Say what you will about Philip Roth, but he knows how to write about intimate moments with garden vegetables and butcher meat. The same cannot be said for Norman Mailer.

Despite being dead, the Literary Review has given Norman Mailer the Bad Sex in Fiction award for The Castle in the Forest, his last book. The incriminatingly bad sex scene could double as a pamphlet for abstinence-only education and is after the jump.

CONTINUED »

Terry Gross interviewed Philip Roth this week about his new book, Exit Ghost. Roth has said the book is the last to chronicle the adventures of Nathan Zuckerman.

Now, we weren’t Psyche majors in college and we know Roth likes to keep his personal life on the DL, but it seems pretty clear that Nathan Zuckerman is Philip Roth’s stand in.

So this exchange seemed a bit, well, awkward:

TG: Zuckerman’s strategy to endure is to completely isolate himself … Is that a reasonable strategy, the strategy of complete isolation?

PR: For him.
TG: I kind of feel like it’s hurting him as a writer too, to be that isolated because there’s no new input.

PR: We don’t know anything about his writing. Roth hasn’t told us anything about his writing.

It’s just like an NPR host to criticize a Pulitzer Prize winning writer via his fictional alter ego.

According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.

Happy New Year! As some of you may know, today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Hey, who are we kidding? Everyone who works in media is Jewish. Shana Tova!

So in preparation for the next ten days of self-reflection, we thought we’d bring you the ultimate novel of Jewish repentance, Portnoy’s Complaint.

Before Philip Roth won a gazillion awards and became “the writer of our generation” or whatever, he was basically known as a sex freak. And this book is why.

Portnoy’s Complaint is a long meditation from Alex Portnoy to his psychoanalyst, who like most shrinks, doesn’t say anything.

The long of the short of it is that Alex is horny, Jewish and sexually frustrated.

CONTINUED »