Free Republic

Not to disappoint Philip Roth, but the fact that you title your book, The Great American Novel, does not make it a great American novel. My definition of Great American Novel is pretty straightforward: a first rate fiction, by an American, that tells us something large and expansive about the American experience. One other condition—it has to be readable. A caveat upfront for the sensitive: seven of the ten novels listed below use the word “nigger,” not the infantile “n-word,” but the actual word itself. For the last many years, we have collectively refrained from using “nigger,” even in an...

The late Philip Roth is my favorite novelist, and his novel The Plot Against America, now a widely-praised HBO mini-series, is an excellent, disturbing book. The book posits an alternate history in which an isolationist, antisemitic Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the U.S. presidency in 1940, and proceeds to enact a series of increasingly draconian antisemitic measures. Among those measures are sending Jewish youths out to the country to live with Gentile families to become “real patriotic Americans,” away from the implied malevolent of their families, the Jewish community, Jewish culture, and Judaism. The irony in the title of this...

It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her friends more than a little anxious. A few days ago, Jong, the author and self-described feminist, gave an interview to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, the choicest bits of which were brought to my attention by the reliably sharp-eyed Christian Rocca, the U.S. correspondent of Il Foglio, who published excerpts on his Camillo blog. Basically, Jong says her fear that Obama might lose the election has developed into an "obsession. A paralyzing terror. An anxious fever that keeps you awake at night." She...

Unlike professional athletes, actors (Gene Hackman) and some novelists (Philip Roth), visual artists don’t usually retire. Or if they do, they don’t announce it. But in 2011, Maurizio Cattelan — one of the most expensive living artists, then at the peak of his career and the subject of an uproarious retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum — told the world that he was finished, fatigued both creatively and by the velocity of the money-fueled art world. During the last couple of years, though, Mr. Cattelan found himself itching to make things in three dimensions again. “Actually, it’s even more of a...

THE DEAD BABY MEDIA If the text on that one is too small for you, it's a CNN piece headlined, "Why the Syrian regime is killing babies." There's not much to add to that. The Syrian regime may be killing babies, but CNN killed journalism. With some help from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC. Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East knows quite well that parading around dead bodies is part of the Muslim ceremony of rallying for the next attack. These aren't funerals, these are corpse parades and the corpses are often...