Clarissa's Blog

What I wondered when I read this novel by Roth is whether there will even be a writer in the 21st century who will write Jewishness they way Roth did back in the 1990s and still residually today. Will there be this kind of Jewishness in existence for somebody to write about? Or has it already been washed away by the tides of fluidity?

Indignation couldn’t have been written about this century. And not because it mentions the Korean War. Wars abound, so that’s not what makes the events of the novel so firmly rooted in the past. And it’s not the quaint old words like “co-eds” or “Dean of Men.” The undoubtedly Jewish way of being of a boy who dies for the cause of atheism childishly embraced is what feels outdated. 

If you cut off your roots in search of freedom, will you find it or will you wither and die? Now that we have shed our oppressive, restrictive familial and cultural bonds, has fluidity given us anything in return? Or are we, like the novel’s protagonist, floating around in limbo, incapable of making a connection with anybody?

Great writer, great novel. And I’m sure the movie has turned it into some tawdry romance flick.