Status Updates From Scriitorul fantomă

"...in which the tantalized hero does not move to act at all--the tiniest impulse toward amplitude or self surrender, let aloneintriuge or adventure, peremptorily extinguished by the ruling triumverate of Sanity, Responsibility, and Self-Respect, assisted handily by their devoted underlings: the timetable, the rainstorm, the headache, the busy signal, the traffic jam, and most loyal of all, the last-minute doubt" 15

"His celebrated blend of sympathy & pitilessness is nowhere more stunning than where the bemused isolate steels himself to be carried away, only to discover that his meticulous thoughtfulness has caused him to wait a little too long or that acting with bold and uncharacterisitic impetuosity, he has totally misjudged what had somehow managed to entice him out of his manageable existence and has made everything worse"

Our latest book club read....and my first Philip Roth book.

"Everything undeniably true struck me as transparently false as soon as I wrote it down, and the greater the effort to be sincere, the worse it went" (8).

Roth quoting Henry James "We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art"

I long ago gave up illusions about myself and experience.

"I long ago gave up illusions about myself and experience."

"...only where the bemused isolate steels himself to be carried away, only to discover that his meticulous thoughtfulness has caused him to wait a little too long to do anyone any good, or that acting with bold and uncharacteristic impetuosity, he has totally misjudged what had somehow managed to entice him out of his manageable existence, and as a result has made everything worse."

...only where the bemused isolate steels himself to be carried away, only to discover that his meticulous thoughtfulness has caused him to wait a little too long to do anyone any good, or that acting with bold and uncharacteristic impetuosity, he has totally misjudged what had somehow managed to entice him out of his manageable existence, and as a result has made everything worse.