This was James’s first important novel, and its preface is the first in The Art of the Novel. I’ll say right off that I have mixed feelings about James. On one hand, he did a lot for the art of the novel (discussed below), but on the other his works can be incredibly boring. But the more of him you read and the more in tune to his project you become, he grows on you, and he’s very instructive for a young novelist.

Roderick Hudson has a handful of main characters. The story is filtered through the consciousness of Rowland Mallet, an idle patron who chances upon Roderick Hudson, a young sculptor, while visiting his cousin in Northampton, Mass. Rowland takes it upon himself to become Roderick’s patron and brings the young man to Rome. Before they get out of town, Rowland manages to fall in love with Mary Garland, whom we later learn is Roderick’s fiancee. In Rome, Roderick emerges as a talented artist, but in the process he becomes selfish and corrupt. He falls in love with Christina Light, a coquette who eventually marries a prince. Rowland becomes dismayed by Roderick’s change, and he arranges for Roderick’s mother and Mary Garland to come to Europe to try to reign Roderick in. Unfortunately, Roderick is lovesick and distraught over Christina’s marriage, and at the end of the novel he falls/jumps from a cliff. In the way the narrative is told, Roderick is the larger-than-life main character (the Gatsby, the Ahab), and Rowland is the changed narrator. Through the novel, Rowland feels responsible for his creation. Like James, Rowland has created Roderick the artist (his Frankenstein), and feels moral accountability for him.

In his preface, James talks about some of the challenges he had with this novel, namely the way in which he has to handle time. The novel is Jamesian in that there is a “center of consciousness” — Rowland — who filters the rest of the action. That’s one thing James brought to the novel, a visual artist’s sense of perspective. This technique allowed him to omit what he calls “developments,” the vulgar melodrama of Victorian novels. You don’t see the drama of the teacup here. You don’t see Roderick gambling away money or flirting with women or whatever other excesses he’s involved with. Rather, James keeps the novel highbrow by only showing us Rowland’s perspective of Roderick as he changes.

James is concerned that Roderick’s change, because it happens so quickly off-stage, is a bit forced. Two years pass quickly so that we can see Roderick’s change. I’m not sure that’s so much a failure, but I do wonder about a few scenes where Rowland chances upon Roderick and Christina. He’s allowed to eavesdrop, and he happens upon people at opportune moments necessary for the narration. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I think you can see James grappling with the challenges of his perspective, trying to keep the perspective in line but also needing to deliver certain information. I’d contrast this with Roth’s Zuckerman trilogy, where Roth allows Zuckerman to imagine things that he can’t know. Roth’s concerns are different from James’s, but I might argue James paved the way for what Roth later did.

I got bored with the Zuckerman Bound quartet and couldn’t really get into The Anatomy Lesson right now. I much prefer Zuckerman in first person than in third, which is strange for me because I usually don’t care for first-person novels. In fact, I think Roth is a rare bird for his ability to write about the self and make it interesting.

Unfortunately, Exit Ghost is not such a feat. It’s an interesting bookend to The Ghost Writer, because it brings back some of the same characters. In short, this novel is about old Zuckerman returning to New York after a decade away. He’s incontinent after prostate cancer, and he’s losing his mind to senility. A young writer is pestering him for information about the old hero, E.I. Lonoff, for a scandalous biography, and the young writer provides Zuckerman with a nemesis, without which he’d be simply adrift.

The novel is interesting in that it’s about an old writer trying to cope with his waning abilities, but Roth himself seems to have lost something with this one. The narrative drops into a He and She drama in places that feel phoned in, mainly because the drama is just inside Zuckerman’s head. We already know what he’s thinking, so we don’t really need to see his fantasies written out. While there are moments in the novel where you see flashes of Roth’s old vigor, I’d pass on this one unless you’re wanting to read the entire canon.

My blog friend Casey (and sometimes JS 2.0 commenter) has a book giveaway contest over at his blog. I hate to shoot myself in the foot here, have a bunch of people comment on his post, and dilute my odds of winning Martin’s new book. But, Casey is calling for readers to define Midwest literature, if there is such a thing, and since I love place in fiction I’d love to read what you all have to say (over at Casey’s blog). The contest closes on Friday.

This is part two of Roth’s Zuckerman quartet (see post below), though I’m not sure how productive it is to talk about these books as a quartet because Roth went on to write a fifth book, then a trilogy, then a ninth book about Zuckerman. In any case, with Zuckerman Unbound, Roth brings back his alter-ego, Nathan Zuckerman, who (like Roth in the ’60s) recently has published a scandalous book chock full of sex and depravity that made him a millionaire and a celebrity.

Unlike Roth, Zuckerman stays in New York City, eats at grubby delis, and takes the bus, and because he continues to live as though he isn’t a celebrity, he gets accosted by a crazy man named Alvin Pepler, a fellow New Jersey-an who had a good run on a TV game show, then lost his reputation in his own scandal. Pepler follows Zuckerman around and phones him up asking for money and generally makes a pest of himself, which causes Zuckerman to start acting like a paranoiac.

The plot moves on from there. The book is primarily a character study, so Roth elegantly weaves in back story about Zuckerman’s past and other things going on in his life right now. As with The Ghost Writer, this book asks serious questions about the author’s responsibility for his work. Zuckerman has scandalized more than just himself; his family is in turmoil. One thing that interested me is that while most of the Zuckerman novels are in the first person, this one (and The Anatomy Lesson) are told in the third person, which allows Roth some narrative irony because we understand more than Zuckerman himself. I enjoyed this novel, but I think I prefer Zuckerman in the first person, even if he fades away as a side character takes center stage.

This is the first of Roth’s Zuckerman novels, told from the first-person in the ’70s about a night in the mid-’50s when Zuckerman, age 23, visited his writer idol, E.I. Linoff. An aspiring writer himself, Zuckerman shows up at Linoff’s house, and while the two converse over drinks Zuckerman becomes fascinated by a mysterious young woman temporarily living with Linoff. Amy Bellete is a literary scholar of sorts, and she seems to have her own infatuation with Linoff, who for his part is adamantly committed to his wife.

There’s a narrative gambit in the middle of this book that I don’t want to spoil, but I will say that Roth pulls a kind of magic trick similar in spirit to the ’90s trilogy that includes American Pastoral. With the gambit in The Ghost Writer, Roth is able to explore the nature of art — what it means to have a literary imagination, where that imagination comes from and how it works. It also allows Roth to comment on the writer’s responsibility to his subject matter, because Zuckerman, much like the young Roth, recently had published  a story that alienated him from his family somewhat because of its negative portrayal of Jewish people.

The Ghost Writer is a short, quick read, and I’d recommend it to any aspiring creative writer or Philip Roth fan.

I think I read this in college, but I’d forgotten most but the bare skeleton of the plot. Briefly, Willy Loman is a salesman who has spent his career on the road. He’s tired and wants a job in the New York office. Meanwhile, his grown sons have come home, and he’s hoping the elder son will finally settle down with a respectable career. Tragedy ensues.

I’m sure you could teach this play to high school juniors, and that they’d enjoy it (as much as some of them could enjoy anything called Literature), but I also think it’s one that means more after you’ve nosed around in the business world for a while. Salespeople do have this magical thing called “spin.” Actually, successful businesspeople in general have it. So Willy Loman is a familiar character, the way he spins one failure after another into a success so that the only answer for him at the end is to suck on a hosepipe in the garage one night.

What’s the lesson in this? Don’t go into sales? Live honestly and confront the truth? Those are easy answers from an artist’s standpoint, but I don’t think the play reaches people because of its moral platitudes. Rather, it’s a description of modern life, and sometimes an accurate description is all you need. (How else to explain the humor of Office Space?)