I liked all that writing life talk quite a bit. Now, having Roth reflect back on those libidinous years via Zuckerman is a little annoying for me, though this may also just be an effect of my age. This is a common issue in Roth books, though, and can get tiresome, though he can be quite self-deprecatingly funny about it at https://kissbrides.com/hot-cuban-women/ times, too.
So 1/3 of the way in the book I thought it was a merely good book, well-written, by one of our greatest living writers. And then it really took off, and the dialogue really begins to sing, as it can in the best of Roth’s works! Zuckerman’s writing gets him in conflict with his own family, which makes him initially resentful of his Newark family and his parents’s harping on his responsibility to his Jewish heritage.
Then the identity of a (Jewish) woman who is a guest in the Lonoff home turns him around again, making him question anew issues of the responsibility of the writer to his writing, to life, family, and cultural identity. I’m not going to say anything specific about that woman, but it is a surprising and wonderful turn of events that elevates the novel to a new level. In the end I very much liked it.
