound breast, David Kepesh, the 
hero of three Philip Roth novels, asks himself: "Did fiction do this to 
me?" His enormous areola, about the size of a baby, has to be sprayed 
daily with anesthetic, but as a devoted literature professor he decides 
it's worth the pain. He's "out-Kafkaed Kafka." Instead of writing about 
the fantastic, he's become it: "This is my great work of art!"
One of six Roth books reissued by the Library of America this month, The 
Breast (1972) is a swift exercise in making the freakish appear normal, 
but it's not so far from autobiography as it would seem. Roth, too, was 
once perceived as a hormonal aberration—a "crazed penis," as he put it. 
His characters enact sexual fantasies with items from the family 
refrigerator, so readers assumed he did too. People would stop him or 
just gawk on the street; eventually it got so bad he had to leave New York.
For Roth, the idea of a man suddenly morphing into art is realistic, 
even practical. Most of his 22 novels feature men who closely resemble 
him: born in Newark, overaccomplished, neurotic. Three of his books are 
about famous writers named Philip Roth. Harold Bloom recently joked that 
Roth now writes so quickly he finishes a book and starts the next one on 
the same page. "So I work," he said in a 2000 interview with The New 
Yorker. "I'm on call. I'm like a doctor and it's an emergency room. And 
I'm the emergency."
Jewish dads all over the country (or at least mine) have been waiting 
for the last decade for Roth to get the Nobel Prize. The Library of 
America's decision to compile Roth's works in eight volumes—more than 
Faulkner and Nabokov combined—is some consolation. These initial two 
volumes, collecting his first six books, cover all of Roth's novels 
before 1972 and feature some of his most raw and intimate scenes. A 
recurring motif in the early novels is a man who sits on the toilet all 
day as his wife flits in and out of the bathroom, cheering him on.
In the wistful 1968 essay "On Not Being a Jew," which described how hip 
it was for gentiles to know about things like challah and being unhappy, 
Edward Hoagland wrote that Roth was the era's best writer because he 
could do more than just provoke. "The point is he knows about people," 
Hoagland wrote. "He's a whole man." Roth's characters scream and have 
panic attacks at the dinner table, but they're well aware of their flaws 
(in Portnoy's Complaint, each member of the family has a designated part 
of the house they go to for weeping). Unlike recent Roth novels, such as 
The Human Stain, which deal with larger, more history-heavy problems, in 
these early novels no one pretends to believe in anything too lofty. If 
most people spend 80 percent of their time thinking about themselves, 
says Libby Herz in Letting Go (1962), "I was up to about eighty-five." 
Her lover feels the same way: "Though subject to his share of 
depressions . . . he cannot enjoy any of it thoroughly (and thereby feel 
his true and tragic worth) because of a nagging doubt that he is very 
lucky and ought to be thankful and shut up."
Roth's one early foray into writing about gentiles, When She Was Good 
(1967), involves grander concerns—mostly "hell" and being "pure"—but the 
book seems overwrought. Lutherans named Whitey, Willard, and Lucy ("the 
word 'pug' had been invented to describe her nose") are prone to 
outbursts like "Oh why can't people be good?" They're every bit as 
serene and dignified and good at crocheting or deer hunting as the 
stereotype. ("You stupid Goyim," Roth writes in Portnoy's Complaint, 
"how strong and manly you are.")
Roth once defined the writer's voice as "something that begins at around 
the back of the knees and reaches well above the head," and in a typical 
story, he writes with a barreling, romantic intensity. Parents are 
hovering birds "beating frantic wings," and sex is on everyone's minds. 
To the original question about his boob-body—did fiction do this to 
me?—David Kepesh's answer is no: "Hormones are hormones," he says, "and 
art is art." But Roth merges the two, transcending his alter ego. In its 
austere black volumes, the Library of America has canonized some 
luxurious fantasies, but also a sweeping portrait of middle-class angst. 
Roth gives domestic dilemmas the weight they deserve. As Alexander 
Portnoy puts it, reflecting on hours spent alone testing condoms in his 
basement: "Oy, civilization and its discontents!"
[1]
Il primo: 
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=231
Novels and Stories 1959–1962
Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), Letting Go (1962)
By Philip Roth, edited by Ross Miller
Library of America, 913 pp., $35
Il secondo: 
http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=229
Novels 1967–1972
Portnoy's Complaint (1969), When She Was Good (1967), Our Gang (1971), 
The Breast (1972)
By Philip Roth, edited by Ross Miller
Library of America, 672 pp., $35
-- 
ale
http://lermocolle.splinder.com

 volumi l'opera di Philip Roth. Già in vendita i primi due [1]
Ho fatto una ricerca recentemente, e pare che, in effetti, non esista altro
che la Library of America paragonabile alla Pléiade e ai Meridiani. Però mi
pare che non abbia un apparato critico ricco. Non so se in Inghilterra,
invece, esistano edizioni simili alla Pléiade. Devo dedurre che sia un
nostro vezzo continentale?
[...]
Ciao, FB
-- 
In any case, if you say 'I gotta go' at an important job interview you're
contributing to being allowed just that privilege.
(Tony the ice man on it.cultura.linguistica.inglese)