false 10 875 242 true 5726118 read 0 true 3964925 currently-reading 633 true 3964924 to-read 52 false 7091039 2009 5 false 7091044 2010 4 false 7091166 favorites 2 false 7091167 least-favorites http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78342446 Can a Darwinian be a Christian?: The Relationship between Science and Religion (Hardcover) by Michael Ruse
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78342418 Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (P.S.) by Kenneth R. Miller
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78188083 Acting Is Believing: A Basic Method (Hardcover) by Charles McGaw
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78188030 Impro for Storytellers (Theatre Arts (Routledge Paperback)) by Keith Johnstone
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78187983 Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction (Paperback) by Charles Baxter
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77967188 Theology for Beginners (Paperback) by F.J. Sheed
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77244498 A Secular Age (Hardcover) by Charles Taylor
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72758927 to: I Married a Communist (Paperback) by Philip Roth
bookshelves: 2009
*SPOILER ALERT*


I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. A famous radio star confides all his secrets to a 15-year old Nathan Zuckerman, takes him up to his cabin that his wife doesn't even visit, teaches him how to drive etc.? Zuckerman's U Chicago TA takes him to classical music concerts and back to his room? I also completely don't buy the "plot twist" (in a story told in the form of recollections of an old man--impossible) of Ira having secretly hastily killed in a moment of passion Strollo the Italian anti-Semite.

Roth commits the usual Zuckerman sins here: saying the same thing over and over again, not knowing what to leave out (as with American Pastoral and Exit Ghost, there are entire sections that you can skip--in American Pastoral it's gloves and tollhouse cookies, in Everyman it's watches, in IMaC it's taxidermy and rocks), and generally "telling" rather than "showing," which gives me the impression that Roth is just filling pages. Half of each Zuckerman novel is analysis of the other half. Zuckerman the narrator usurps the role of the reader, which ruins the whole experience of using your imagination, which is one of the reasons we read rather than watching movies, etc. The Zuckerman novels all seem to tell us exactly how to feel, even compared to Dickens. Seriously. That's a big no-no.

Another Zuckerman trait is a tin ear for dialogue. Everyone seems to talk like Zuckerman, that is, rambles for pages in monologue form as though they are reading from a script. Again, I just don't buy it. The story may have been powerful if it hadn't been told in a way that did such violence to it; as it is, however, it is a failure as a novel.

Another Exit Ghost similarity is needless sections of liberal jawing (in EG about GW Bush; here about Nixon's funeral, which took place after Ira is long dead and therefore is not relevant except to pay lip-service to what "everybody knows"--liberal swill disguised as conventional wisdom).

And just as a side note, I think Ira foreshadows both the Swede in American Pastoral and his daughter. He has all the heroic traits of the Swede and all the fanaticism of the daughter. That's just something I found interesting.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76406660 Love in the Ruins (Paperback) by Walker Percy
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76406549 Christianity and Culture (Paperback) by T.S. Eliot
bookshelves: to-read
]]>