States of Trial
Subtitle: manhood in Philip Roth's Post-War America
By: Ann Basu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc; Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9781623562960; 9781623562434; 9781623568313
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Criticism and interpretation; Masculinity in literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / General; LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General
Description: "This study of five towering Philip Roth novels - Operation Shylock, the American Pastoral trilogy, and The Plot Against America - explores his vision of a turbulent post-war America personified in trial-racked Jewish American men. These works collectively register the impact of post-1945 upheavals upon the nation and American trial-based myths about wholesomeness and regeneration. Roth shows how the "stories of old" which moulded American self-making have produced disorderly and disruptive counter-stories, playing themselves out in Jewish men marked by spots and stains where their constitutional integrity has been infringed. Roth probes the nation's own constitutional testing points as he shatters the identities of characters such as fallen ace athlete Swede Levov and disgraced academic Coleman Silk. His books seek to strip away America's false innocence, demanding that historical accountability should replace myths of new beginnings. Creating arenas of trial for his American men where national discourses and narratives cross and clash, Roth's novels reveal that a culture equals its debates and allow us to see Americans and America as ongoing experiments, always being tested"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-175) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction: Philip Roth's Post-war Americans in a State of Trial Chapter One: Turning Sentences Around: Trial Themes in The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson Chapter Two: Before the Law: Operation Shylock: A Confession Chapter Three: Testing "Stories of Old" in American Pastoral Chapter Four: Undoing the Bildungsroman: Cold War Trials in I Married A Communist Chapter Five: Spooking the American National Body in The Human Stain Chapter Six: The Plot Against America and the Trials of the American Constitution Conclusion: Nemeses: Reworking the Trial for Post-war America Notes Bibliography.