Jersey Boy Jewish: Philip Roth’s Indignation
Indignation, Philip Roth’s newest, is a small but potent box of surprises: a little J.D. Salinger, a bit of Henry James, and a dash of Alice Sebold’s voice from beyond. Roth follows sophomore college student Marcus Messner from his Newark Jewish neighborhood to Ohio’s WASP Winesburg College. A master commentator on country and conscience, Roth’s story is set in 1951 as the draft reaps any man without a deferment for the bloody foxholes of Korea. Young Marcus, a kosher butcher’s son, is a true American innocent in spite of his intimate acquaintance with butcher shop blood and entrails. Roth’s foreshadowing lovingly develops the boy’s meat market education in all its gory detail.
Soon enough Marcus and Roth’s readers will discover that killing can be done with more than a cleaver.
The flip side of Salinger’s cynical teenager Holden Caulfield, Marcus believes the American Dream is real, if tarnished, and that an ethnic kid from Newark with brains and decent morals can be, well, somebody. His ideals begin to crumble under the onslaught of phoniness, decadence, institutional insanity, and sexual predation that is Winesburg’s male society. Ex-debater Marcus just cannot shut down his personal “free speech movement”, which leads readers to some hilarious rounds with really memorable characters: the football star reincarnated as “Dean of Men”; the rich Jewish fraternity brother who slimes society’s wheels with shekels; the luscious waster of innocence, Marcus’ redheaded girlfriend with a “past”; the towering Wonder Woman of a Jewish mother; and last, the cackling and slovenly bunkmate Flusser, who pollutes night with classical sturm und drang, day by emoting Shakespeare’s, “I’ll be revenged of the whole pack of you”, and space with all manner of bodily fluids. When the last page turns, the only thing left to say is, “Oy!” Highly recommended reading for both sexes.
Book reviewed by Val Morehouse in Oct. 2008 email issue of Library News from Temple Isaiah Library.