'eh?' of the day
Monday, August 28, 2006
The novels of Philip Roth have seemed as free of embedded literary allusions, as devoid of mythic parallels and archetypal symbols, as a comic monologue by the late Rodney Dangerfield.
– Philip Marchand in the Toronto Star
I'm not sure how to interpret this, not being familiar with the late Mr D's œuvre. But The Human Stain (2001) fairly hums with references to Greek tragedy, particularly ideas about predestination and inevitability, makes deliberate use of such classical devices such as foreshadowing (and outright revealing the ending), and even has a sort of Chorus in the person of Zuckerman. And one of its principal themes is the weight of myths and stories and how they govern and direct our lives, their reliability and their deceptiveness, and their destructive power.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there. I'm updating Roth's biography at the mo, and might be overdoing the research just a tad.
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