Nothing much to report here, no news and no surprises: dog bites man; Philip Roth writes another masterpiece. What would be truly shocking at this stage in the late, great unfolding of Roth’s genius would be if he were to write a bad book, something as bad as The Breast, his last bad book, and that was published in 1972. We expect — and rightly — intermittency of genius: Roth, in an effort which already seems like the stuff of myth and legend, defies our expectations. Since, say, 1995, from Sabbath’s Theater onwards, through American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist, (1998), The Human Stain (2000) and The Plot Against America (2004), he has consistently produced works of brilliance, incomparable books which don’t merely announce their greatness but which are great.

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