Deception (Audible Audio Edition) Philip Roth, David Colacci, Susan Ericksen, Brilliance Audio Books
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"With the lover everyday life recedes," Roth writes - and exhibiting all his skill as a brilliant observer of human passion, he presents in Deception the tightly enclosed world of adulterous intimacy with a directness that has no equal in American fiction.
At the center of Deception are two adulterers in their hiding place. He is a middle-aged American writer named Philip, living in London, and she is an articulate, intelligent, well-educated Englishwoman compromised by a humiliating marriage to which, in her 30s, she is already nervously half-resigned.
The book's action consists of conversation - mainly the lovers talking to each other before and after making love. That dialogue - sharp, rich, playful, inquiring, "moving", as Hermione Lee writes, "on a scale of pain from furious bafflement to stoic gaiety" - is nearly all there is to this audiobook, and all there needs to be.
Deception (Audible Audio Edition) Philip Roth, David Colacci, Susan Ericksen, Brilliance Audio Books
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Deception (Audible Audio Edition) Philip Roth, David Colacci, Susan Ericksen, Brilliance Audio Books Reviews
So imagine William Gaddis' "JR", but about a third of the length and instead of covering a whole host of topics (but mostly money and what it does to people) mostly depicting pillow talk between two people cheating on their spouses. Bingo! Now you have "Deception", a book about people talking.
For those who don't like to read lengthy prose descriptions of, well, anything this book will be both your manna and a godsend as there is essentially no narration at all, no way to tell who is talking other than context, barely any descriptions of action (although it seems pretty clear that not a lot is happening) just a man and a woman chatting (and not always the same woman, it appears) conveyed through the magic of pure dialogue. The man appears to be a writer named "Philip" (not knowing much about Roth's personal life I can never tell if he has the world's best romantic life or would really like to have such a thing) and the woman might be the same woman he wrote about Zuckerman having various states of affairs with in "The Counterlife" (the two books overlap quite a bit thematically, although it's only coincidence that I read them so close together) but hardly any of that seems important as much as the two of them having succinct conversations about love and cheating on your spouse and being Jewish (he is, she's not) and whatever else seems to strike Roth's fancy.
This is one of those books that is either designed to be read in tiny bits, or devoured in one sitting. I did the latter, blazing through it in about ninety minutes, but its set up as chunks of dialogue (unlike "JR", which was one long seven hundred page scene) and snippets, occasionally bursting into the lengthier chunks of monologues that I associate more with Roth. It all goes down quite easily but there's nothing especially revelatory here, and people who have read several Roth novels around the same time period may feel that he's repeating himself, just with different window dressing. He writes fine dialogue (he manages to give a decent sense of place without getting too expository) but his strong point is more the intersection of prose and dialogue. Restricting him to just one aspect, while a nice literary exercise that he had fun doing, is more like watching an artist attempting to work with one arm strapped behind his back. It doesn't help that there isn't, as I noted earlier, a whole lot of narrative heft to the whole thing, most of it coming across as rather paternalistic, with the woman being somewhat unsure of herself and fluttery while Roth is cool and confident and given to long lectures about the things that interest him the most. It's a characterization of a lady that I feel I've read before, which may not be a fair criticism since she may be basically the same woman/woman construct that existed in "The Counterlife".
He also doesn't quite commit to the experiment completely, dropping in a snatch of narration here and there, although if they're you're own self-imposed rules there shouldn't be too many penalties for breaking them. It just comes across as a light work, and when he makes an attempt toward the end to justify it as a necessary self-referential writing exercise (not quite stating if the argument for being self-referential is just part of the writing exercise itself and just as false), it feels like he needed to justify publishing a series of notes and sketches as an actual novel and tacked on the "Is this not literary?" debate after the fact. But the whole novel feels weightless and untethered, not breaking any new ground beyond us giving us a few morsels of juicy dialogue to chew on. If you like Roth already, this is about as close to a "beach read" as you're going to get but if you are just being introduced to him, reading this might make you assume he's a bronzed Adonis, the kind of man irresistible to the likes of you and I. Although a universe where writers are the sexiest creatures to walk this earth isn't one I'd be all too opposed to.
'The trouble with life is you don't really know what's going on at all.' The main objective of this short novel is the explanation of this insight.
A series of dialogues involving Philip Roth's alter ego, a Jewish American writer in England, called Philip. He listens most of the time, most often to a married woman, who visits him in his Spartan studio (that he rented for writing, away from home). She talks a lot about her shaky marriage.
Sometimes other people talk, some women who seem to have had a relation with him, and some men, who accuse him of going for their women.
When Philip speaks, he seems much preoccupied by English anti-semitism, anti-Israelism, and anti-Americanism, in general and even more so in his literary circles. (The book was published in 1990, so the events must be placed in the 80s.) Some confusion boils up, when he discusses his work on a biography of his literary creature Zuckerman. That's a lovely mind bender. The difficulties in writing a bio of a man whom you invented yourself should not be underestimated.
In the middle of all this, Roth suddenly gets put on trial by a feminist tribunal for all kinds of sexist misbehaviors. His heroines are all falling short of proper womanhood. Philip lashes back. Or possibly Roth is defending himself clumsily, with a bad conscience?
And worse Philip's wife gets to read these notes and accuses him of an affair with that woman. But isn't it all fiction? The fictional wife doesn't believe that.
This is all quite delightfully confusing. All in all, an amusing mess. Not great, probably, but rather lovable for cynics like me. Mystification on a peak.
Roth is a master. No novelist can touch him.
This was not one of Phillip Roth's best efforts. It was somewhat disjunctive making it hard for the reader to tie the story together.
I would have sent the book back, but did not know how to do it. Surprised that Roth could write such a boring book.
Excellent as all of his books are I intend to read them all
I am rereading all the Roth books. This one reads like doodles during a staff meeting. It is interesting how these musings are collected into a book that does not flow in the style of a novel. Reading the books in order of their publication dates is quite a picture into Roth's mental state throughout his career. He is funny, insightful ,sad, melancholy, profound, and sometimes all of the above.
He said, She said. It's all very confusing. Or, rather deceptive...
Great dialogue. But hard to follow who is speaking to whom.
Eventually, it doesn't really matter. It's the conversation that's the backbone of the book.
Text voyeurism. Eavesdropping on two people in intimate conversation.
It's a shame that voice recognition can't be incorporated in the text!
Read a second time around some of the characters come out of anonymity.
Deception (in the eternal triangle) remains.
The Czech girl episodes... Just great!
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