Pam Thurschwell on Philip Roth

I stumbled upon this commentary only yesterday.

draft in progress: 100 favorite novels (not in order)

      A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Brothers Karamazov by F.D.
Chump Change by Dan Fante

The Sell-Out by Paul Beatty

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

Light in August by William Faulkner

Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
Candide by Voltaire

Lolita by Nabokov

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin

War Trash by Ha Jin
The Joke by Milan Kundera
Petersburg by Andrei Biely
Envy by Yuri Olesha
Native Son by Richard Wright
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
2666 by Robert Bolano

Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody
The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

The Ghostwriter by Philip Roth

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
Caucasia by Danzy Senna
Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee
Hard Times by Charles Dickens

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
Water Music by T. C. Boyle

World's End by T.C. Boyle

Budding Prospects by T.C. Boyle

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Another Roadside Attaction by Tom Robbins

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Nun by Denis Diderot
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Television by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Revulsion by Horacio Castellanos Moya
Zone by Mathias Enard
Journey to the End of Night by Celine
Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

Ask the Dust by John Fante

The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Correction by Thomas Bernhard

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Camera by Jean-Phlippe Toussaint

The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

Immortality by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard
The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Castle by Franz Kafka
Confessions of a Lady Killer by George Stade
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Independence Day by Richard Ford

The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Memory of Departure by Abdulzarak Gurnah

Afterlives by Abdulzarak Gurnah

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

The Extra Man by Jonathan Ames

The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Shame by Salman Rushdie 

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabel

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabel

Firmin by Sam Savage

Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

The Seven Madmen and the Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt 

V by Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Crime and Punishment by D.

The Possessed (Demons or The Devils) by D.

A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Washington Square by Henry James

Sula by Toni Morrison

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Separate Peace

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Giants in the Earth

Run Me To Earth by Paul Yoon

White Mythology by W.D. Clarke

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

The Story of My Wife by Milan Fust

The Incorporation of Eric Chung by Steven C. Lo

Straight Man by Richard Russo

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Lydia Field Snow Live

Career adjunct and activist Lydia Field Snow had a chance this week to describe her Adjunct Headquarters writing at Socialist News and Views.

words as a weapon

"His war against puritans is what his liberal admirers have in mind when they argue that he should be 'celebrated and remembered' as 'a tremendous liberating force in American culture.' Nowhere has this belief been explained more dramatically (or, in light of the charges of racism so often leveled at him, more relevantly) than in Richard Wright's Black Boy, a copy of which can be found on the shelves of the Mencken Room. Mencken himself marked this passage from the final chapter:

'A block away from the library I opened one of [Mencken's] books and read a title: A Book of Prefaces. I was nearing my nineteenth birthday and I did not know how to pronounce the word "preface." I thumbed the pages and saw strange words and strange names. I shook my head disappointed. I looked at the other book; it was called Prejudices. I knew what that word meant; I had heard it all my life. And right off I was on guard. . . . That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? . . . He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as weapon? No. It frightened me. I read and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.'"

~~ from The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken by Terry Teachout

affordable copies

Why pay less when spending more is so easy and free? Right. In other words, if anyone would like a shipped paperback copy of Auggie's Revenge or Fight for Your Long Day, the internet may be able to deliver. There are also affordable copies of Auggie's Revenge at Apple Books, on eBay, for Kindle, as well as at Bookshop and Smashwords, too.

"Use duffel bags."

"Don't be afraid to get rid of stuff."