The Great American Novel

The book condition was listed as "good," yet the spine is severely cracked. The cracked spine and loose pages are not "good" quality and may impact one's ability to read the full novel.

As a fan of Philip Roth, I approached this book about baseball with mixed emotions. After reading, I can say that this is one of Philip Roth's finest. Despite being forgotten among Roth's better known works, this book exceeded expectations in my view. "The Great American Novel" is told from the perspective of sportswriter "Word" Smith. Smith brings to light a story omitted from American history, the third baseball league known as the Patroit League. While many of the stories seems eerily similar to real baseball stories, the tales go a step further. Just being introduced to the vagabonds known as the Ruppert Mundys is enough to make the average reader laugh aloud. From murderous pitcher Gil Gamesh to midgets and dwarfs in professional baseball through the communist scandals that ended the league and caused it to be erased from American history, it is difficult not to laugh. These fictional stories seem to parallel too well with this work of fiction. Even in the story of the performance enhancing food known as "Jewish Wheaties", Roth makes an eerie parallel to present baseball. Baseball fans should should take delight in this book. I can say that it is among the best book I have read in some time. Fans of Philip Roth will enjoy this purely humorous side of his writing as this is his strongest effort in terms of humor. I highly recommend this book.

I suspect I've read the first 200 pages of The Great American Novel more times than any other 200 pages in literature--it's that funny, and as a baseball fan, I always find a new laugh from both the adventures of the itinerant Rupert Mundys, a baseball team from the "third major league" displaced on a season-long road trip (to play the Aceldama Butchers, the Terra Incongita Rustlers, the Kakoola Reapers, and the Tri-City Greenbacks as well as a benefit game against inmates in a lunatic asylum) as their seaside stadium is commandeered by the US government as an debarkation point for soldiers during World War II. The war has also drained talent from the Patriot League, leaving the Mundys with drunken first baseman John Baal (son of the infamous "Spit" Baal), 14-year old second baseman Nickname Damur, 50-year old third baseman "Kid" Heket, and one-legged catcher "Hot" Ptah--along with one-armed right fielder Bud Parusha (he lost the other one in a hand grenade training accident) and two battling midget relievers--O.K Ockatur and Bob "Every Inch a Man" Yamm. Roth gets so many of the baseball details right--even in such a ridiculous context. The backstory of the Patriot League is nearly as funny--highlighted by the ongoing feud between 19-year old pitching phenom Gil Gamesh, who comes within one pitch of the ultimate perfect game--three strikes and out on 27 consecutive batters, until veteran umpire Mike "The Mouth" Masterton turns his head on the final pitch. The story of Luke "The Loner" Gofannon and his love of triples is another that baseball fans will appreciate. 90-year old retired sportswriter and narrator "Word" Smith tells the story in spasms of alliteration, puns, allusions and other literary devices, led by the memorable first line "Call me Smitty". The last third of the book--a product of the conceit that the Patriot League really existed, only to be erased from American history as part of the Red Scare of the '50s, bogs down a little as Smitty goes before the House Unamerican Activities Committee--no doubt a personal bit of satire by Roth. Baseball fans will enjoy it the most, followed by fans of clever satire in any form. Sure it's excessive, but what can you expect from a book with such a modest title.

I've never been a fan of Philip Roth. And I really hate him for being so mean to poor Claire Bloom! But this book is really funny. It's the most outrageous, irreverent, sexual, and scatalogical book ever written about baseball. It's exactly like having Howard Stern rewrite THE GLORY OF THEIR TIMES as a porno movie! Then again, it's also like THE BAD NEWS BEARS if it was directed by Stanley Kubrick as a sequel to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The year is 1943. The Ruppert Mundys, the last place team in the old Patriot League, gets kicked out of their stadium and is forced to play every single game on the road. Due to wartime shortages, every player is either a criminal, a cripple, or some form of psychotic drifter. Each game is more and more gruesome, hilarious and bizarre. But these warm hearted hi-jinks can be deceptive. Roth isn't just tearing the sentimentality away from baseball's unsavory past. He's tearing raw wounds in the sanctimonious American worship of money, power and respectability. The most brutal killer is an okay guy if he can play a boy's game well. Money is the only thing that matters. The game that teaches Americans to value winning only turns losers into monsters and freaks. Roth doesn't just make fun of the helpless Mundys -- he shows you superstars reduced to foraging for garbage in Latin American jungles, or being brainwashed into becoming Stalinist revolutionaries and bug-eyed devotees of terror. In passing he gives you an unforgettable picture of Ernest Hemingway, the Communist Party, high society dowagers, and much much more! Occasionally Roth's personal sicknesses can make you queasy, of course. This is the only "hetero" male I have ever heard of who finds the smell of female arousal nauseating. No wonder he couldn't hang on to poor Claire Blom!

Philip Roth fans tend to divide into two categories. One group admires his more Henry James-like efforts: the Zuckerman books, "Deception," "Patrimony." And then there are those of us who like those books but also cherish every foul, hilarious, in-you-face word he's ever written, like in "Portnoy's Complaint," "My Life as a Man" and this wonderful mock history of baseball. (Although I can't say this enough: you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy it.) This book, which is carefully ignored by the palefaces among Roth admirers, is his comic masterpiece. It is an encyclopedic satire of mid-20th century American life, with many pages that will have you falling out of your chair with laughter. It's a cult book, like "A Confederacy of Dunces" or Dan Jenkins' "Semi-Tough"; once you read it you will buy copies for your best friends.

This is one of the funniest damn books ever written; perhaps only a true baseball fan could be so enthusiastic about it, however. I remember with fondness reading it at age 16, and my astonishment continues at both Mr Roth's inventiveness and his adherence to the tradition of baseball. At the very least, read about the exhibition game in Asylum...