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This list originally ran on September 24, 2007.
The indispensable, the significant, the disposable, and everything in between.
Roths funniest, smartest, most readable experiment in metafiction.
Notorious for a scene of graveside masturbation (take that, liver!
), the book pushes Roths obsession with sex and death to its limits.
Arguably Roths best novel, certainly his most mature.
Roths nascent obsessions are evident (sex, class, assimilation), but not yet his trademark voice.
Runs the gamut of self-absorption, from brilliantly taut to tedious.
A slim, uncompromising fable of a self-centered artist facing the abyss.
Just about the closest Roth has ever come to writing a happy ending.
By rights, this shouldnt hold together.
But for all the potential confusion, its satisfying Roth.
Told almost entirely in dialogue between two adulterous lovers, this is Roths smart, stiletto-slim beach-read novel.
The Anatole Broyard story, punctuated by rants about Monica Lewinsky.
But the voice is curiously neutral, lacking much of the whipped-up frenzy of later Roth.
Naturally, he has a bit to say about that.
Avoid
No Jews, no Newark, no jokes!
You might mistake this for second-tier Updikeespecially given that the sex is furtive, guilty, and banal.
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