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The Great American Novel
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The Great American Novel Paperback - 1995

by Philip Roth

Now that whaling is banned and the Mississippi is a tourist attraction, the subject for anything resembling The Great American Novel could only be baseball. And the author could only be Philip Roth, who in this ribald, wickedly satiric book tells the story of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless baseball team in American history.


From the publisher

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--a richly imagined novel featuring America's only homeless big-league baseball team in history delivers "shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself" (The New York Times).

Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, "The Babe Ruth of the Big House," who never hit a home run sober. If you've never heard of them--or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys--it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory. In this ribald, wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.

From the jacket flap

Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, "The Babe Ruth of the Big House," who never hit a home run sober. If you've never heard of them--or of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history--it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.
In this ribald, richly imagined, and wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Details

  • Title The Great American Novel
  • Author Philip Roth
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 416
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Vintage, New York, New York, U.S.A.
  • Date 1995-04-11
  • ISBN 9780679749066 / 0679749063
  • Weight 0.65 lbs (0.29 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.06 x 5.2 x 0.95 in (20.47 x 13.21 x 2.41 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Humorous stories, Baseball stories
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 94041584
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"Shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself." —The New York Times

"Roth invents baseball anew, as pure slapstick.... An awesome performance." —The New Republic

"Roth is better than he's ever been before.... The prose is electric." —The Atlantic

Citations

  • Library Journal, 06/15/1995, Page 99

About the author

PHILIP ROTH won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts atthe White House and in 2002 the highest award of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction.He twice won the National Book Award and the NationalBook Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/FaulknerAward three times. In 2005 The Plot Against America receivedthe Society of American Historians' Prize for "the outstandinghistorical novel on an American theme for 2003-2004."Roth received PEN's two most prestigious awards: in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. In 2011 he received the National HumanitiesMedal at the White House, and was later named the fourthrecipient of the Man Booker International Prize. He died in 2018.
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