My Neck, My Back
In about 2012 I was at university studying English Literature and Philosophy. I didn’t do a lot of the reading, but I did get through both Exit Ghost and The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I don’t know whether I was primed to dislike Roth or I managed it completely naturally. From the start I found him self-pitying and uninteresting. The Nathan Zuckerman books are somewhere between partially- and wholly-autobiographical. They are about an aging author who now teaches at an elite university and spends his time embroiled in affairs with students, cancel culture, disputes about intellectualism and morality. As the books continue, Zuckerman ages with them. He suffers from incontinence. His body is breaking down but he still wants to fuck. I found all of this contemptible. Not just politically - the whining of the New York intelligentsia at being cancelled by students, the (even now) risible ‘twist’ that the cancelled professor is revealed to be a light-skinned black man all along. Take that! ...
