Latest news with #PhilipRoth
New York Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Literature Lost Its Mojo
I'm old enough to remember when novelists were big-time. When I was in college in the 1980s, new novels from Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Alice Walker and others were cultural events. There were reviews and counter-reviews and arguments about the reviews. It's not just my nostalgia that's inventing this. In the mid- to late 20th century, literary fiction attracted huge audiences. If you look at the Publisher's Weekly list of best-selling novels of 1962, you find Katherine Anne Porter, Herman Wouk and J.D. Salinger. The next year you find Mary McCarthy and John O'Hara. From a recent Substack essay called 'The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction' by Owen Yingling, I learned that E.L. Doctorow's 'Ragtime' was the best-selling book of 1974, Roth's 'Portnoy's Complaint' was the best-selling book of 1969, Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita' was No. 3 in 1958, and Boris Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago' was No. 1. Today it's largely Colleen Hoover and fantasy novels and genre fiction. The National Endowment for the Arts has been surveying people for decades, and the number of people who even claim to read literature has been declining steadily since 1982. Yingling reports that no work of literary fiction has been on the Publisher's Weekly yearly top 10 best-selling list since 2001. I have no problem with genre and popular books, but where is today's F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, George Eliot, Jane Austen or David Foster Wallace? I'm not saying novels are worse now (I wouldn't know how to measure such a thing). I am saying that literature plays a much smaller role in our national life, and this has a dehumanizing effect on our culture. There used to be a sense, inherited from the Romantic era, that novelists and artists served as consciences of the nation, as sages and prophets, who could stand apart and tell us who we are. As the sociologist C. Wright Mills once put it, 'The independent artist and intellectual are among the few remaining personalities equipped to resist and to fight the stereotyping and consequent death of genuinely lively things.' As a result of this assumption, novelists were accorded lavish attention as late as the 1980s, and some became astoundingly famous: Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote. Literary talk was so central that even some critics got famous: Susan Sontag, Alfred Kazin and before them Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson. There were vastly more book review outlets, in newspapers across the country and in influential magazines like The New Republic. Why has literature become less central to American life? The most obvious culprit is the internet. It has destroyed everybody's attention spans. I find this somewhat persuasive but not mostly so. As Yingling points out, the decline in literary fiction began in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet was dominant. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Atlantic
24-06-2025
- General
- Atlantic
The Real Reason Men Should Read Fiction
There's always something going on with men. They can't make friends; they're very lonely; they're 'losing' to women; they listen to Andrew Tate. And, we are told, they do not read. Over the past few years, multiple articles have observed the so-called decline of the male reader, whose tastes once made best sellers of swaggering authors including Philip Roth, John Updike, and David Foster Wallace, and whose disappearance from the contemporary literary scene is troubling. 'If you care about the health of our society—especially in the age of Donald Trump and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster—the decline and fall of literary men should worry you,' David J. Morris wrote in The New York Times. The argument that society's problems can be traced to the fading prominence of Infinite Jest on dorm-room bookcases feels like a stretch; so does the underlying evidence. The source of such laments seems to be a widely circulated (but poorly sourced) factoid showing that men account for only 20 percent of the North American fiction market—an alarming number that invites all sorts of unchecked speculation. (For example: Does this mean that men who do read mostly stick to nonfiction—history books, self-help guides, manuals on improving one's business? Is the modern male reader statistically likely to be a walking LinkedIn post?) The 80/20 split is probably overblown, as Vox 's Constance O'Grady found in a recent investigation of the oft-cited statistic. But there is some proof that women consume fiction at a higher rate than men. (O'Grady cites a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts survey finding that 50 percent of American women had read a novel or short story in the past year, compared with 33 percent of men—still a divide, though not as extreme.) All sorts of explanations for this have been floated: Publishing is overwhelmingly staffed by women, who might be more likely to acquire and market books that appeal to women; the attention economy has drawn men to other forms of entertainment, such as podcasts and video games; nobody reads much right now—the median American consumes just five books a year—and men are just canaries in this coal mine. The last point, in particular, prompts fiction defenders to explain why this is a bad thing. Arguments about why one should read tend to emphasize some positive outcome, as though a book is a public good and you are its beneficiary. 'Reading fiction is also an excellent way to improve one's emotional I.Q.,' Morris noted in his Times op-ed, implying that reading will change men for the better. Perhaps they could appear more sexually desirable to certain prospective romantic partners (according to the filmmaker John Waters), or consider spiritual mysteries that can't be neatly captured by numbers and facts alone, or strengthen their empathy muscles and become less polarized citizens. But as someone who belongs strongly in that fifth (or perhaps much more) of the male population that reads fiction, I can say that I'm usually not thinking about what I stand to learn. Rather, I'm aware of what is happening to me right now —and that affirmative thrill is the reason I can't seem to stop accumulating new books to read, even though I could use the space in my apartment for something else. The concept of reading as an empathy machine—to borrow a phrase that originated with the late movie critic Roger Ebert —is appealingly idealistic. Stories that burrow into characters' trains of thought can capture true interiority in a way that film or nonfiction cannot. For a similar reason, personal essays are more likely to go viral than an academic paper about the same subject, because reality is more engaging as a described experience than as a series of logically arranged details. When I read Elena Ferrante 's My Brilliant Friend, I tunnel through space and time into 1950s working-class Naples. When I read Don DeLillo 's Libra, I can feel the particulars of Lee Harvey Oswald's life. I believe this makes me more empathetic, and I enjoy believing that it does; it's flattering to think I am becoming a better person by reading a book, even if it's obviously not always true (I know some veteran readers who are truly awful people). But empathy is a bit too touchy-feely as a consistent motivation—at least for me. Sometimes I'm in a standoffish mood and don't particularly want to feel; men don't have a monopoly on misanthropy, but I'd argue that we're the more churlish gender—and the one more expected, and therefore allowed, to shake a stick and bark 'Stay away from me.' So many books (thrillers about burly ex-military cops, literary novels with creepy narrators) are more interesting precisely because their protagonists are nearly impossible to identify with. For example, the Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor's novel Paradais is partly about a teenage gardener in a gated community who befriends an off-putting loner with a monstrous plan to sexually assault his wealthy neighbor—gripping characters, but not exactly sympathetic ones. Instead, it's how Melchor tells her story—in a dense, logorrheic style that piles on sensory details and intrusive thoughts—that makes Paradais so effective. In one representative passage, Polo, the gardener, attempts to blend in at a children's birthday party as his attention wanders from the women in attendance ('their hair straight and inert, as neat and lifeless as wigs') to their bland husbands ('just as ridiculous in their pink polos and pastel shirts') and unruly offspring (who 'screeched and launched themselves at the juddering bouncy castle like raving lunatics'). As Polo thinks and thinks and thinks, Melchor refuses to separate his observations with periods; the misanthropic remarks accumulate at the speed of thought, communicating the depth of his distaste with dizzying urgency. The intensity of this style feels more compelling than it would if Melchor had written, 'He looked around and realized he hated these rich people.' I do not need to feel the exact feelings of a doltish, unfulfilled Mexican teenager who will eventually play a role in a heinous crime. But I can recognize the singularity of his experience, and the specific way in which Melchor renders this experience. I am not attempting to understand Polo, but I am following along at the pace of his perception, and my awareness of how Melchor has manipulated reality into something feverish and all-consuming makes me think of moments when I've also experienced events at the same pitch. This is not empathy, per se, but an escape from my own consciousness and surroundings—something I need, from time to time. Conversations by men about men are self-selecting by nature; surely millions of men live their life every day without caring about what other people are saying about them. But a real demographic of men is besieged, every day, by a corner of the media universe—the so-called manosphere—that dictates where they should be spending their attention. You have possibly encountered a video of one of these manosphere men, sitting in front of a microphone, stridently theorizing about how a dude should be. Men should strive to stand out, they often say. They should broadcast their opinions, judge other people, stand up for their gender—as though investing a single man with enough authority could fix everything. Many of these outspoken personalities advocate for men to throw off society's flattening influence, but they tend to make starkly similar points in starkly similar ways. Beyond the intellectual reservations they raise, I find them deeply boring. Contrary to their rebellious posturing, there is nothing more conformist than adhering to a stranger's standards of how you should behave. Literature, meanwhile, allows me to occupy a place that is totally for myself, and unaccountable to other people's expectations. The author Percival Everett is fond of noting that he considers reading to be a subversive act. 'No one can control what minds do when reading; it is entirely private,' he once said. This, to me, is the best argument for why a man should read, and why he should seek new mental frontiers beyond the accumulation of information. Reality is linear, but reading skips backwards and forward, allowing me to consider the world from a removed vantage point. Instead of feeling squeezed by my earthly existence and my own bodily limits, I leap into other minds and perspectives—not just those of men, but also those of women and nonhumans—and consider those expectations. I am reminded that everyone is unexceptional and everyone is exceptional. Facts can sometimes tell us this about humanity, but fiction does this best of all. It is seductive, too, to keep things to yourself. To incubate your own thoughts and ideas without having to express and justify them in real time as you might when talking with other people. Too much isolation can lead someone askew—ask the Unabomber—but this kind of solitary contemplation offers a retreat from social pressures. I have often felt powerless, or lonely; these are, in the end, just conditions of being alive. (They are certainly not gendered or tied to any particular demographic trend.) But fiction can remind you that you exist along a continuum of human experiences, and that your own everyday ennui is less of a dead end and more of a data point. Yes, men could use more empathy; they would also benefit from a heightened sense of perspective. Too often, 'man time' is described as putting on a football game or picking up a fishing rod—retreating into some kind of brainless entertainment that is occasionally punctuated by moments of joy. Freedom can certainly be found in the physical world; Everett is also an avid fisherman. But if you can't go outside at the moment, or if you can't stand staring at another screen? Well, pick up a novel. It may shock you, the worlds you end up exploring—and the feelings you will stir up from nothing at all. You will find it easier to walk through life, ready for what comes next.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Susan Choi Recommends a Book So Engrossing It Made Her (Almost) Lose Her Luggage
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Welcome to Shelf Life, books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you're on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you're here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too. What began as a short story in The New Yorker is now Susan Choi's sixth and latest novel, Flashlight, about a man who goes missing—and the resulting trauma for his family. Like the family in the book, Choi lived in Japan for a short period during her childhood. (Nor is this the first time she's shared autobiographical details with her characters: Her father was a math professor, like a character in 2003's A Person of Interest; she went to graduate school, the setting of 2013's My Education; and she attended a theater program in high school, as do the protagonists in 2019's National Book Award-winning Trust Exercise, for which she wrote at least 3 different endings.) Her second novel, 2004's American Woman, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and adapted into a film, and she has also written a children's book, Camp Tiger. Choi teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, yet one literary goal remains elusive: 'Trying to read 50 books a year,' she says. 'I've never achieved the goal and some years I don't even come close, but I love trying.' The Indiana-born, Texas-raised, New York-based bestselling author studied literature at Yale University; was once fired from a literary agency for being too much of a 'literary snob'; was a fact-checker at The New Yorker and co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker with editor David Remnick; won an ASME Award for Fiction for 'The Whale Mother' in Harper's Magazine; and has two sons. Likes: theater; fabric stores; kintsugi; the Fort Greene Park Greenmarket; savory buns; flowers. Dislikes: being on stage; low-hovering helicopters. Good at: rocking her gray hair. Bad at: cleaning menorahs; coming up with book titles. Scroll through the reads she recommends below. It's not exactly a missed-the-train moment, but I was re-reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov while waiting on a train platform [once], and when the train pulled in I stood up, still reading, boarded the train, still reading, and sat down, still reading…until at some point, after the train pulled away, I realized that I had left my luggage on the platform. Philip Roth's Everyman. I never would have thought a novel about the bodily decline and eventual death of a hyper-masculine Jewish guy who mistreats many of the women in his life—a lot like Philip Roth—could make me literally heave-sob at the end. But this is why Roth is such an incredible writer: He makes us feel enormous compassion for people we don't even like. Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation, which kaleidoscopically compresses the stormy history of 20th-century Germany into barely a hundred pages, while holding the focus steady on a single plot of land. It's one of those books that makes you want to write. All of Proust. Or even just some decent amount of Proust. I love the prose but also find it so exquisite it's almost unbearable to continue reading for any length of time, at least for me, which makes me feel like a total failure as a reader. I might have to set aside a year of my life just to read Proust. Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall is impossible to put down, and it's also so tensely coiled from the very beginning that reading it I sometimes forgot to breathe! In some ways it's a 'small' story—about a girl and her parents doing a crazy-seeming reenactment of prehistoric life in the English countryside—but then it turns out to be about the biggest things, like what it means to be a people, or a nation, or even human. Rachel Khong's Real Americans, which I am so riveted by that as soon as I finish these questions, I'm picking it back up. It's a story about three people who, despite how deeply they feel for each other—and how deeply we feel for them—cannot manage to be a family. My heart is already half-broken and I'm only halfway through it. Paul Beatty's The Sellout. I was sitting on the beach in Maui (the one time I have ever been to Maui), reading that book instead of swimming, and a stranger came up to me to ask what it was because apparently I was laughing so hard I'd attracted general attention. In Francisco Goldman's The Ordinary Seaman, two young guerilla fighters, boy and girl, fall madly in love and start having trysts in the back of an ambulance. The girl also has a pet squirrel that she's been carrying around in her bra, and, during the trysts, the squirrel runs frantically around the back of the ambulance. These are some of the funniest, wildest, most heartfelt sex scenes ever put on paper. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read it every few years because it feels new every time and, at the same time, it feels so familiar, like returning to a favorite place. I love every single sentence in it, even the sentences that are totally over-the-top (and there are a lot of them!) because they remind me that Fitzgerald was actually a fallible human being, capable of writing very over-the-top sentences sometimes. Sigrid Nunez's A Feather on the Breath of God shocked me the first time I read it because it really felt like the book was looking at me, like it knew exactly who I was. The protagonist has, like me, a real culture-clash background, and up to the point in my life when I read the book—the '90s—I'd never encountered that in fiction, so it was very emotional when I finally did. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. Just read it. You'll thank me. Renee Gladman is one of my absolute favorite living writers/artists, yet I was totally unaware of her until maybe six years ago when I was recommended her work by an employee—I am so sorry I don't know his name—at my local indie bookstore. Now it feels unimaginable to me that I ever lived my life without Renee Gladman! Everything by Ali Smith, and Ali Smith herself. She is such a brilliant, compassionate, elating observer of us humans and the strange things we do. The London Library. A friend who's a member showed it to me a few years ago, and I never wanted to leave. Maybe they'll set up a hammock for me! PEN America, because they support freedom of expression, which none of us can take for granted anymore.$14.40 at at at at at at at at at at You Might Also Like The 15 Best Organic And Clean Shampoos For Any And All Hair Types 100 Gifts That Are $50 Or Under (And Look Way More Expensive Than They Actually Are)
Elle
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Susan Choi Recommends a Book So Engrossing It Made Her (Almost) Lose Her Luggage
Welcome to Shelf Life, What began as a short story in The New Yorker is now Susan Choi's sixth and latest novel, The Indiana-born, Texas-raised, New York-based bestselling author studied literature at Yale University; was once The New Yorker and co-edited Likes: theater; Dislikes: Good at: rocking her Bad at: cleaning menorahs; coming up with Scroll through the reads she recommends below. The book that…: …made me miss a train stop: It's not exactly a missed-the-train moment, but I was re-reading …made me weep uncontrollably: Philip Roth's …I recommend over and over again: Jenny Erpenbeck's …I swear I'll finish one day: All of Proust. Or even just some decent amount of Proust. I love the prose but also find it so exquisite it's almost unbearable to continue reading for any length of time, at least for me, which makes me feel like a total failure as a reader. I might have to set aside a year of my life just to read Proust. ...I read in one sitting; it was that good: Sarah Moss's …currently sits on my nightstand: …made me laugh out loud: Paul Beatty's …has a sex scene that will make you blush: In Francisco Goldman's ...I've re-read the most: ...makes me feel seen: looking at me, like it knew exactly who I was. The protagonist has, like me, a real culture-clash background, and up to the point in my life when I read the book—the '90s—I'd never encountered that in fiction, so it was very emotional when I finally did. ...everyone should read: ...I could only have discovered at ...fills me with hope: Everything by elating observer of us humans and the strange things we do. Bonus questions: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be: The literary organization/charity I support: Read Susan Choi's Book Recommendations Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Now 24% Off Credit: Vintage Everyman by Philip Roth Now 12% Off Credit: Vintage Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck Now 66% Off Credit: New Directions Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss Now 50% Off Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Real Americans by Rachel Khong Now 32% Off Credit: Vintage The Sellout by Paul Beatty Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux The Ordinary Seamen by Francisco Goldman Credit: Grove Press The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Now 30% Off Credit: Charles Scribner's Sons A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez Now 36% Off Credit: Picador Paper Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie Credit: Riverhead Books
Telegraph
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why this is a golden age for Jewish theatre
My Jewish mother does not go to the theatre often. But when she does, she sees Fiddler on the Roof. She has seen it so many times she could understudy any character at a moment's notice. In fairness she did attend a Pinter play once, but walked out at the first infamous Pinter Pause thinking it was the interval. Naturally she was ecstatic when the Open Air Regent's Park theatre revived Fiddler last year, even more so when a transfer to the Barbican (which has just opened) was announced. Garlanded with 13 nods at this year's Olivier awards, Jordan Fein's production matched the record set by Hamilton for the most nominations for a single show. Not bad for what Philip Roth once derided as 'shtetl kitsch.' In fact, Fiddler is not the only Jewish show to have become a critical hit in the past year. Principal among these was Mark Rosenblatt's Giant at the Royal Court, a fire-breathing study of Roald Dahl's virulent anti-Semitism; then there was Patrick Marber's production of What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Nick Cassenbaum's After the Levoyah and the Marber-directed Nachtland. The popularity of Jewish-orientated shows seems incongruous when juxtaposed with skyrocketing anti-Semitism post October 7th. 2024 saw the second-highest recording of reported anti-Semitic incidents in a single calendar year according to the Community Security Trust, a charity which represents the UK's Jewish population. 'There have been countless examples of problems in the creative industries with soft boycotts and discrimination to anything with links to Israel' says literary agent and producer Neil Blair. 'I'm sure that Jewish writers have been scared to express their Jewishness as they fear they won't get published. It's been a tough time to be a proud Jew.' London theatre has seen numerous high-profile incidents of anti-Semitic controversies. Ken Loach 's 1987 production of Perdition was pulled from public performances at the Royal Court before the first preview. Historians declared Jim Allen's play historically unsound and deeply anti-Semitic. In 2011 Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children also premiered to a chorus of opprobrium from across the British-Jewish community, once again at the Court. A recent new production produced by actor Brian Cox revived the contentious debate over the extent to which it straddles the murky line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. 'And look what happened with Rare Earth Mettle' says Blair. Once again attached to the Court, Al Smith's 2021 play sparked outcry over 'Hershel Fink' an Elon Musk-inspired character with an unmistakably Jewish name seemingly imbued with anti-Semitic traits, even though the character was not written to be Jewish. The original name surfaced in preview performances before it was changed. The production still went ahead. 'It's astonishing that the theatre had initially claimed that they didn't realise Fink is a Jewish name,' says Blair. A consequent internal report found that despite the fact that the name had been twice flagged as potentially offensive in the play's development and rehearsal period the creative team kept the name. The theatre would go on to apologise 'unreservedly.' Jewish creatives have played a significant role in theatre since the early 20th century. Immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe laid the artistic foundation stones of Broadway and the Jewish influence could be seen not only in explicitly Jewish shows like Fiddler, but also in productions which mirror the dynamics of the Jewish diaspora. Stories of overcoming the odds and forging a new home in America parallel the immigrant struggles of artists such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Neither has there been a shortage of Jewish voices in the West End. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard are arguably the two most influential dramatists of the 20 th century, then there are directors such as Peter Brook and Jonathan Miller, and even critics, Milton Shulman and Bernard Levin, the so-called kosher butchers. But it would be rare to see Jewish artistic self-expression in mainstream spaces that paralleled Broadway. The theatrical tradition in London was already richly established, with its own inheritance, traditions, and artistic canon. Jewish dramatists, usually second-generation immigrants, had to assimilate their storytelling, allowing it to lurk only beneath the surface. This was certainly the case with Harold Pinter. While the linguistic rhythms of Pinter's early work mirror the broken English of Eastern European immigrants, it's detectable on a narrative level too. Pinter drew from his childhood in Hackney for The Homecoming. Ruth can be easily interpreted as a non-Jewish woman marrying into a Jewish household overseen by a paranoid patriarch. Pinter took inspiration from a childhood friend who 'married out' – a transgressive violation considered to be a personal and cultural betrayal. Initial drafts set the action in the East End and referred to an unseen character named 'Berkowitz,' eventually exorcised from the final draft. Recent success at the Oliviers signals a paradigm shift in Jewish on-stage representation as dramatists openly interrogate the idiosyncrasies of contemporary Jewishness on mainstream stages. Rising anti-Semitism, war in Israel, consequent tension within the community are fertile dramatic soil ripe for theatrical exploration. Audiences, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are listening. 'Intelligent pieces of theatre are striking a chord because audiences want nuanced debate' says Tracy-Ann Oberman whose reworked version of The Merchant of Venice relocated the action to London's East End in 1936 under the looming shadow of Mosley's black shirts. After an initial run at the Watford Palace Theatre it embarked on a national tour as well as two West End runs. 'It's been on a journey for two and half years; the positive responses and interest from audiences across the country has warmed my heart,' she says. Oberman admits that its commercial success was unexpected, especially when compared with traditionally lucrative hits such as Fiddler on the Roof. Like Giant it was conceived before October 7 th but came to take on a new meaning in light of growing anti-Semitism. 'The Merchant of Venice showed what anti-Semitism looked like in 1936, that came to resonate with the rise of anti-Jewish racism today, especially how a lot of the vernacular about anti-Zionism bleeds into anti-Semitism' says Oberman. 'People understand that nothing is as black and white as some would have us believe. Art is the best way to show that.' Since the Hershel Fink debacle at the Royal Court, Oberman is adamant there has been significant progress around boosting awareness of Jewish culture. Questions over authentic casting and cultural appropriation are more prominent to the extent that the costume designer of the new production of Oliver! rang Oberman to run by ideas for Fagin's costume to ensure respect of cultural sensitives. 'The fact that he was willing to make that call with me was a huge step forward. If this is a Golden Age, then it's one of renewed understanding and consideration towards Jewish culture,' she says. As a consequence, Oberman has noticed more writers and artists wearing their Jewishness proudly on their sleeve. Perhaps other creative industries could take a leaf out of theatre's book. The ultimate test for this golden age is if Giant transfers to New York - not outside the realm of impossibility after its Olivier success. It is currently playing at the Harold Pinter Theatre – my mother has bought a ticket at my behest.
