Dying public

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<Though I just this moment referred to Roth as a Realist I'm so overjoyed to 
see MalignD back I don't even mind what he said. Where was he when we 
needed him a week ago??>>

I assume this refers to the contrertemps with the tarbaby, his umbrage taken 
at being called a list nazi, and the wierdly grave and overblown discussion 
it engendered, (overblown in that "list nazi," it seems to me, draws its 
meaning more from the soup chef on Seinfeld than from, say, Henirich 
Himmler).   

As to being back, I haven't really gone anywhere, it's just that GRGR leaves 
me weeping with boredom.  (And re your being overjoyed, well I'm ... 
flattered.)

<<when i look at a highly complex novel like "the counterlife" [1986], it 
also doesn't make a lot of sense to call roth a "realist" ...>>

The Counterlife is marvelous.  And there are far more ideas, more 
intellectual rigor, and more sheer narrative brilliance in Operation Shylock 
than in the overlong, overrated, and overbloated M&D.  

It's much funnier too.