The Great American Novel (Roth)
Encyclopedia
The Great American Novel is a novel by Philip Roth
, published in 1973.
baseball
league, and the national Communist conspiracy to eliminate its history because it has become a fully open communist organization.
at the beginning of the 1943 season—to be used as a soldiers' embarkation point—which forces the athletes to play as the league's first permanent road team. The novel's narrator is "Word" Smith, a retired sports columnist who spends 1943 traveling with the Mundys.
era, such as one-armed outfielder Bud Parusha (Pete Gray
).
critic Bob Minzesheimer called the work "one of Roth's least known," and added,
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, published in 1973.
Summary
The novel concerns the Patriot League, a fictional AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
league, and the national Communist conspiracy to eliminate its history because it has become a fully open communist organization.
Plot
The Port Ruppert Mundys of New Jersey lease their stadium to the United States Department of WarUnited States Department of War
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department , was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army...
at the beginning of the 1943 season—to be used as a soldiers' embarkation point—which forces the athletes to play as the league's first permanent road team. The novel's narrator is "Word" Smith, a retired sports columnist who spends 1943 traveling with the Mundys.
Replacement-era players
Characters on the Mundys roster are parallels of actual replacement players from the World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
era, such as one-armed outfielder Bud Parusha (Pete Gray
Pete Gray
Pete Gray was a professional baseball player best known for playing in the major leagues despite having lost his right arm in a childhood accident.-Early life:...
).
Critical reception
In 2003, USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
critic Bob Minzesheimer called the work "one of Roth's least known," and added,
Daniel OkrentDaniel OkrentDaniel Okrent is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, for inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books, most recently Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.-Education and...
once wrote that if "40 percent of The Great American Novel is out-of-control, the remainder is unmitigated triumph. Roth turned the screw of fantasy and myth one notch higher than others and ended up with a work far truer to the sport: He knew his target, loved it dearly, and knew as well what exaggerations it could withstand."
Roth, best known for Portnoy's Complaint and American Pastoral, won a life achievement medal last fall at the National Book Awards. At the reception, I told him how much I enjoyed The Great American Novel nearly 30 years ago. He laughed and said it's usually the precocious teen sons of friends who tell him that. But he said no novel was more fun to write.
External links
- "Philip Roth is in the bullpen with 'Novel'", by Bob Minzesheimer, USA TodayUSA TodayUSA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, March 13, 2003