The British gambling house Ladbrokes lists Philip Roth as the front-runner for the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, which will be announced on October 11. Ladbrokes lists his odds as 5-1. Amos Oz is rated seventh, at odds of 10-1.
Oz is one of the pioneers of Israeli literature, literally inventing words to add to Hebrew to describe modern conditions. He may deserve the prize for “A Tale of Love and Darkness” alone. Ruth Wisse lists “The Hill of Evil Counsel” in “The Modern Jewish Canon,” and his 1995 book of essays “Israel, Palestine, and Peace” was masterful (although it doesn’t read so well today).
But nothing quite compares to the range of Roth’s work. Three of his books alone could form a mini-canon:
“American Pastoral” is the Great American [Jewish] Novel, for reasons touched on here, although some might prefer Henry Roth’s “Call It Sleep.”
“Patrimony” may be the finest father-son memoir of recent decades (and I’m counting the remarkable “The Duke of Deception” by Geoffrey Wolff and the extraordinary “A Boy’s Life” by Tobias Wolff).
“Everyman” is a modern parable of life and death that in my view has enough in it to satisfy both a religious and an irreligious point of view.
But Roth also exhibits one of the most unfortunate aspects of modern fiction — what Ruth Wisse has called its concentration on “the pre-eminence of the individual . . . [that] swears no prior allegiance to anything but itself and bears witness to a world that functions without reference to Divine Authority.” His latest novel, “Exit Ghost,” has been panned by writers as diverse as Christopher Hitchens (in “Zuckerman Undone”) and David Wolpe (in “Zuckerman Has Left the Building”) for its self-absorption, captured by Rabbi Wolpe in his elegant short essay:
This book is blighted. Roth’s great subject reminds me of what Emerson said in his journal about Bronson Alcott: "He never quotes; he never refers; his only illustration is his own biography. His topic yesterday is Alcott on the 17th October; today, Alcott on 18th October."
Roth’s subject is his body, more accurately, his genitalia. There was his youthful lust, his middle age lust and now we are unwilling voyeurs to his aged, unavailing lust. The reader can trace the distasteful peregrinations of Roth’s libido through a series of books designed to illuminate the modern condition. His subject is Zuckerman’s (Zuckerman is one of Roth’s fictional alter-egos) sexual status on 17th October. Tomorrow it will be Zuckerman’s sexual status on 18th October.
Throw in some magnificent verbiage, a few political diatribes, include a young nubile woman always interested in him and usually married, and presto — the novel is cooked.
JCI is nevertheless going with Roth for the 2007 Prize. Last year, he gave an interview to the British media in which he exhibited certain signs of Bush Derangement Syndrome (you can watch it here at Steve Pollak’s interesting literary blog). That probably sits well with the committee that chose Jimmy Carter and Harold Pinter in recent years, so we’re betting on Roth.