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ae3b477
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Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre.
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Philip Roth |
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34c3987
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Before that night, I'd had no idea my father was so well suited for wreaking havoc or equipped to make that lightning-quick transformation from sanity to lunacy that is indispensable in enacting the unbridled urge to destroy.
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Philip Roth |
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8c24c7d
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Mr. Levov was one of those slum-reared Jewish fathers whose rough-hewn, undereducated perspective goaded a whole generation of striving, college-educated Jewish sons: a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn't as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men w..
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Philip Roth |
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4c666aa
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That people were manifold creatures didn't come as a surprise to the Swede, even if it was a bit of a shock to realize it anew when someone let you down. What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for
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Philip Roth |
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2b9a892
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But in Old Rimrock, NJ, in 1995, when the Ivan Ilyches come trooping back to lunch at the clubhouse after their morning round of golf and started to crow, "It doesn't get any better than this," they may be a lot closer to the truth than Leo Tolstoy ever was."
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Philip Roth |
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47098e8
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How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I'd think I was having a hallucination." Though"
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Philip Roth |
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2627ac1
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His nose was his most distinctive feature: curved like a scimitar at the top but bent flat at the tip, and with the bone of the bridge cut like a diamond--in short, a nose out of a folktale, the sort of sizable, convoluted, intricately turned nose that, for many centuries, confronted though they have been by every imaginable hardship, the Jews have never stopped making.
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Philip Roth |
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f0feafd
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Madeline displayed the bright sadder-but-wiser outlook of an alert first grader who'd discovered the alphabet in a school where Ecclesiastes is the primer--life is futility, a deeply terrible experience, but the really serious thing is reading.
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Philip Roth |
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5f3a4a6
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That's what I learned from my father and what I loved learning from him: that you do what you have to do.
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Philip Roth |
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c64d232
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n shk lmr , skhryth , lHss lslym lsysy lthqfy , ldhy yHfZh b`yd `n ltHrkt ljm`y@ , kn dr` wqy .
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Philip Roth |
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aa1b0fc
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There is no you, Maria, any more than there is a me. There is only this way that we have established over the months of performing together, and what it is congruent with isn't "ourselves" but past performances--we're has-beens at heart, routinely trotting out the old, old act." --
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Philip Roth |
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395cd04
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You are America. Yes, you are, my wicked boy. When we flew to New York and drove in on the highway, whatever the highway is, and those graveyards that are surrounded by cars and the traffic, and that was very confusing and frightening to me. I said do Matija, 'I don't like this'. I was crying. Motorized America with all the endless cars that never stop, and then, suddenly, the place of rest is between that. And they are thrown a little here..
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Philip Roth |
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c0e7ed2
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But it is INTERESTING trying to get a handle on one's own subjectivity--something to think about, to play around with, and what's more fun than that?
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Philip Roth |
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0db0212
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je kunt alles doorstaan zei Phoebe, zelfs als het vertrouwen geschonden is, als het maar eerlijk wordt bekend. je wordt dan levenspartners op een andere manier, maar je kunt nog wel partners blijven. maar liegen- liegen is een goedkope manier van macht uitoefenen over de ander. wie liegt, kijkt toe terwijl de ander handelt op basis van onvolledige informatie- met andere woorden zichzelf vernedert. ... het is toch eeuwig hetzelfde verhaal. d..
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Philip Roth |
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77667a3
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hoe weemoedig hij soms ook mocht kijken naar zulke echtparen in de vallende schemering of op zondagmiddagen, de week had nog meer uren en hun leven was niets voor hem, als hij zijn melancholie weer de baas was
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Philip Roth |
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cbdf938
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devi fare solo questo, presentare una buona e coerente versione di te stesso, e nessuno verra mai a farti domande.
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Philip Roth |
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a948a09
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He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach-that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again.
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Philip Roth |
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63f2c84
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'mn 'jl dhlk Sun` lkhlwd, lky ykhwD lmr fy tfSyl `mrh?
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Philip Roth |
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1cd6298
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And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds?
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Philip Roth |
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7d0530c
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Exhibitionismul inerent unei marturisiri nu face decat sa agraveze suferinta.
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viața
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Philip Roth |
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4e5c004
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Do me a favor, my people, and stick your suffering heritage up your suffering ass_ I happen also to be a human being!
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Philip Roth |
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62ecfe6
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Refusing! And she is after me with a broom, trying to sweep my rotten carcass into the open. Why, shades of Gregor Samsa! Hello Alex, goodbye Franz! "You better tell me you're sorry, you, or else! And I don't mean maybe either!" I am five, maybe six, and she is or-elsing me and not-meaning-maybe as though the firing squad is already outside, lining the street with newspaper preparatory to my execution."
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Philip Roth |
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318e34e
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I wouldn't so much as stick my head in a pool hall. Oh, look, this is as far as I go explaining what I am and am not like. I will not explain myself one more time. I will not make an inventory of my attributes for people or mention my goddamn sense of duty. I will not take one more round of his ridiculous, nonsensical crap!" Whereupon,"
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Philip Roth |
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2eb5854
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We return you to the Vice President, who is now addressing the National Sword Swallowers Association." "-the psychotics, the sob sisters, the skin merchants, the saboteurs, the self-styled Sapphos, the self-styled Swinburners, the swine, the satyrs, the schizos, the sodomists, the sissies, the screamers, the screwy, the scum, the self-congratulatory self-congratulators, the sensationalists, the snakes in the grass, the sex fiends, the shift..
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Philip Roth |
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9cdb399
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Conflicting stories continue to circulate concerning the death of the President. A second White House announcement has now called attention to the President's schedule for the day, pointing out that no mention is made there of dying. Also released was the President's schedule for tomorrow, wherein there also appears to be no plan on the part of the President or his advisers for him to die. "I think it would be best," said the White House Bi..
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poetry
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Philip Roth |
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2784552
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We've sifted through the eight thousand, don't worry about that. And this is the one. This is the murder weapon, no doubt about it." Then the President has been murdered?" I cant tell you that right now. But I can assure you that if there has been a murder, this is what did it."
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Philip Roth |
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24154e4
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What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. It was as though whole their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn't wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to tha..
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Philip Roth |
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857b434
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You know what I've come to realize about you kindly rich liberals who own the world? Nothing is further from your understanding than the nature of reality.
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Philip Roth |
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4c8c339
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This is the plot up to the moment when the writer leaves the woman still dolefully enmeshed in it, and, suitcase in hand, tiptoeing so as not to disturb her postcoital rest, he himself slips silently out of the plot on the grounds of its general implausibility, a total lack of gravity, reliance at too many key points on unlikely coincidence, an absence of inner coherence, and not even the most tenuous evidence of anything resembling a serio..
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plot
plotted
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Philip Roth |
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aa99de1
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It was not for me, after these last seventy-two hours, to reject as too outlandish the possibility that the situation for him here had driven George crazy. Yet I did reject it. It was just too insipid a conclusion. Not everybody was cray. Resolute is not crazy. Deluded is not crazy. To be thwarted, vengeful, terrified, treacherous--this is not to be crazy. Not even fanatically held illusions are crazy, and deceit certainly isn't crazy--dece..
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deceit
deluded
resolute
vengeful
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Philip Roth |
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9c0aecf
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I finally went back to my seat in the second row and sat there doing what I've done throughout my professional life: I tried to think, first, how to make credible a somewhat extreme, if not outright ridiculous story, and, next, how, after telling it, to fortify and defend myself from the affronted who read into the story an intention having perhaps to do less with the author's perversity than with their own.
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professional-life
to-fortify-and-defend-myself
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Philip Roth |
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2ced2c3
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Would that I were still a ludicrous character in his lousy book!
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ludicrous-character
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Philip Roth |
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237c5c7
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Look, I've got more personalities than I can use already. All you are is one too many.
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Philip Roth |
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b364c74
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a nervous, undernourished girl who continually looked down the front of her gown as though there was some sort of construction project going on under her clothes.
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Philip Roth |
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07b4275
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I suppose I should have laughed even more uproariously at what happened next; as a newly anointed convert to the Old Comedy, I should have bounded to my feet, cried aloud, "Hallelujah!" and sung the praises of He Who Created Us, He Who Formed Us from the Mud, the One and Only Comic Almighty, OUR SOVEREIGN REDEEMER ARISTOPHANES, but for reasons all too profane (total mental paralysis) I could only gape at the sight of nothing less than the h..
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convert-to-the-old-comedy
one-and-only-comic-almighty
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Philip Roth |
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efdd051
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Carrying his books from one life into the next was nothing new to Zuckerman. He had left his family for Chicago in 1949 carrying in his suitcase the annotated works of Thomas Wolfe and Roget's Thesaurus. Four years later, age twenty, he left Chicago with five cartons of classics, bought secondhand out of his spending money, to be stored in his parents' attic while he served two years in the Army. In 1960, when he was divorced from Betsy, th..
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Philip Roth |
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5554373
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But by the third year he had come to wonder whether Laura's purpose wasn't the shield behind which he was still hiding his own, even from himself.
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Philip Roth |
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9d061df
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Gone were the days when Zuckerman had only to worry about Zuckerman making money: henceforth he would have to worry about his money making money.
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Philip Roth |
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ebab62f
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All this, this luck - what did it mean? Coming so suddenly, and on such a scale, it was as baffling as a misfortune.
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Philip Roth |
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80675e9
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Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.
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Philip Roth |
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a097de6
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I left the front stoop on Leslie Street, ate of the fruit of the tree of fiction, and nothing, neither reality nor myself, has been the same since.
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Philip Roth |
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2b1790f
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You're our Marcel Proust, Mr. Zuckerman." Zuckerman laughed. It wasn't exactly how he saw it."
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Philip Roth |
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8b22951
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Nathan called all shiksas Maria--the explanation seemed as ludicrously simple as that.
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Philip Roth |
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7a4deca
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If you're from New Jersey," Nathan had said, "and you write thirty books, and you win the Nobel Prize, and you live to be white-haired and ninety-five, it's highly unlikely but not impossible that after your death they'll decide to name a rest stop for you on the Jersey Turnpike. And so, long after you're gone, you may indeed be remembered, but mostly by small children, in the backs of cars, when they lean forward and tell their parents, 'S..
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Philip Roth |