Philipp Roth – I married a Communist

Another one of the Zuckerman series, i.e. it is about how to become a writer. In this case it is also about politics and how political believe influences personal life – and vice versa.

“to teach them that you don’t have to be Al Capone to transgress – you just have to think (…) Cri-ti-cal think-ing (…) --- there is the ultimate subversion” (Roth, 1998).

“I was sitting between two shirtless brothers well over six feet tall, two big, natural men exuding the sort foforceful, intelligent, manliness to which I aspired. Men who could talk about baseball and boxing talking about books. And talking about books as though something were at stake in a book. Not opening uo a book t worship it or to be elevated by it or to lose yourself to the world around you. No, boxing with the book.” (Roth, 1998, p.27).

“He has outlived dissatisfaction. This is what remains after the passing of everything, the disciplined sadness of stoicism. This is the cooling.” (Roth, 1998, p.78).

“The incompatabilities were endless. But then, that was the challenge. With Ira, the more that’s wrong, the more to correct.” (Roth, 1998, p.83).

“You can’t bring to private life the ideologythat you bring to the great world. You cannot change her.” (Roth, 1998, p.84).

“His mind moved all right, but not with clarity. It moved only with force.” (Roth, 1998, p.86).

“You look with your big eyes into the capitalist shop window, you want and you wnt, you grab and you grab, you take and you take, ou acquire and you own and you accumulate and there is the end of your convictions and the beginning of your fear. There is nothing that I have that I can’t give up.” (Roth, 1998, p.96).

“Generalizing suffering: there is Communism. Particularizing suffering: there is literature.” (Roth, 1998, p.223).

“who has no family and no relatives and no house – who is without all that stuff that was pulling Ira in twenty differen directions, without all those emotions pulling Ira in twenty directions.” (Roth, 1998, p.235).

“How drunk on metamorphosis could he get, the heroic reinvention of himself he called Iron Rinn?” (Roth, 1998, p.301).

“No one finds his life. That is life.” (Roth, 1998, p.319).