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PARTISAN REVIEW
dead.
Roth is inviting us to inhabit a world bereft of love, to stand in the
pouring rain in a rundown graveyard policed by German Shepherd dogs
and with him to recite the roll call of tombstone names.
It
is absurd to
hunt for signs of growth or new life. This is a book about the end of
things. The end of art. The end of meaningful existence . The end of
connectedness, energy, hope. Malice and grief are what are left to us,
and, too, the persistent itch for a fight. What would Roth say to disap–
pointed idealists, to those backward believers in love among us, and to
those who are eager to say that this time he has gone too far? He would
probably reply in the words of Mickey Sabbath:
To everyone he had ever horrified, to the appalled who'd considered
him a dangerous man, loathsome, degenerate, and gross . . . "Not at
all! My failure is failing to have gone far enough! My failure is not
having gone further!
JANIS FREEDMAN BELLOW
