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Sep 26, 2008

Jeff rated it:

This is only my fourth Roth novel (though I do believe American Pastoral to be one of the great American novels of the 20th century) so I don't really know how to place it. If Samuel Beckett took Portnoy's Complaint and distilled it into a seething novella of adolescent angst and disconnection (leavened with a heavy dose of Oedipal conflict) it would probably look something like Roth's latest offering. Why Beckett? Well, his view of the afterlife suggests we are condemned to live, over and over More...

5 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 21, 2008

R. rated it:

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13 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 06, 2009

Warren marked it as to-read

*Starred Review* In Roth's provocative new novel (his twenty-ninth book)-which, in a quieter, more personal fashion, is as provocative as his astonishing Plot against America (2004)-the setting and the main character are plucked from traditional Roth country: a nice Jewish boy living in Newark in the early 1950s, the son of a kosher butcher. The Korean War rages halfway around the word, but Marcus Messner, conscious though he is of the war and his possible forced participation in it, has a more More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2008

Judith rated it:

Sort of typical Philip Roth rehashing characters he's used before. Here we have an oddball college sophomore whining about his inability to get laid. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Because this plot wouldn't be realistic in today's world, the story is set in the 1950's during the Korean war, and the whiny college student is actually already dead, just looking back on this college experience. Because he refuses to compromise some vague unclear principles, he gets kicked out of sch More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2008

Ellenjsmellen rated it:

So far so good. Flows like Roth's Everyman and should be finished with this by the end of the day.

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2008

Ben rated it:

This book was a mess. It's the story of a young, blue-collar college man, Marcus, who grows up happily working in his father's butcher shop and idolizing the old man. Then, for reasons that remain unexplained, his father succumbs to traumatic anxiety about his son's future, and ends up questioning every decision of his and Marcus's. Of course, the parental anxiety of letting go is understandable as a motive, but Marcus's father jumps far beyond the ordinary, with no explanation (and no attemp More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 23, 2008

Dusty rated it:

"As a child, I had sometimes been taken by my father to the slaughterhouse on Astor Street in Newark's Ironbound section. And I had been taken to the chicken market at the far end of Bergen Street. At the chicken market I saw them killing the chickens. I saw them kill hundreds of chickens according to the kosher laws. First my father would pick out the chickens he wanted. They were in a cage, maybe five tiers high, and he would reach in to pull one out, hold on to its head so it didn't bite More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2011

Ron added it

An enjoyable and surprisingly easy read from such a master of the thoughtful novel. In some ways it had many of Roth's hallmarks, with a 1950s hero who is a disaffected Jew, young, intelligent but whose parents [well, father] have had too strong an influence for him to fit in away from home.

However, written from the point of view of a nineteen year old killed in Korea, this tells the story of how Marcus Messner, a lad of strong principles but little experience, attempts to settle in a very old- More...

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Mar 28, 2009

James rated it:

The force of this novel sneaks up on you as you are reading it. So many aspects to it: for someone my age, I know too much about the Viet Nam War, but, until this book, so little about The Korean War. Why should I have remotely expected that the war in Korea would have been any less savage than any other war? Because when it was being waged, I was young, in grade school and when reading about it in history books, it still had no meaning. Enter Philip Roth and this novel, Indignation. It is More...

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Mar 06, 2009

Tina rated it:

This is my first Philip Roth book, lent to me by my boss who loved it. First of all, I would like to say that Roth's prose is refreshingly frank and largely metaphor-free, yay! Overall the book was very straightforward, expounding upon the theme "actions can have unintended consequences," which is not exactly a rare and groundbreaking idea in the world of fictional narratives. Nevertheless I had a good time reading it and somehow really sympathized with his honest, bewildered young cha More...

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Jan 05, 2009

Stop added it

Read the STOP SMILING review of Indignation:

Has Philip Roth been spending time on the Animal House couch? His 29th novel, which takes place mostly at a tranquil Midwestern college, includes several key elements of classic campus satires:

1) a panty raid

2) a malevolent dean

3) a riot scene

4) projectile ejaculating

Knowing these four ingredients and the name of the author, you’d likely conjure a work much racier than Indignation, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Perryville rated it:

Marcus Messner, at age nineteen, had done no wrong. Raised in the Jewish working class neighborhood of Newark, NJ, he studies and works long hours doing the unpleasant tasks that have to be done in his father's butcher shop, working beside a father he loves and admires a great deal. But, as the Korean War escalates, his father's overprotectiveness and fear that Marcus would be drafted and fed into that meat grinder that was claiming so many young men’s lives, drives a wedge firmly between the tw More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 24, 2008

Brian rated it:

As Philip Roth winds his career down, his books have slimmed down but are no less effective in pentrating the psychology of American life in the 20th century. His latest, Indignation, follows the trials of Marcus Messner, a son of a kosher butcher in Newark. Through the lens of conservative and parnoid 1950s midwestern America, Roth creates an apparent coming-of-age story for Messner, who leaves his home in New Jersey to start his own life out from under a father who refuses to let his son grow More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 20, 2008

Stephanie rated it:

AMERICAN author Philip Roth might be in his winter years, but the 75 year-old-author has been very productive lately, with the publication of his third novel in three years and a fourth due out next year (2009).
And after 29 novels, it is safe to say that there are certain themes and situations he enjoys writing about: being Jewish, growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s, mid-western universities, sex and, more recently, death.
His last two books - Everyman (2006) and Exit Ghost (2007) More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2008

Valerie rated it:

I just saw this on the new book shelf at the library and picked it up. I had enjoyed reading The Plot Against America and thought I would give this a try. It is a quick read--I'm not a speedy reader, but had it finished in one evening.
We begin to know Marcus Messner through his first person narration while he is still living at home and preparing to be the first in his family to attend college. Through his own eyes he seems to us a fairly normal young man.
When circumstances in his l More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 07, 2012

Ben rated it:

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Oct 13, 2011

Cmorice rated it:

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 à 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 fil More...

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Jul 25, 2011

Adam rated it:

I am forever grateful to the professor who introduced me to Philip Roth in my second semester of college. Roth has since become one of my favorite authors whose humorous and often biting social commentary remains fresh to this day. While I would not class "Indignation" with some of Roth's other work ("Portnoy's Complaint," "American Pastoral," "Sabbath's Theater," "The Plot Against America"), it is a very good read. "Indignation" tells More...

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May 05, 2011

Tess rated it:

It’s the second year of the Korean War and 19 year-old college student Marcus Messner, a butcher’s son, flees his father’s increasing paranoia. Obsessed with Marcus’s well-being, Mr. Messner chases Marcus away from the safety of his home town, a school where he is thriving and into the great abyss of college and the threat of war. Roth's imagery of the butcher shop and the knives are so masterful with the impending threat of battle and going off to war.

I found the scenes with his fa More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2011

Frank rated it:

Questo libro è scritto con la tecnica del racconto in prima persona. Il protagonista parla del suo periodo di studente al college e così si viene proiettati nell'America degli anni cinquanta, in un insieme di contraddizioni, di timori e di entusiasmi dovuti alle nuove scoperte. Parrebbe quasi un contesto da Grease o Happy Days, ma la leggerezza e lo svago tipici di quelle pellicole davvero qui non trovano posto. Piuttosto gli stati d'animo prevalenti sono l'insofferenza e la difficoltà dovuta a More...

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Jan 29, 2011

Tancredi rated it:

"È a questo che serve l’eternità, a sguazzare nel pantano delle minuzie di una vita?"

Il mio primo romanzo di Roth: lo confesso, la prima impressione è ottima!

Indignazione è stato davvero una sorpresa, l'ho letto tutto d'un fiato (e va bene che è brevissimo), preso da una sete incredibile di lettura. E' un romanzo breve, ma davvero può pesare come un mattone (e infatti c'è chi si è bloccato dopo nemmeno venti pagine!), perché Roth ci mette dentro davvero tutto.

E' un More...

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Jan 03, 2011

Steve rated it:

Deeply flawed, yet there is much that is impressive in it. The flaws as well as the strengths are all typically Rothian--achingly bad dialogue in parts, overdoing the wrong stuff and underdoing the wrong stuff, cleverness of construction and narration, bad or cliche lines or solecisms sprinkled throughout, an anti-moral moral [beyond stupid: "I'd been drawn into the vapidity of the Winesburg College mores but of the rectitude tyrannizing my life, the constricting rectitude that, I was all More...

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Oct 25, 2010

Josh rated it:

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Jul 06, 2010

Clif rated it:

The self is a storm-tossed ship and Roth's books are tales of the navigation of that ship.

He uses themes repeatedly - the Jew among gentiles, the Jewish boy going after the shiksa (gentile girl), the entrepreneur/proprietor losing his world to the big-box stores, but he departs this dock on different paths that all examine existential issues: Who am I? Can I relate to others or am I alone? What do I have to hold onto? What can be trusted to endure?

Angst runs throughout hi More...

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Jun 25, 2010

Evelyn rated it:

I enjoyed this book in a superficial, half-hearted kind of way. It made for a fun afternoon of reading and there were times when the writing was clever enough to put a big smile on my face. But in the long run there was not one likable character in the entire book, and I wondered why Roth made it that way. The protaganist started to annoy me first when he fantasizes about using a black friend to shock his parents and most of all when he seems to have no backbone or even definitive opinion on More...

1 comment like

Jun 01, 2010

Marc rated it:

A short novel, wherein Roth goes back again to brilliantly sketch what sounds like another semi-autobiographical depiction of his coming of age. I find that I like it more after several weeks than I did when I put it down. Roth says something here about the wages of a rebellious soul, summed up just after his gruesome death on a hillside in Korea, with these words: "Yes, the good old American, 'Fuck You',and that was it for the butcher's son, dead three months short short of his twentieth b More...

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May 01, 2010

Melinda rated it:

This is my 6th or 7th Roth book (I was just exposed to him a couple years or so ago) and while I did not enjoy it as much as American Pastoral or The Human Stain, I did like it. For me, I think the softness and lovely Zuckerman descriptions was missing as it was for my in Operation Shylock. The book uses Newark as it's jumping off pint (do they all?) and artfully describes a young, smart, indignant 19-year-old who desperately does not want to become his father. It is a short book, but unnerving More...

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Apr 07, 2010

Bob rated it:

I lent this book immediately to a friend after finishing it, and so now, 3 and a half months after reading it, I can't refer back to passages I want to re-read, or to remind myself of characters' names or killer quotes.

What I do have: my notes on my bookmark: "Kid got his ass kicked by rural Ohio." That's the thumbnail version. The longer version is this: circa 1950, a nice Jewish kid from Newark, who worked in his father's butcher shop, found the need to escape his oppr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 16, 2010

Ian rated it:

One day all books will be written like this. Packed into just over 200 pages, there is not a waseted breath in this book.

The story is about circumstance, missed opportunities and the impacts of decisions. And I love it.

Marcus is an only child in the 1950s. He is going off to college and breaking free from his working class parents who are increasingly living vicariously through him and worrying about him.

Marcus heads off and has a bit of trouble fitting in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 17, 2010

Chuck rated it:

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