Philip Roth, página 3 de 15

David Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twenty-four, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when he left his wife and child, Kepesh has experimented with living what he calls an "emancipated manhood," beyond the reach of family or a mate. Over the years he has refined that exuberant decade of protest and license into an orderly life in which he is both unimpeded in the world of eros and studiously devoted to his aesthetic pursuits. But the youth and beauty of Consuela, "a masterpiece of volupt" undo him completely, and a maddening sexual possessiveness transports him to the depths of deforming jealousy. The carefree erotic adventure evolves, over eight years, into a story of grim loss. What is astonishing is how much of America"s post-sixties sexual landscape is encompassed in THE DYING ANIMAL. Once again, with unmatched facility, Philip Roth entangles the fate of his characters with the social forces that shape our daily lives. And there is no character who can tell us more about the way we live with desire now than David Kepesh, whose previous incarnations as a sexual being were chronicled by Roth in THE BREAST and THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE. A work of passionate immediacy as well as a striking exploration of attachment and freedom, THE DYING ANIMAL is intellectually bold, forcefully candid, wholly of our time, and utterly without precedent--a story of sexual discovery told about himself by a man of seventy, a story about the power of eros and the fact of death.

Philip Roth''s new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from "one family''s harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man''s lifelong skirmish with mortality. The fate of Roth''s everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes. The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.

It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner, is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he there and not at the local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Es el año en 1951 en Estados Unidos, el segundo año de la Guerra de Corea. Marcus Messner, un estudioso e intenso joven que gusta de amoldar las reglas a su propio antojo, prodecente de Newark, New Jersey, está comenzando su segundo año de estudios en el religioso y conservador campus de la Universidad de Winesburg en Ohio. ¿Por qué razón se encuentra él aquí, y no en la facultad local de Newark donde se matriculó originalmente?

In a plot that evokes the author''s earlier work, Roth (Exit Ghost, 2007, etc.) focuses on a young man''s collegiate coming of age against the deadly backdrop of the Korean War.The book has a taut, elegant symmetry: A nice Jewish boy named Marcus Messner from Newark, N.J., reaches the turbulent stage where he inevitably clashes with his parents, his butcher-shop father in particular. After continuing to live at home for his first year of college, Marcus, the novel''s narrator as well as protagonist, feels the need to emancipate himself by enrolling in a college as unlike urban New Jersey as possible, one that he finds in Winesburg, Ohio. Whatever of his Jewishness he is trying to escape, he discovers that his ethnicity provides the stamp of his identity on the pastoral campus, where he is first assigned to room with two of the school''s few other Jewish students and soon finds himself courted by the school''s lone Jewish fraternity. There''s resonance of the culture clash of Goodbye, Columbus (1959) and the innocence of The Ghost Writer (1979) in the voice of this bright young man, who isn''t quite experienced enough to know how much he doesn''t know. The novel reaches its climaxin a couple of senseswhen the virginal Marcus becomes involved with the more experienced Olivia, whose irresistible sexuality seems intertwined with her psychological fragility. Can Marcus be Olivia''s boyfriend and still be his parents'' son? Can he remain true to himselfwhatever self that may bewhile adhering to the tradition and dictates of a college that shields him from enlistment in a deadly war? Is Winesburg a refuge or an exile?A twist in narrative perspective reinforces this novel''s timelessness.

Este volumen reúne por primera vez en castellano las tres novelas que componen la Trilogia americana de Philip Roth: Pastoral americana (1997), Me case con un comunista (1998) y La mancha humana (2000). Las tres tienen un mismo protagonista, Nathan Zuckerman, quiza el personaje central de la novelistica de Roth, alter ego del escrito o "alter mente" como el mismo lo llama. A traves de sus ojos, se reflejan tres momentos de la realidad americana posterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, las decadas de los sesenta, los cincuenta y los noventa, respectivamente.En Pastoral americana, Zuckerman cuenta la historia de Swede Levov, encarnacion del sueño americano: atleta legendario en sus años de estudiante, casado con una antigua Miss Nueva Jersey y heredero de la fabrica de su padre. Hasta que un dia de 1968, la America idilica por la que lucho se le hunde.Me case con un comunista es la historia de Iron Rinn, hombre hecho a si mismo, que de trabajador en una mina llega a ser un famoso actor radiofonico. Soldado en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, defensor de los derechos oprimidos, acaba en la lista negra y sin empleo denunciado por su mujer durante los furiosos años del macartismo.Finalmente, La mancha humana muestra como Coleman Silk, decano de universidad, ve su reputacion y su carrera

Nous sommes en 1951, deuxième année de la guerre de Corée. Marcus Messner, jeune homme de dix neuf ans, intense et sérieux, d'origine juive, poursuit ses études au Winesburg College, dans le fin fond de l'Ohio. Il a quitté l'école de Newark, dans le New Jersey où habite sa famille. Il espère par ce changement échapper la domination de son père, boucher de sa profession, un homme honnête et travailleur, mais qui est depuis quelque temps la proie d'une véritable paranoïa au sujet de son fils bien-aimé. Fierté et amour, telles sont les sources de cette peur panique. Marcus en s'éloignant de ses parents, va tenter sa chance dans une Amérique encore inconnue de lui, pleine d'embûches, de difficultés et de surprises. Indignation, le vingt-neuvième livre de Philip Roth, propose une forme de roman d'apprentissage : c'est une histoire de tâtonnements et d'erreurs, d'audace et de folie, de résistances et de révélations, tant sur le plan sexuel qu'intellectuel. Renonçant sa description minutieuse de la vieillesse et de son cortège de maux, Roth poursuit avec l'énergie habituelle son analyse de l'histoire de l'Amérique - celle des années 1950, des tabous et des frustrations sexuelles - et de son impact sur la vie d'un homme jeune, isolé, vulnérable.

Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth's startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent and his assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, 'are melted into air, into thin air'. When he goes on stage he feels like a lunatic and looks like an idiot. His confidence in his powers has drained away; he imagines people laughing at him; he can no longer pretend to be someone else. 'Something fundamental has vanished'. His wife has gone, his audience has left him, his agent can't persuade him to make a comeback. Into this shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evacuation bursts a counterplot of unusual erotic desire, a consolation for the bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not towards comfort and gratification but to a yet darker and more shocking end. In this long day's journey into night, told with Roth's inimitable urgency, bravura and gravity, all the ways that we persuade ourselves of our solidity, all our life's performances - talent, love, sex, hope, energy, reputation - are stripped off. Following the dark meditations on mortality and endings in "Everyman" and "Exit Ghost", and the bitterly ironic retrospect on youth and chance in "Indignation", Roth has written another in his haunting group of late novels. "The Humbling" is Roth's thirtieth book.

The Humbling, Roth`s thirtieth book, is the shattering account of Simon Axler, one of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, who has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance? told with Roth`s inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity.

In 'the stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, even death.

It is 1951 in America, the second year of the Korean War. A studious, law-abiding, intense youngster from Newark, New Jersey, Marcus Messner is beginning his sophomore year on the pastoral, conservative campus of Ohio's Winesburg College. And why is he here and not at a local college in Newark where he originally enrolled? Because his father, the sturdy, hardworking neighbourhood butcher seems to have gone mad - mad with fear and apprehension of the dangers of adult life, the dangers of the world, the dangers he sees in the every corner for his beloved boy. So Marcus leaves and, far from home, has to find his way amid the customs and constrictions of another American world. Indignation is the story of a young man's education in life's terrifying chances and bizarre obstructions. It is a story of inexperience, foolishness, intellectual resistance, sexual discovery, courage and error, told with all the inventive energy and with Roth has at his command.About Author: In 1997, PHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House and in 2002 the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction. He has twice won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has won the PEN/Faulkner Award three times. In 2005 The Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians' Prize for "the outstanding historical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004." Recently Roth received PEN's two most prestigious prizes: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. Roth is the only living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. A dazzling new novel from a modern master of the form...

En un solo volumen cuatro obras fundamentales de Philip Roth : Elegía, Indignación, La humillación y Némesis. ¿Qué tipo de decisiones determinan fatalmente una vida? ¿Cómo el individuo resiste la ar

"Il libro, come recita il sottotitolo, e una storia vera. Protagonista e Hermann Roth, il padre di Philip. Hermann e un vedovo di ottantasei anni, agente di assicurazioni in pensione, conosciuto un tempo per il suo genio, la sua forza e il suo fascino, che ora lotta contro un tumore al cervello. Colmo di amore e attenzioni, di ansia e terrore, Philip accompagna il padre in ogni momento di questa enorme esperienza, lungo il calvario di una dilatata agonia. Il figlio condivide l''umore e le miserie che il malato e costretto a subire: consulti medici, l''orrore del decadimento fisico, l''attesa inumana della separazione finale. Gli episodi memorabili si accumulano: il figlio che paragona la fredda tomografia del padre al calore della propria biografia; il confronto del suo lascito patrimoniale con quello di un taxista psicopatico; ma anche il concerto di musica da camera suonato dagli amici per Hermann; o Philip che telefona a Joanna, una compagna d''universita, per calmare le proprie angosce. "

"Il destino dell''""Everyman"" di Roth si delinea dal primo sconvolgente incontro con la morte sulle spiagge idilliache delle sue estati di bambino, attraverso le prove familiari e i successi professionali della vigorosa maturita, fino alla vecchiaia, straziata dall''osservazione del deterioramento patito dai suoi coetanei e funestata dai suoi stessi tormenti fisici. Pubblicitario di successo presso un''agenzia newyorkese, e padre di due figli di primo letto, che lo disprezzano, e di una figlia nata dal secondo matrimonio, che invece lo adora. E l''amatissimo fratello di un uomo buono la cui prestanza fisica giunge a suscitare la sua piu aspra invidia, ed e l''ex marito di tre donne diversissime tra loro, con ciascuna delle quali ha mandato a monte un matrimonio. In definitiva, e un uomo che e diventato cio che non vuole essere. "