Book 26 : The Professor of Desire - Philip Roth

This wasn't my favorite Roth - in fact I would not even recommend it to a friend - but of course I loved it none the less.

Roth's first two books (Goodbye, Columbus and Letting Go) were sprawling narratives written by Roth before he was 30 years old. They were honest, and though flawed, they were clearly focused and straight forward.

With his most famous book, Portnoy's Complaint, Roth started trying new literary techniques. He continued this for several books - none of which I am a huge fan of.

The Professor of Desire is a book on the cusp of his experimental period and the point at which he went back to his roots. He still tried many weird literary techniques in this book and none of them worked for me.

One example is the dialouge. Instead of the standard (starting a new paragraph when a new speaker begins) he varied his dialouge tags based on the urgency of the conversation. An example :

"Well, there's no need to ask what you thought of him, is there?” "It's as you said : he adores you.” "Really, just what has empowered you to sit in judgment of other people's passions? Haven't you heard? It's a wide, wide world; room for everybody to do whatever he likes. Even you once did what you liked, David. Or so the legend goes.” "I sit in judgment of nothing. What I sit in judgment of, you wouldn't believe.” "Ah, yourself. Hardest on yourself. Momentarily I forgot.” "I sat, Helen, and I listened and I don't remember saying anything about the passions or preferences or private parts of anybody from here to Nepal.” "Donald Garland is possibly the kindest man alive.” "Fine with me".

I think he was trying to encourage the reader to realize that this type of dialouge was much quicker and more urgent than a typical conversation. I found it distracting and hard to follow. In fact, many passages like this went on for 4 or 5 pages without a paragraph break.

I also found portions of it to be over written. Roth has an extensive vocabulary throughout all of his books, but only during this strange experimental phase did I become aware of his writing - of the fact that he was trying. Good literature should be like special effects in the movies -- no matter how difficult they were to pull off, your goal is to find a way to make them seem natural and believable and to not have your audience think twice that they are effects. An example of his painful overwriting :

Hardly a single benighted literature major straying into ingenious metaphysical exegesis!

There were some interesting themes in this book that I really enjoyed. It starts out with David, the protagonist, in love with a very complicated and exciting woman. They eventually marry and the passion between them becomes too much for either of them to live with. Years after they divorce, he moves on to a much simpler woman who is content to simply be with him.

In the end, neither extreme works for him. He realizes that nothing is going to work for him. Not that he is destined to be alone -- but rather that he will never find the ideal he is looking for. This book is part two in a three part series focusing on David and my guess is that in Book 3 he will find a way to find happiness with another.

* * * *

Ah, Clarissa, let me tell you, all that is pleases. The pond where we swim. Our apple orchard. The thunderstorms. The barbeque. The music playing. Talking in bed. Your Grandmother's iced tea. Deliberating on which walk to take in the morning and which at dusk. Watching you lower your head to peel peaches and shuck corn . . . Oh, nothing, really, is what pleases. But what nothing! Nations go to war for this kind of nothing, and in the absence of such nothing, people shrivel up and die.

* * * *

She never speaks of what she does not have, never lingers for so much as a moment upon loss, misfortune, or disappointment. You'd have to torture her to get her to complain. She is the most extraordinary ordinary person I have ever known.



8/10
YTD:
Books read : 26
Pages read : 7,798
Currently reading : Jailbird - Kurt Vonnegut & The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter - Katherine Anne Porter