Roth is so annoying: it's like he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe

[Gurn Blanston]

Brian's, J.Z. Herrenberg's and the negative comments of others about Roth and Company echo my antipathy.

Yes, Herzog the "legendary novel" by Bellow...I just do not find anything of interest, either in style or content.

Here are some writers of legendary epics: if you are under 60 and recognize the names, I will be surprised.

Ever hear of Lloyd Douglas, James Gould Cozzens, Thomas Costain, Booth Tarkington, Warwick Deeping, Mary Rinehart?  Many of their books were best-sellers, lionized, and turned into movies.

Or Ross Lockridge, a candidate for The Great American Novel, whose entry was turned into an Elizabeth Taylor movie?

Anyone, anyone?

Even Sinclair Lewis has faded, despite the Nobel Prize. 

I find most of them more interesting than Roth and Company: were they great?  I think they approached it at least more often than Roth and Company.

I sense that Roth and Company and their foul-mouthed, politicized, malakial oeuvre will fade, unless the professors keep resuscitating them.

Yes to all of them, although it has been a few years since I read them. When I was in 8th grade I was a big Penrod fan, for example. But what? 99% of "bestsellers" are temporary fads, and 1% semi-great art?

I read Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint when they were newly released books back in the late '60's. They were greatly amusing at the time, since they trod down the dark, sacred corridors where most feared to tread in 1968. Now they are dated and mundane. Well, cynicism is easy to generate ex post facto. I could probably work up a little bit myself. But just like music, literature, when taken out of context, is tepid at best.