Why I hate Van Halen (a dissection of "Jump")

I just put this on my last.fm blog. Check me out sometime.
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Van Halen gets too much respect these days and I want to know why. I have my guesses, mainly that the people who enjoy this band grew up in the 80s and have an unhealthy attachment to anything heard on the radio during their formative years; additionally, we are starting to deal with the rise of young music listeners who faced a similar predicament, if only because their parents are those same listeners from the 80s. Surely, Van Halen had a few virtues far beyond those of the average cheese metal band (although its influence on the most horrid examples of the genre, such as Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Ratt, cannot be denied), but such modest virtues consisted solely of Eddie Van Halen's novel approach to guitar playing, which I will grant that, at the time of their debut album in 1978, may have seemed like a logical extension of the sort of things Led Zeppelin was doing, even as Led Zeppelin's better years were behind them, with Jimmy Page devoting himself full time to heroin and Aleister Crowley. Some believed that Eddie's chops were enough to offset David Lee Roth's horrible lyrics and even worse vocals in those days, but by the time something like "Jump" came around, I don't think anyone was attempting anything resembling good songwriting.

People seem to have a special spot in their heart for "Jump" among all Van Halen songs. I really can't figure out why. It's anchored by a keyboard riff that is as shockingly pedestrian as any that has been replayed over and over on classic rock radio, and you better believe that is saying a lot. It is a textbook case of beating a bad riff into the ground. "Jump" was part of Eddie Van Halen's opus 1984, which was a poor attempt on his part to master the keyboards in the same way that he had proven himself to be a master of guitar. Obviously, something went horribly wrong.

I begin with, as I must, with the lyrics. You might ask, why bother? Even the biggest David Lee Roth fan in the world has to admit that he is one of the two or three worst lyricists of all time (this is assuming that Roth is writing these lyrics, which I'm not sure--if it's Eddie, there's another reason for him to quit his day job). Roth of course was an amateurish singer, a preening prima donna of a showman, an incomparable chauvinist asshole, and, from all records, an impressive martial artist. Roth brings all these experiences and more to this beautiful opening aphorism:

I get up
and nothing gets me down

Whether or not it is true that it is difficult to get Roth down once he gets up, you have to wonder what he means by "getting up." Knowing Roth, it possibly has something to do with drugs but more likely is just Roth trumpeting his own irrepressible (read: annoying) personality, refusing to let all the haters hold him back. This opening line would make a lot of sense in a Viagra commercial, but beyond that, come on. Let's see if Roth can follow up this claim.

You got it tough
I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real

This is Roth's statement of purpose, foregrounded by Eddie's already gratingly repetitive keyboard riff. As far as I can tell (and by doing this I am putting more thought into David Lee Roth's lyrics than anyone else in the history of the world, certainly more than Roth himself), Roth is trying to cheer up a woman who's not doing too well, telling her to "roll with the punches to get to what's real." This means, as far as I can tell, that if she just keeps taking it, eventually something good will come out of it. Thanks a lot, Roth.

Let's continue with what I guess is the bridge part, a blessed respite from that fucking tinny keyboard, kind of:

Oh can't you see me standing here, I've got my back against the record machine
I ain't the worst that you've seen
Oh can't you see what I mean?

Record machine? Surely he isn't referring too, I don't know, a record player of some sort? Perhaps a jukebox, which would suggest that Roth's players are in some communal place like a bar, or perhaps a local soda fountain. Then he says, "I ain't the worst that you've seen," which perhaps could be construed as an attempt by Roth at self-deprecation, until he says, "Can't you see what I mean?" So, he isn't the worst that you've seen, wink wink nudge nudge? Does that mean that he is, actually, the worst thing that you've seen? I doubt it. More likely, Roth believes that any sentence followed by ,"if you know what I mean" qualifies as a pickup line. He is entitled to think that as the singer of a successful rock band (albeit, apparently, an ungrateful one).

So after this is the chant. "You might as well JUMP!" which is followed by someone else yelling, "JUMP!" Every time Roth says the title of the song, someone else (Eddie?) responds in turn. I find this to be one of the most annoying aspects of the song, particularly because Roth has to continue shouting nonsense like, "Yeah, jump! Go ahead, jump! Might as well jump!" etc. I'm willing to postulate that, to people who grew up with this song, this may be the most affecting part. That is, if one can put aside what some could construe to be a casual message of encouragement to those who consider suicide. Others could possibly take it to mean, I don't know, doing something crazy because you're young and invincible. Or something like that. It seems a lot of terrible songs from the 80s cover the same topic.

The rest of the song's lyrics basically repeat the bridge and the chorus over and over again, although there is one more verse that is, as you'll see, complete nonsense:

Aaa-ooh, hey you! Who said that?
Baby, how you been?
You say you don't know, you won't know
until we begin.

Christ, I don't even feel like going into this any more. Obviously it's just stupid, and it's not even the most egregious example of Rothian nonsense. I have a theory for why he wrote lyrics like this (seriously, did he just make them up on the spot?). David Lee Roth once said something to the effect of, "Rock critics love Elvis Costello more than me because they all look like Elvis Costello." It seems that me that this brilliant realization of Roth's inspired him to be everything that Elvis Costello is not, and so, to counter Costello's proclivity to write intelligent lyrics, Roth chose the meathead route. He must have figured that the quality of an individual's lyrics is inversely proportional to how much said individual gets laid; for all I know, he could be correct (although Costello was no slouch).

By now you will be arguing, "well of course the music is more important than the lyrics." I agree with you, so let's take the music on its own terms. The entire production sounds, at this point, phenomenally dated, in the same way in which similar "classics" like Born In The USA and Thriller sound dated. As products of the 80s, all the levels are reduced to car stereo quality, making everything sound tinny and inexpressive; additionally, keyboards are front and center and all the non-electronic instruments sound as if they are electronically augmented, even if they are not. As a result, the music sounds as inauthentic and "non-live" as traditional rock music can get, in a way that Led Zeppelin or even previous Van Halen never did.

Let's talk about the overall arc of the songwriting. For someone considered an incredible virtuoso, one of the crowning princes of his instrument, Eddie Van Halen surely doesn't extend his experimental edge to his songwriting. I think this has to be intentional, and a good reason why he is far more popular and revered than more esoteric players like Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai (or progenitors like Zappa). Not that there's anything wrong with that: in fact, I think it's probably a good thing that Eddie tried to temper his virtuosity by channeling it into typical pop structures. Still, even as a pop song, "Jump" is really nothing special. If you listen to both the verses and the chorus (this is one of many, many mainstream 80s songs where the verse and the chorus are the exact same thing), you'll notice that what you have is a I-IV-V progression--which, as songs from "Louie, Louie" to "Get Off Of My Cloud" to at least every other Ramones song will attest, is as typical a chord progression as is possible. In "Jump"'s case, you got C, then F, then G. It's really as simple as that. Over this progression is the keyboard riff, which overpowers every other instrument to an absurd degree. It's the same thing over and over again. Obviously, that's the point, it's a riff, but let me explain my distaste. I feel as if I have different responses to keyboard riffs than I do with guitar riffs: with a good guitar riff, you can at least feel the joy of expressing that sort of thing through repetition, whereas with this keyboard there's no real way to tell if Eddie didn't just play it once, put it on repeat, and make a song out of it. The fact that he tries changing it to some degree once in a while doesn't really do much for me, as even when he does that, the rhythm doesn't change at all, as if the whole tune has been preset.

The less said about the ineffectual rhythm section running behind Van Halen and Roth, the better. It's really a shame how inferior Alex Van Halen is compared to his brother, and yet it's moving to see him try to become some sort of drum legend when all the chips are stacked against him. That number one chip being, of course, bassist Michael Anthony, who as far as I can tell has a hard time playing more than one note for an indefinite period of time. Well, so did Dee Dee Ramone, you claim, but Dee Dee didn't have a drummer who played copious and poorly considered fills all the time. Alex's drumming is famously flashy, yet counter-intuitive given the nature of the song. On "Jump," neither of them can play worth shit, which is good because Eddie is clearly running the show here, and you can tell by what instruments are prominent.

Oh, but Eddie...there are several things wrong with this song's structure. Apart from actually giving us some audible guitar during the bridge (the "record machine" part), the most prominent guitar playing is during the solo, which, I must say, is pretty piss-poor. It sounds like Eddie recorded it in bits and pieces and edited it together at the last second after realizing he forgot to put in a solo, like a pimply teenager who tries to desperately rub one out before his prom date arrives. I was disturbed to read on Wikipedia that Eddie considers this to be his finest solo, although I couldn't find any evidence of him pointing out why. It comes out of nowhere, has nothing to do with the rest of the song, is completely unmemorable, and (his greatest sin) sounds like it's just trying to waste time. It's this kind of onanistic chaff that deservedly gives virtuoso guitar playing its bad rap.

Eddie's keyboard solo, which immediately follows the guitar solo, is embarrassingly bad for an entirely opposite reason. Here, it seems he can barely get a hang on the instrument, and his "solo" is nothing more than a quick succession of triplets, rather than the full chord at once. I don't know if Eddie got a bit better at the instrument later in his career (I hear he did), but at that point, it seems he is stuck with the most rudimentary of chords--triads--and he is not adventurous enough to try anything else.

So it seems we have Eddie Van Halen exemplifying the two opposite poles of bad instrumental soloing: total incompetence, of course, as well as super-competence, and the resulting high self-regard for what is essentially aimless noodling.

By the way, I personally prefer this video of Van Halen playing. It includes a noble attempt at "Iron Man":



Children of the 1980s, guitar enthusiasts, lovers of shitty lyrics, hear my plea. The next time you hear "Jump" on the radio, ask yourself these questions: why is this a good song? Why is it even on the radio? Has this aged well? Maybe you should consider that it was that stupid video on MTV, coupled with its aggressive airing on commercial radio, that foisted this upon you, and as such you are not required to like it at all. Just think about it. There's nothing worthwhile in this song. It's just a piss-poor excuse for a synthesizer riff that must have taken Eddie Van Halen five seconds to come up with. It is aural boredom. If you want a great keyboard lick from the 80s, might I suggest "Enola Gay" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? And, of course, "Take On Me" by a-ha.

The Batman, emphasis on "The Man," also: Watchmen trailer

No thanks to you bozos, I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight, and of course as a fan of what Christopher Nolan is doing with the character, generally, I found it to be yet another very powerful and effective superhero movie (does anybody besides me notice the ratio of good superhero movies to bad superhero movies these days? No wonder they're a sure bet at the box office these days--it seems every other summer movie can't resist being labeled a mixed bag at best). Heath Ledger was extremely good, I thought, and definitely the best Joker I've ever seen on screen (don't count me as a fan of Jack Nicholson's impression), even as his portrayal didn't exactly match the conception I had of him from the comics. It was also fun and somewhat novel to see a movie version that argued basically the inverse of what V For Vendetta was going for: that, as Thomas Hobbes suggested, life is nasty and filled with awful people, and only self-appointed guardians of order, legitimately elected or not, can keep us from tearing ourselves apart. Much has been written about how the Joker has been remade as a political terrorist a la Zarqawi or whoever, and it's sort of interesting to see the formerly anti-establishment Batman teaming up with the cops to restore capitalism and democracy, albeit not by playing by the books (then again, who ever did?). I was also happy to see the Joker providing a true-life example of "the prisoner's dilemma" for us to witness--as a screenplay device, it's kind of hoary, and the payoff is even worse, but the idea of the Joker as a amateur political scientist strikes me as gold.

Some things bugged me, but I don't know if they qualify as actual criticisms of the movie. The film brings up a lot of properly weighty themes that are discarded without a moment's notice--the Joker-Batman inverted psychoses theory first posited (as far as I know) by Alan Moore; the interesting notion that Batman is indirectly responsible for most of the supervillains who hang around Gotham City; that Two-Face follows this tragic arc and remains, unlike the rest of the characters, unredeemed. I never felt, for all the speechifying done by various characters (including countless moments where Joker says something to the effect of, "I'm just like you, Batman, I'm the yin to your yang, Batman, you are order and I am chaos, blah blah blah"), any of this was satisfactorily resolved. When Two-Face finally gets involved in the action, as fearsome as he looks, it seems that he is supposed to represent the new breed of evil in Gotham--and he doesn't seem that bad. The conversation he and Joker have doesn't make any sense. Additionally, I felt the film crossed the line with having Batman devise some sort of widespread sonar device that could determine the location of anyone with a cell phone, even if it's meant to be temporary. Has it come to the point where audiences can only trust Batman if he is the superhero embodiment of Big Brother, working with law enforcement to take down unabashed anarchists? I don't think this is an encouraging development (and what would Batman have done with V?). I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, because it seems that Nolan is trying to set up something not frequently explored in the comics, that of Batman operating completely outside of the law and, indeed, in opposition to it. It would be cool to see a movie where Batman fought police brutality or battled war profiteers by waging corporate warfare as Bruce Wayne (there was an excellent arc in Morrison's JLA where Batman "buys out" Lex Luthor in order to stop one of his schemes). Won't happen though. The way the movie ends, I like to think it would dovetail nicely into an arc involving Killer Croc or Solomon Grundy (Batman has to relocate in the sewers) or maybe Catwoman. Then, maybe in the future, we can get a Superman team-up?

But let's not get into that. Let's talk about this Watchmen trailer.



I, like many millions of Americans, am a big fan of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Many people like to say that it is the greatest comic book story of all time, and while I am trying to slowly wean myself from making grand pronouncements like that, I think it is absolutely essential reading for just about anyone. Certainly, if I were to ever teach a class on postmodern fiction, I would include that as required reading, no question. As a statement on industrial imperialism, compounded by the world's first US superpower employing people with literal superpowers, and the resulting fecundity of cold war resentment, it is without peer, and I honestly believe that, even with all the superheroes running around. The layers of detail and exposition warrant many repeated readings, and the ending is appropriately (given the times) morally ambiguous: I've had long arguments with people concerning whether or not we felt Rorschach's actions at the end were justified.

I feel as if Watchmen fans are now divided in two halves: those who can't wait for Zack Snyder's movie adaptation and those who are uneasy with the notion of Watchmen being made into a film, particularly by Zack"300" Snyder. You can count me among those who felt that 300 was an absolutely loathsome movie, which, if not an outright gesture of support for the continuing War on Terror was sufficiently xenophobic, homophobic, and full of enough macho self-posturing to make me want to gag. Additionally, the fact that Alan Moore explicitly stated that a movie cannot and should not be made of Watchmen was enough to give me additional pause.

Funny fact: I was delighted to find that Moore and I have similar feelings about 300, per an interview he did recently with Entertainment Weekly:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Don't you have the slightest curiosity about what Watchmen director Zack Snyder is doing with your work?
ALAN MOORE: I would rather not know.

He's supposed to be a very nice guy.
He may very well be, but the thing is that he's also the person who made 300. I've not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn't particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: [that] it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that's not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but...I wasn't impressed with that.... I talked to [director] Terry Gilliam in the '80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ''Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, 'I wouldn't.''' And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't.

He makes good points, and he admits he may be making generalizations.

Anyway, I saw the trailer, and I couldn't help but be taken aback by how strikingly similar to the comic it is, at least in terms of angles: in fact, I was downright moved by the proceedings. I'm not convinced yet this is a good idea, but who knows? It was a good choice to have them play the Smashing Pumpkins song "The End is the Beginning is the End," as it fits the heavily stylized industrial atmosphere, as well as give it an updated 80's flavor (although, it should be pointed out, that song was written by Billy Corgan not for any album but for the soundtrack for Batman & Robin--a bad omen if you think about it). The Owlship, I was pleased to see, looks very cool. Nite Owl now looks kind of like a doughy Batman ripoff, and it's kind of silly to see him dropkicking some prisoners, but whatever. Silk Spectre now wears less clothes, no surprise there. Dr. Manhattan looks very cool, and very similar to the comics, as does the Comedian. Ozymandius unfortunately looks pretty underwhelming, but maybe that's part of the point. My beloved Rorschach (who, incidentally, shares Mendelson's birthday), looks spiffy as well, although I'm dubious about how Snyder is going to try translating the constantly shifting patterns on his mask--having them change on screen gives it a slightly different effect than having them change from panel to panel.

Anyway, it's an addictive trailer. I will probably see it when it comes out, but consider me, like Moore, to be skeptical. Hurm.

An open plea

Does someone want to see The Dark Knight with me, someone who preferably is already in Ames?

There's no way you will be interested in this

My class schedule for next year, for those of you interested. In case you are confused, I go to a liberal arts school that's divided into nine "blocks," which translates into four classes one semester and five in the other. Looking back on my college career, I am proud to say that I never took a block off, and I never skipped class, not even when I was sick (not that I ever got sick). Unfortunately, the days when one got rewarded for this are now over, and I have to depend on my intellect to reap me benefits. I'm screwed.

1. Senior Seminar: Colonial Literature and Postcolonial Theory
2. Intermediate French
3. American Survey
4. Virginia Woolf
5. Jazz Improvisation
6. Topic: Who Owns Music? The Practice and Politics of Musical Borrowing
7. Advanced Critical Writing
8. Race, Sex, and the Constitution
9. Critical Theory

I know what you are thinking: Is this Sacks guy so hardcore that he is going to end his college career with Critical Theory? Damn right. I couldn't fit it anywhere else.

Some other notes:
-Regarding Intermediate French, I'm screwed. Part of a liberal arts education is that you need to take a requisite number of classes outside your major, which includes a language. Technically the only class you need to pass is one language class at the 205 level, but unfortunately you need to either make it through three beginning classes or pass into a higher level by taking a test at the beginning of freshman year. I passed into French 103, which meant I would have to take two classes. I took 103 back freshman year, but for numerous reasons I have had to keep pushing back when I would take 205. Now, I don't remember any French. This is bad news. I feel especially bad considering the amount of friends, particularly from high school, who have gone and lived in other countries and learned other languages. For some reason, I have tried to remain willfully ignorant of other languages, in part because I never really liked the French language to begin with. I wonder why I never went abroad, anywhere. I guess I couldn't imagine leaving my little liberal arts alcove, but now I'm gonna have to leave, or end up like Eric Stoltz in Kicking and Screaming (see that movie if you haven't).


-Jazz Improvisation is looking to be somewhat hardcore, although I'm sure I can take it way better than most people. I wonder if my teacher will be down for some jazz fusion in the form of, I dunno, Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow.

-I'm only taking Virginia Woolf because it's with the master of all things Woolf, and at Cornell there are disappointingly few classes devoted to a singular author (one on Milton, if I remember, and two on Shakespeare).

-I found out not long ago that a professor of some repute who recently left Cornell (and whose name is not really that googleable but I will withhold it, just in case), talked a bunch of shit about me to a friend of mine. He took great issue with my article on Mark Steyn, which angers me only because I consider that article/interview to be the only worthwhile thing I did on that paper, and he proceeded to tear me up for not being sufficiently critical of Steyn and Cornell for inviting a public speaker that a) didn't have old-school scholarly credentials, and b) maintained that multiculturalism is a deterrent on American progress. I felt like writing an angry E-Mail but I abstained, as surely he is a far superior rhetoritician. Still, I swear to God, if I were ever to become a professor I would not end up being a knee-jerk peacenik like so much of the faculty. I mean at least they can entertain a speaker's presence for a day or so.
-Jesse Helms was a prick.

Also, I need to consider giving this blog a bit more oomph. Those who have known me or seen me will understand when I say I have no concept of visual aesthetics, and I will pay someone to help redesign (and maybe get a guest blogger up in here, anyone interested?*) If some of my bloggier friends (Mendy, Jim, Ricky) want to work something out I would be glad and somewhat relieved.

Oh yeah, since Mendy posted a link to my last.fm meme I am bound by my code of honor to do the same for him: Here. I think his answers ended up being a lot more interesting then mine, but then he got lucky.

*Not Juell.

Quotes, for the sake of wasting time

"These seances are intercut with concert footage, during which the band typically sings the lyrics through once and then gets mired in endless loops of instrumental repetition that seem positioned somewhere between mantras and autism. The music is shapeless, graceless, and built from rhythm, not melody; it is amusing, given the undisciplined sound, to eavesdrop later as they argue in a van about whether they all were following the same arrangement."
-Roger Ebert, on the music of Neil Young & Crazy Horse

"I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't...Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life as a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."
-Spike Lee, offering the most ridiculous generalization masquerading as criticism I've heard in a while, and I'm not even that big of a Coen brothers fan.

"astenou6 you's da faygot spiderman is teh greatest marvel superhero character ever not because of his powers but, because of what he represents your to much of a noob to get taht!"
-Youtube user Ace48071, spreading the Spider-Man gospel in ways I could only hope to emulate.

"So here is the problem. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for 100,000 years, but apparently for more than 95,000 of these years he accomplished virtually nothing. No real art, no writing, no inventions, no culture, no civilization. How is this possible? Were our ancestors, otherwise mentally and physically undistinguishable [sic] from us, such blithering idiots that they couldn't figure out anything other than the arts of primitive warfare?"
-Dinesh D'Souza, undeservedly proud of his new counter-theory against "the atheists" claiming that it makes no sense that God would only choose to intervene in human affairs sporadically over the last 5,000 years (I generally have little regard for anything anyone says over the internet, and I include myself, but I was heartened to see people on D'Souza's site ripping apart this argument fairly readily).

Oh snap, you been shylock'd!

In case you haven't heard, it's the new Fox news game show: respond to any attacks on Fox News' character by showing ridiculously Jewed-up pictures of the perpetrators. This is what Steve Doocy and co. tried to do on Fox & Friends in a segment in which Doocy was complaining about some attack against Fox News leveled by The New York Times. So they showed an obviously doctored photo of the reporter in question, Jacques Steinberg. Compare below (courtesy Media Matters):

Seems kind of weird. They also took down another "attacker," Steven Reddicliffe:

What the hell? The question isn't whether or not Fox News actually did doctor these photos: obviously, they did, and a spokeswoman for the company said that it is common practice on cable news networks to photoshop pictures of people, but why do it this way? First of all, this is some terrible, me-level photoshopping. Second of all, it looks like pictures straight out of 30s German propaganda, and not even the good stuff, like Leni Riefenstahl. Can you imagine them taking a picture of, say, Al Sharpton, and doctoring some huge red lips on it? Shameful.

And yet some people say that anti-Semitism is not a factor, or is unimportant compared to various other forms of prejudice. As if it's a contest.

Vanity Fair has gotten into the game, posting a bunch of ridiculous photos of Fox News personalities, although in this case I would imagine it would not be in their best interest to shylock somebody already Jewish, like Bill Kristol. Speaking of Bill Kristol, I just saw the movie Arguing the World and I would like to talk about it at some point. Not that it has anything to do with Bill, but the deep lack of respect Irving Kristol's peers now hold for him is telling, I think.

Philip Roth, Part VI: The End

So, only three more books, all of them having nothing to do with any Kepeshes, Zuckermans, or Roths. The journey was fun and immensely helpful in regards to my honors stuff, and I hope to do this again with another author. But which one? Probably a white male. I fear I will spend the rest of my life feeling that I am woefully under read. I can now carefully consider myself a Roth scholar, but I want more. Indignation comes out in October.

Sabbath's Theater: If I were to choose one book from Roth's oeuvre to read again immediately, this one might be it, despite its comparatively massive length and the pallor of decay and gloom hanging over it. Make no mistake, this is an absolutely perfect novel that distills all the best aspects of Roth: comical scatology; spot-on dialogue; a feel for even the most minor of characters; an ability to pace; and a predilection to do new, interesting and novel things with the form. He squeezes every last drop of narrative potential from what could have been a very ordinary story about an aging, disgraced puppeteer near the end of his life, mourning the loss by cancer of a very special mistress and yearning to redo the whole thing again. Mickey Sabbath is an incredibly disgusting and vile, yet he is a lovable character, and his relationship with the doomed mistress, Drenka, is as touching as it is vomit-inducing (I swear, I don't know how he does this stuff so well). There are a good dozen or so brilliant moments that I feel like rereading immediately, including a transcript of a phone sex conversation (can't think of any better one off the top of my head), a Ulysses-esque digression imagined by Sabbath on a subway, Sabbath trying in vain to buy some vodka so that a woman he met at a rehab facility--where he was supposed to be visiting his wife--would sleep with him, Sabbath revisiting his home, the description of various depraved sexual practices that Sabbath and Drenka engage in without abandon, and several others. This is a very special book that packs an emotional wallop right to the very end, and has probably the best opening and closing lines of any Roth book I can think of. This book is about as depraved as Roth got, and it isn't for the faint of heart, but it's as moving a character study as I believe Roth is capable of constructing.

Shop Talk: Not much to say about this book: like Reading Myself and Others, this is straight non-fiction (a rarity for the author), although this time Roth is smart enough to take himself out of the equation, mostly, and presents a series of mostly interviews and appreciations of authors he admires. I found this book only intermittently interesting as I had yet to read many of the authors he interviews in this book, but it's always nice to hear Roth talk about how enamored he became with the artistic scene in Czechoslovakia (the book contains interviews with both Milan Kundera and Ivan Klima, both of ramble on intelligently about the positives and negatives in choosing to represent a society that is so hostile to open ideas and art) and also how he views himself in the pantheon of 20th century Jewish writers, via his appreciations of Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud (there's also a quick interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer--having read Singer, I really don't see how they would have much in common, but they are respectful). It should also be noted that his interview with Aharon Applefeld showed up almost verbatim in Operation Shylock. This is not necessary reading by any means unless you happen to be interested in the authors Roth is talking about, which in most cases I was.

Everyman: This book was quite a doozy to end on, and I'm sort of sorry I chose to end it this way. This is a very short and powerful read, although it doesn't offer much beyond this very novel notion that it is a biography (the protagonist of which is nameless) that consists entirely of Everyman's illnesses: Roth will mention in fleeting how his character lived 25 years with no health problems and move on to the next operation or hospital visit. The intent is obvious, to convey the horror and depression of someone who knows he is inching ever closer to the end of his life, and cursing the failings of his body and mind. As one can imagine, this does not make for happy reading. There is virtually nothing in the way of humor in this book, a rarity among Roth's works, and the descriptions of Everyman's few infidelities aren't terrible interesting compared with what we know Roth is capable of. There are many powerful sequences, but I suspect Roth intends them to be secondary to the overall mood of the piece, which is to convey his own anxiety about growing old and seeing his body fail (I'm told that Roth, unlike his older characters, is more or less in excellent health). This would have made a fitting epitaph had Roth chosen to end it this way, particularly the scene where he goes to the graveyard to visit the grave of his mother and father. I felt this passage to be absolutely heartbreaking:

Aloud, he said to them: "I'm 71. Your boy is 71." "Good, you lived," his mother replied. And his father said, "Look back and atone for what you can atone for, and make the best of what you have left."

I don't think that this is a sentiment that can only be understood by 71-year olds. If there's anyone in any of Roth's book that says anything worth taking to heart, it's Everyman's father.