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The Style of Philip Roth

By Anita Mathias

When Roth “talks about getting a story right he does so, like any craftsman, with a practical understanding of the materials he uses and the techniques needed to get the job done. In The Ghost Writer, the ageing writer, EI Lonoff, tells 23-year-old Nathan Zuckerman, the most disabused of Roth’s stand-ins, that he “has the most compelling voice I’ve encountered in years. I don’t mean style… I mean voice: something that begins at around the back of the knees and reaches well above the head.” Voice in this sense is the vehicle by which a writer expresses his aliveness and Roth himself is all voice. Style, in the formal, flowery sense, bores him; he has, he once wrote, “a resistance to plaintive metaphor and poeticised analogy”. His prose is immaculate yet curiously plain and unostentatious, as natural as breathing. Reading him, it’s always the story that’s in your face, never the style.
His voice sounds so spontaneous that the lazy reader might suppose he is listening to confession rather than reading a work of fiction.”
Al Alvarez, The Guardian

Filed Under: books_blog, Style

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My Books

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

Wandering Between Two Worlds - Amazon.com
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Amazon.co.uk

Francesco, Artist of Florence: The Man Who Gave Too Much

Francesco, Artist of Florence - Amazom.com
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The Story of Dirk Willems

The Story of Dirk Willems - Amazon.com
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Amazon.co.uk
Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
Runner Up Christian Media Awards 2014 - Tweeter of the year

Recent Posts

  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
  • Trust: A Message of Christmas
  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner
  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

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What I’m Reading

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir
Vivian Gornick

Fierce Attachments  - Amazon.com
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Wanderlust
Rebecca Solnit

Solnit --  Amazon.com
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Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life
Kathleen Norris

KATHLEEN NORRIS --  Amazon.com
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Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96
Seamus Heaney

Opened Ground: Poems, 1966-96 Amazon.com
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