NP - Roth's Women

kelber at mindspring.com kelber at mindspring.com
Thu Jun 1 12:15:42 CDT 2006


-----Original Message-----
>From: Ghetta Life <ghetta_outta at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Jun 1, 2006 12:42 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: NP - Roth's Women
>

>
>Philip Roth hates women*
>(*Is that true? And does it matter?)
>

Yes and yes.  We can assume that most Great Male Writers (the dead ones, anyway) have sex/race/class issues.  Although an anti-semite, Dostoevsky, for example, and his books are filled with nasty snipes at Jews, the plots don't revolve around haterd of Jews.  Roth has a seething hatred for women which pervades his books (all right, I'm being a little dishonest here -- I haven't read that many).  In "I Married a Communist," the female characters are vile human beings who serve as foils to the morally ambiguous male protagonists, making them appear sympathetic by comparison.  If anyone has an example of a sympathetic portrayal of a woman in Roth's work, I stand corrected.

Laura




More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list