Page 5 - Boca ViewPointe - June '21

June 2021 Viewpointe, Page 5

Book Review from page 4

Streisand, Jackie Kennedy and Ava Gardner, and many, practicing Jewish authors. Yet no one would ascribe the “Good Jews” and “Bad Jews.” Being a mensch wouldn’t
many others; including a seventeen year relationship and moniker “self-hating Jew” to Tom Stoppard. In contrast to necessarily enhance your book sales, but Stoppard sought to
marriage with the notable Jewish actress, Claire Bloom. Yet Roth’s eternal chip on his shoulder, Stoppard forsook his live an exemplary life. Stoppard also divorced two wives but
he excoriated his two wives and marriages, not least because youthful image as the rebel, wrote patiently and thoughtfully treated them respectfully in the aftermath of their marriage.
Roth was a serial adulterer who did not accept constraints on about cosmopolitan themes rather than from spite and He was a good father to Ollie and Barnaby and encouraged
his behavior with regard to infidelity. There was no lack of anger. Stoppard was encouraged to forget and obliterate their relationship with their mother unlike Roth who even
spite in his renditions of the people who disappointed him, the trauma of his itinerant youth. He claimed not to be treated his three stepchildren abominably as distractions and
from friends, publishers, reviewers, rivals, all fed his drive aware of his Jewishness (though his second wife Miriam hindrances to his writing career.
for success and celebrity. was an Orthodox Jewess), but accepted it later in life when There are passing references to each other in the
He endlessly rendered, revised, his zany, ego-driven he wrote: “On Learning to Be Jewish.” On the contrary, biographies. While Stoppard enjoyed a warm relationship
fiction with its pretentious refashioning, misrepresentations, Roth was embraced by his tribe, including meeting with with Jewish Americans like Mike Nichols and Steven
and corrections. Revealing that even a genius can be a the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and Spielberg, he did not seek out Roth who lived in London
chump. Roth perceived himself to be driven to tell the truth honored by Jewish institutions like Yeshiva University and while married to Claire Bloom, perhaps as a reflection of
in his art—even engaging in and writing about affairs with Jewish Theological Seminary. About the same time that their differing moral and literary sensibilities.
his students—yet another of many betrayals of his faith. Stoppard reconnected with his faith, Roth in “Imagining There is also the greater breadth, patience and
Both Stoppard and Roth can be accounted as non- Jews” condescendingly acknowledged that there were disinterestedness of Stoppard’s oeuvre. Travesties and
Jumpers have more intelligent wit and Arcadia and The
Invention of Love have more brilliance than Roth’s ego-
YOU have a choice who YOUR Physical Therapist can be. suffused meanderings. Roth certainly hit a homer with his
fine The Great American Novel and distinctive critique of
Outpatient Physical Therapy in your home. anti-Semitism in The Plot Against America. His affection
for Newark comes though notably in American Pastoral.
YES we come to YOU! He had a challenging end-of-life with multiple hardships
(bad karma?) which he ably represented in The Humbling

- Orthopedic & Sports Injuries - Manual Therapy, Soft Tissue & Joint and Nemesis among other works.
From Homer and Sophocles to the authors of the Bible, to
- Pre/Post-Surgical Rehabilitation - Mobilization Plutarch, to Boswell, (biographical) writers have stressed the
- Vestibular Rehabilitation
- Chronic Pain & Aches - Balance/Fall Prevention Training mission of literature, in Aristotle’s formulation, “to inculcate
- Strains/Sprains - Therapeutic / Corrective Exercise virtue.” Bad boys are certainly making more interesting
reading. You will come to admire Stoppard’s rendition of a
- Headaches and Migraines - Jaw Dysfunction & Pain mensch who did it his way and will not put down Bailey’s
life of Roth. “Not so good as Turgenev” as Chekhov
Dr. Jenna Platt, DPT 10 years of Experience described the writer of second class status—decidedly not of

Experience the highest quality care on YOUR road to recovery! Nobel Prize stature. True to himself in death, a non-repentant
Shaygetz, he proscribed the recitation of the Kaddish, the
Jewish mourner’s prayer, at his burial.

Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, a resident of La Paz, is an Emeritus
OFFICE 561-907-8866 MEDICARE PART B/ Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 
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