Thursday, September 7

The Great American Novel

Great baseball satire, almost too light to write about. I read it in such a herky-jerky manner that I might have missed some stuff, but I doubt it.

I give it three PLDS games out of five.

5 comments:

Ben said...

Interesting comments, Louis. I had a very similar reaction to the book. My feeling is that perhaps if I knew more about HUAC, life during WWII, and baseball during WWII, I might have approached the humor a bit differently. Obviously Roth's brilliant portrayal of Hemingway is something that a scholarly sort of any age can identify with, and most of the baseball humor is light and frivolous. But yeah, there's biting humor throughout, some of which I can only assume was assigned to specific targets that rest outside of our generational radar. Either that or the communist tangent seems tacked on, a little sloppy and unncessary to readers of any age. This very well could be the case.

No matter, the wordplay and baseball related tomfoolery were enough to earn my admiration.

Bryan said...

"Light" is almost certainly the wrong word. I apologize. It's too satirical to write about - everything is on the surface and very funny, but it's on the surface, so what is there to say?

Ben said...

Yeah, what you say is probably why the book is not often considered amongst Roth's best.

Bryan said...

He is ridiculous with words, and he weaves every old baseball legend into the story without a single one of them seeming forced. Yeah, he's good.

Bryan said...

Also, Louis, unless Roth earned the Wild Card, he has already won a Book-Loop Pennant. Gosh!