Dear (insert your name here),
For those of you who don't know, Philip Roth and Paul Auster are considered to be among the greatest living American writers at work today. Roth, whom Harold Bloom has referred to multiple times, including in his fairly recently published book "Novels and Novelists", as among the four greatest American writers alive (the other three being Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon). He is known particularly for his first book, "Goodbye, Columbus", his extremely provocative fourth novel, "Portnoy's Complaint" (which caused a sensation because of its blunt sexual content), and later works, including his many Zuckerman novels, "Sabbath's Theater", "American Pastoral", "The Human Stain", and others. He's also won practically every award there is to win.
I admit I don't know as much biographical information about Paul Auster because I've only just begun going through all his books. But, and this information can be found on the bio page of any of his works, he has won a number of awards for his fiction, poetry, and memoirs and is known for "The New York Trilogy", "Moon Palace" "Leviathan", "In the Country of Last Things", "The Music of Chameleons"...and honestly those are the only five (seven if you could the trilogy as three separate books) I've been able to get through so far.
THE DEBATE
On the one hand, Roth and Auster are writers that are so different that seems almost pointless to try and compare them. However, their difference brings up an extremely important question to me, and that is - what do we value more in a novelist, the ability to explain ourselves or the unknown? To explain the difference, consider Fyodor Dostoevsky and Jorge Luis Borges. Dostoevsky, whether you like him or not, has been praised for his study of mankind, of what makes us us, and of all the paradoxes inherent in all of us. Borges, in contrast, is famous for exploring exotic questions and creating fascinating mental puzzles. For example, one of his short stories deals with the discovery of a secretly imagined world with its own kind of mathematics, literature, philosophy, and so forth. Reading his work not only stretches but strains the imagination.
Roth belongs unquestionably to the group of writers who, like Dostoevsky, are most interested in investigating us. Actually, it would be more accurate to say he has been most interested in investigating himself, considering that the majority of his novels deal with Newark, Jews, young Jewish intellectuals, Jewish writers, and sometimes even Philip Roth himself (for a pretty funny piece about this habit of his, check out this blistering criticism of him). Some have seen his occupation with himself and his home as a sign of weakness, but there is nothing inherently wrong with focusing work on a particular setting (it worked for Joyce, Hardy, and Faulkner). I bring this famous aspect of his work up simply because I believe anyone interested in post-WWII literature and/or Jewish literature more generally must read Roth.
Auster, on the other hand, is a totally different creature. Whereas it's easy to place Roth in the company of writers working during or immediately before his time, Auster's colleagues are Kafka, Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus, and Kierkagaard along with other writers of other times and nationalities. Whereas Roth writes about American Jewish identity, Auster is concerned with identity itself - specifically its breakdown. I am now reading my fifth novel by him, and I am still amazed by how vividly he can describe the ways in which we can lose ourselves and also question what it is that makes us us - our work? our friends? our family? our beliefs? Auster's characters lose all of these and more until they are reduced physically and mentally to practically nothing. And that's when they begin the process of becoming someone new or find out just how terrifying nothingness is when it begins to define your own self.
So who's better? While I am more interested in who you like (and why, of course), I have to go with Auster. I fear I have been overly simplistic in my description of the two, but in the interest of keeping things concise I'll limit myself to saying that for all Roth's skill in analyzing and describing a particular person and place, there is something very small about his narrative world. Earlier, when I mentioned how he explored American Jewish identity, I could almost hear his defenders say that, no, he explores human identity. Maybe, but I've read eighteen of his books, and for the most part the same ideas are expressed over and over, and frankly, I've only really enjoyed about nine of them. Some, like "The Professor of Desire", or "The Anatomy Lesson" are simply too obsessed with the character of Philip Roth (though both books are about someone very much like the author). While there are only a few of his books I really loved, most are interesting enough that I don't mind reading them if I can't think of anything else at the moment. However, Auster is consistently great and the fact that his themes are drawn more from psychology and philosophy rather than a particular cultural epoch makes his world seem as vast and mysterious as Roth's is small and highly specific.
So there's my opinion - both are talented writers, but if I had to choose between reading a novel by Roth or Auster, the choice would be easy, since one of the most fun things about reading for me is not knowing where the author will take me, or who I'll end up as when I finish.
What about you? Feel free to comment below because, as I said, I realize I've been very narrow in my discussion thus far and so would be more than happy to go into detail about particular books or topics concerning either author.
Thanks for reading and have a good day and/or night,
-Matt
NOTE:
I have good news and bad news that is, oddly enough, directly caused by the good news. The good news is that I was recently hired to contribute news and political stories as a freelance writer for a website and will hopefully be able to write literary articles for another. In fact, the writing sample I submitted to the second site was about a particular Auster novel. However, assuming I get accepted, that means that any political or literary articles I write for them cannot be posted here. This is a little annoying for me, since part of the fun of this blog is getting to talk to you about what is on my mind at any moment. Despite the fact that I may have to refer you to other sites rather than simply be able to offer you content here, I will do my best to keep contributing at the same pace here as I will there.
Philip Roth is a much better writer than Paul Auster ever could be.What makes the Roth's literature so great is the intensity of his writing. Literature is not only about "what?", butlike any other form of art, most of all about "how?" HOw do you handle the topic you chose?
ReplyDeleteWhile Paul Auster's novels are very good writen storys, in which you can detectt the "scenario", and sometimes suspect in them the stamp of other great authors, and even being disappointed about the forcefully added aspect in a work, like foreseeble parts of a plan (a than b than c,for example "Hollywood follies"), Philip Roth?s writing is, despite of all the possible influences the author can reflect in them, is unchangable and bears only the authentic stammp, that of Philip Roth's style. I think they belong to two different classes of authors, not because they handle different kind of topics, but because of different kind of qualities of their writing.
Philip Roth is a great writer, a great Artist,he is a kind of Piccasso among the contemporary writers (and one has to admid that there are many of them under the contemporary writers), while Paul Auster is a very good writer, a kind of Salvator Dali, who calculates and can deliver very good told stories, and at the end of your reding you have to admit "very well done" but you still see the calculation in his work. Meanwhile Philp Roth grips you in his writing, and at the end you have to ask yourelf, like any time when you end reading great literature, Joyce, Grombowitz, Saramago, Llobo Antunes, Kafka, Kawabata, Hrabal, Marquez, Kundera, Kadare, etc, etc, "How is this possible? How is this writing possible? How do they do this?`" and you can't help yourself but reman buffled by the genius of writing.