I would have thought that Philip Roth would have won a Nobel Prize. I am surprised he never did, though he was always mentioned as a potential recipient.  Nefarious powers that be must have kept him from winning the award--that or, perhaps he was not the all-powerful writer that I think he was, and my own lack of breadth in other writers is behind my indignation. I think not, though, I think he was a very good, or great writer, certainly one of the best post-war writers that genre I am most familiar with. And also depressing is the idea that if Roth, who was light years ahead of anything I might aspire to in terms of human insight would not have won such a prize, what level of inconsequence does that leave my own, indeed that of most of my friends, level of abilities.

Roth had a grasp of dialogue, especially that of hard-boiled individuals. He did not quite, like Saul Bellow, create his own universes, but what I have read, probably about a third of his corpus, always struck me as being a strong dose of unpleasant reality, perfectly described, sometimes almost unpleasantly. Indeed, maybe that is why he did not win a Nobel Prize. He was not particularly likable. His biography attests to that. He had a slightly beaked, slightly saurian appearance, not the good-natured look of a Saul Bellow.  He was somewhat sexist, and there was a slightly Woody Allen-type predatory quality in his discussions of women. He discussed emotions and feelings that were remote, unpleasant, and even abrasive. His talent seems nearly limitless. His understanding of human pain was extraordinary, as was his understanding of the absurd, harsh realities of family life.  He was a great, or near great. I can think of few authors with his grasp of the language. Plus he wrote about New Jersey. Who writes about New Jersey?