but I’ve only heard of him a couple times before. I…uh, GUESS that could be something Anton Chigurh referenced, but I have no idea if Cormac McCarthy liked any of that noir pulp stuff (when Rolling Stone interviewed him, he said he only considered four books to be masterpieces–Ulysses, The Sound And The Fury and…uh, two others, Moby Dick I think? Can’t remember what else. He wasn’t a fan of modern stuff)

“Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle.”

I don’t know whether to laugh at that or cry.

Off The Wall managed a couple nice deep cuts. It was actually Bad I was most curious to hear because I already knew Thriller was hits-plus-filler. I’m not really filled with high hopes for the last three Jacko albums and if Thriller and Off The Wall really are his best, then…well, he’s not exactly one of the all time greats. Look, I wanted to do someone “pop” and mainstream because I was already larded down with prog and long discographies, and his isn’t long. But he’s not great.

Yep, the Simple Minds album is the one with “I Travel” on it. That’s a pretty good cut, probably the best known thing from the album. I’m already to the New Gold Dream album (they did a double album in 1981 that I’m putting aside for now for time constraints purposes) which bears absolutely no trace of the “Soviet dance rock” sound they were trying in 1980. This band seems to have major issues picking a sound and sticking to it!

It’s pretty cool that Nathanael West’s total output is only about 450 pages, but I don’t think anybody I’ve ever recommended him to ever read him.

The “happy Jews” line I quoted is just something I didn’t pick up on my first two readings of Portnoy’s Complaint–it’s not actually the final line of the book; the final line, you may remember, is the “punch line” from the therapist he’s been talking to the whole book. And before that “AT LEAST WHEN I LIVED, I LIVED BIG!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I don’t know how much remaining Roth there is that I really feel like reading. Here’s what I read:

1)Goodbye, Columbus: Pretty good, early stuff that sets the tone for much of what would follow. I remember the “conversion of the Jews” bit the best. This will probably be re-read this year.
2)Portnoy’s Complaint: Masterpiece
3)Our Gang: Brief, acidic, but rather obvious satire of Richard Nixon and his corruption. What would the dumbass MAGA crowd think of Nixon, and how angry everyone was at him? It’s a valid question!
4)The Great American Novel: Really liked this a lot. One of the 20 best books I’ve ever read, gets a silver medal after Portnoy’s. Needs to be re-read soon as I have forgotten most of what happens in it.
5)Zuckerman Unbound: Not bad but again I don’t recall the plot, Zuckerman goes back to Roth’s old neighborhood, was it? Sort of a transitional novel, Roth getting kinda old by this point? It was 1981.
6)Operation Shylock: This was really good, Roth dealing with an enemy and a “reverse diaspora.” Got good reviews and one of his best books.
7)Sabbath’s Theater: Another good 90s book, this one about a perverted old loser!
8)American Pastoral: Got a lot of good reviews, and does a pretty good job dealing with its protagonist being stuck between his own era and the radical 60s, but the people who said it could have been edited a bit were probably right. Good book anyway
9)The Human Stain: Not a classic but more good than bad. Not that I can remember what was wrong with it. It was about a black man who passes for white. Has a couple of borderline stock characters in it that in the hands of a lesser writer than Roth would have been unbearable (a bitchy left wing professor who targets the main character, and a pissed off macho right wing veteran guy)
10)The Plot Against America: Left wing paranoia fantasy concerning Charles Lindbergh becoming president. Lindbergh is no huge personal hero of mine so I couldn’t take it personally. I recall the book as being fairly good. It was made into a streaming miniseries that I never saw.
11)Indignation: One of his last books, about a young Jewish man fighting for himself during the Korean War at a WASPy college. Again, pretty good–reassuring that Roth still had it in his old age. This is in spite of the fact that this must have been like the 30th time he detailed a protagonist’s childhood growing up Jewish in New Jersey in the 40s or 50s, a variant of his own childhood.

I don’t know about the others. Roth got away with covering the same ground a stunning number of times, probably got away with it more than Woody Allen, whom I’ve been told he wasn’t a fan of? Do I have that right? I’d rather do those rereads before doing any of his other books–the ones I read seemed to be the ones that got the most love from the critics.