Author: ROTH, PHILIP
Title: Deception
Description: Vintage. 1991. (ISBN: 9780099801900). Paperback. Paperback in good condition, some minor creasing to cover. From Publishers Weekly Conversations, most of them between an American writer living in London and his English mistress, make up what PW called "a clever comedy of manners that segues as is the author's wont into a disquisition on the distinction between literature and life." From Library Journal Philip, a successful, middle-aged, and highly opinionated Jewish-American novelist, moves to a small flat in London to work on his new book. He begins seeing a married Englishwoman in his spare time, and soon he has filled a notebook with their pre and post-coital conversations. When he publishes this document as a novel, his indignant mistress accuses him of deceiving both her and his public. The book ends with Philip's impassioned defense of self-referential fiction. The issue, however, is not self-referential fiction in general but simply Roth's own peculiar version of it, which consists mostly of unabashed editorializing through the mouthpiece of Philip. A textbook example of the novel as soapbox, Deception will appeal only to Roth's most steadfast supporters. Used: Acceptable.

Keywords: 9780099801900


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