Less - Andrew Sean Greer (2017)

Less won the 2018 Pulitzer prize over The House of Broken Angels and others. There are many Pulitzers to be won. The journalism awards have been well publicized, but there are so many different kinds (posthumous recognition for Flying Houses in 2019 for Criticism?). Actually House of Broken Angels is not listed as a finalist but The Idiot is (I had heard a bit about that) as is In the Distance (I had not heard about that). Maybe they call nominations finalists until there is a winner, and the two runners up become the actual finalists. I didn't read the other "finalists" anyways so no point in comparison, but yes, I found Less more compelling than HOBA. This is probably not the most award-worthy opening to a review but as one should know, we need to talk about the ways we find out about books and the reasons we pick them up. And we like fun facts (such as seeing previous subjects The Goldfinch and The Pale King and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The Corrections and American Pastoral and Underworld  in prize history).

Less is a character study of Arthur Less, a novelist about to turn 50, who has accepted a series of invitations for various international literary events in order to distract himself from the marriage of his ex-boyfriend of 9 years, to which he was also invited. He travels from his home in San Francisco to New York, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan. He has to interview a more popular sci-fi writer, attend a prize ceremony, teach a 5 week class, touch up his work-in-progress at a retreat, and write an article on Japanese cuisine. Like HOBA, it's an easy plot to relay. Unlike HOBA, the identity of the narrator is an ongoing mystery, and eventually revealed. I will make no comment on the narrator except that I sort of guessed their identity and felt slightly disappointed. It is a conventional novel after all. It is not a Bad Ending, and I need not append spoilers beneath asterisks to discuss it. Ambivalence is sometimes difficult to justify, and here the ending is ultimately, quite bittersweet and comforting. So this goes into the "highly recommended but not Best Books" category.

You know what I never did with FH was come up with a set formula for a review. Like, pararaph 1 is how i came to read the subject, paragraph 2 is a plot overview, and here is paragraph 3, usually a set up for an excerpt. This is a highly-excerptable book. It's good most of the way through (the only reason it doesn't make Best Books is that it started to lose some of it's energy in the Morocco/India chapters--though the character that turns 50 right before Less is perhaps the greatest portrait) and it seems like the movie rights should have been scooped up swiftly. Movies about writers aren't always great, but I have to believe this could make for a very fun, highly-stylized film. Interesting topic: what are the best movies about writers? Wonder Boys, The Lost Weekend...I digress.

A word should be said about diversity. Maybe it doesn't. But it has been my experience that most people want to read books about people like them. Not anymore. One would believe that now, more than ever, people want to read about people different from themselves, to develop empathy and gain perspective on women, minorities, and other oppressed people (i.e. not cis straight white males). Because this is just a cis gay white male. Here, this is the perfect time for an excerpt:

"Less can think of nothing to say; this attack comes on an undefended flank.

'It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world.  The gay world.  But in your books, you make the characters suffers without reward.  If I didn't know better, I'd think you were Republican.  Kalipso was beautiful.  So full of sorrow.  But incredibly self-hating.  A man washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years.  But then he leaves to go find his wife!  You have to do better.  For us.  Inspire us, Arthur.  Aim higher.  I'm so sorry to talk this way, but it had to be said.'

At last Less manages to speak: 'A bad gay?'

Finley fingers a book on the bookcase.  'I'm not the only one who feels this way.  It's been a topic of discussion.'

'But...but...but it's Odysseus,' Less says.  'Returning to Penelope.  That's just how the story goes.'

'Don't forget where you come from, Arthur.'

'Camden, Delaware.'" (144)

This exchange occurs during a brief layover in Paris at a party. It comes from a concerned friend that wants to tell him what everyone says about him behind his back. It's ridiculous and it's meant to be humorous but it functions as a kind of r'aison d'etre for the novel. There is self-hate in Less, but it is not a first-person narrative. There is psychological realism, but it is transmitted through an outside lens. There are suggestions of the identity of the narrator, and if the reader has not figured it out for themselves, it is made obvious in the book's final pages. One could re-read the book to see if it holds up in the same way one could re-watch The Sixth Sense. Still it feels less like a twist that enhances one's appreciation for the story than a device that allows the protagonist to be deprecated without implications of self-loathing.  He's not just obsessed by his exes and his past--he's taking inventory of his life and trying to find a path forward. It still feels like his perspective.

It is not perfect, but it is rightfully lauded for the authenticity of its observations. It's entirely possible that Greer got on Google Earth/Maps and Wikipedia and made up a bunch of stuff, but the extent of the detail makes it seem unlikely. It is the "travelogue novel" par excellence. It is also "literary fiction" to an ironic extreme.  And there are many classic passages:

"A truth must be told.  Arthur Less is no champion in bed.

Anyone would guess, seeing Bastian staring up at Less's window each night, waiting to be buzzed in, that it is the sex that brings him.  But it is not precisely the sex.  The narrator must be trusted to report that Arthur Less is--technically--not a skilled lover.  He possesses, first of all, none of the physical attributes; he is average in every way.  A straightforwardly American man, smiling and blinking with pale lashes.  A handsome face, but otherwise ordinary.  He has also, since his early youth, suffered an anxiety that leaves him sometimes too eager in the sexual act, sometimes not eager enough.  Technically: bad in bed.  And yet--just as a flightless bird will evolve other tactics for survival, Arthur Less has developed other traits.  Like the bird, he is unaware of these.  

He kisses--how do I explain it?  Like someone in love.  Like he has nothing to lose.  Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person.  Only now, only you.  There are some men who have never been kissed like that.  There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again.  

Even more mystical: his touch casts a curious spell.  There is no other word for it.  Perhaps it is the effect of his being 'someone without skin' that Less can sometimes touch another and send the spark of his own nervous system into theirs.  This was something Robert noticed right away; he said, 'You're a witch, Arthur Less.'  Others, less susceptible, have paid no attention, too intent on their own elaborate needs ('Higher; no, higher; no, HIGHER!').  But Freddy felt it as well.  A minor shock, a lack of air, a brief blackout, perhaps, and back again to see Less's innocent face above him, wreathed in sweat.  It is perhaps a radiation, an emanation of this innocence, this guilelessness, grown white-hot?  Bastian is not immune.  One night, after fumbling adolescently in the hall, they try to undress each other but, outwitted b foreign systems of buttons and closures, end up undressing themselves.  Arthur returns to the bed, where Bastian is waiting, naken and tan, and climbs aboard.  As less does this, he rests one hand on Bastian's chest.  Bastian gasps.  He writhes; his breathing quickens; and after a moment he whispers: 'Was tust du mir an?' (What are you doing to me?) Less has no idea what he is doing." (113-114)

The novel is well-paced and the prose flows elegantly, though at times it feel as if the word "Less" comprises an unusually high-percentage of its total number of words.  The scene near the end that takes place on a video call is a strikingly beautiful, as is the final scene.  There is more to admire in it than many others.  You could do far worse than this for a summer beach book.  I would recommend it especially for that occasion, or any international travel.

Philip Roth - 1933 - 2018

2 giants in 2 weeks, in their mid-to-late 80's. I don't write obituaries for everyone, but I try to write them when I think I can speak properly to their import. In the case of Tom Wolfe, I wasn't familiar enough with his oeuvre to say anything of substance. The New York Times Book Review podcast briefly addressed his passing and while I had intended to do Bonfire of the Vanities and maybe The Right Stuff (one day), their comments seemed to indicate that Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is his seminal work. So maybe that will have to come first. 

Wolfe will be remembered for "New Journalism." What will Roth be remembered for? Not winning the Nobel Prize. He was a Nobel Prize-level writer. I think he will be remembered for demarcating the line between toxic masculinity and horniness. Among other things.

Recently, there was a very scandalous book published that apparently details an affair with a fictional stand-in for Roth. The author admitted that she did, in fact, have an affair with Roth, and not all that long ago. Roth was also recently in the New York Times for an e-mail exchange checking up on him, after all the #metoo revelations, to get his take on the finer points of male desire. He had been retired from his occupation as a novelist over the past several years. 

I read Everyman over 10 years ago now, and that seemed to be his comment on retirement. Indignation still came after (as did The Humbling and Nemesis). American Pastoral was the best. I still haven't read everything. 

Here I've only written about American Pastoral and The Professor of Desire. Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint should be re-read. Both are essential. People have said The Plot Against America is prescient and/or prophetic. I want to read that and Sabbath's Theater.

It's hard to do better than Roth. That is the only thing of substance I can say here, and I'm not even sure that qualifies as substance. 

We wrote about Salinger eight years ago. Salinger was silent for years. He practically hadn't published anything since Roth had first published. They were 14 years apart in age. I consider them equals. They're two of the best 20th century American writers to have lived. Surely there are many great writers that nobody knew about. They both relayed truths rarely spoken, yet often felt. 

Roth's prolific career is a work of art on its own, and this writer is not so deeply familiar with it that an authoritative tone may be struck. Suffice to say, this entire site is filled with instances of exhortations to read so-and-so and while I do truly try to be careful not to overwhelm the casual reader, everybody knows that Roth was a true modern master (in the same way that I know Bellow was, though I haven't read him). He's in the Pantheon. Our world is rapidly evolving and one expects a similar change in the way we consume literature, as well as our expectations of how we expect to be transported by it. So maybe there will be a new literature, and Roth is a relic from a bygone era. History has shown that writers will be remembered if their words can stand up to eternity. Roth is not Plato and he will likely not be referenced by Westworld-types of entertainment 2,000 years from now. Roth may not even be Hemingway. I see many parallels with Vonnegut in terms of output and cultural relevance. Vonnegut was not seriously rumored to win the Nobel. Both were zany, though Vonnegut was zanier. People will inevitably compare him to Wolfe if only for their sense of timing. They were true writers. They made their living off writing their books. Roth was popular, but never commercial. One hopes that writers such as him may still exist and prosper. 

White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000)

On August 17, 2016, a little over a month ago, I posted my "15 authors" list on Facebook.  The first comment was, "This is a lot of dudes."  And yeah, right after I posted, I noticed to my horror that all 15 authors were male, and perhaps even worse, all were white.  Apparently my worldview is extremely limited and I can only appreciate authors that reflect my privilege.  But let's put all that to the side, because the real point of sharing such a list was to find out other writers I should be reading.  My friend Melissa suggested about a dozen other authors, most of them female, most or all of them non-white.  From that, I asked her which books she would recommend the most highly.  This was not an easy decision, but she settled on White Teeth and Americanah.  Well Americanah will be picked up from the library shortly, and White Teeth was a good read.  Will it be named to the "best books" list?  No, but I would still highly recommend it.

Here is the plot: as the novel opens, Archie Jones, 47, white English male, is attempting suicide by asphyxiation in his car.  He is depressed over the departure of his wife.  On a side note this was a very good way to open up a novel.  A list of "compelling opening scenes" should be compiled at some point.  In short it was immediately engaging.  Anyways, his attempt is thwarted, and he goes to a kind of hippie commune that same day and meets Clara, the 19-year-old daughter of a Caribbean immigrant.  This takes place in roughly 1975.

The novel then jumps to the perspective of Samad Iqbal, Archie's friend of 30 years.  They first meet while serving together in World War II.  Samad is originally from Bangladesh, and also marries a much younger woman around 1975, Alsana.  Both women become pregnant around the same time: Clara with a girl, and Alsana with twin boys.  These children--Irie, Millat and Magid--eventually drive the narrative to its climax.

And that's kind of my problem with the novel.  It's not that the material with Irie, Millat and Magid is inferior to the rest of the novel; it just feels like it was written to have a "real plot."  The "real plot" of the novel does not get introduced until page 343 (out of 448).  I'm not saying the last 100 pages are bad, I'm just saying they are not as good.  Regardless, many may actually find the ending to be the best part, because it does pose some interesting questions, and there is a delightful twist of sorts at the very end.  But I say this for my own personal feelings on the novel.  It is at its best when it is examining and developing the interior lives of its characters.

I read in City Lit bookstore in my neighborhood that Smith received an advance of 350,000 pounds for the novel at age 24.  To me, it feels like she got the advance, and still had to write the last 100 pages.  I am probably completely wrong with this, but that's what it felt like.  Certainly, she makes a good case that she deserved an advance of that size, but for me personally, it felt like the end of the novel feels padded.  Particularly when, for example, in the final denouement, characters make commentary on the way other characters talk:

"...Archie says Science the same way he says Modern, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them.  'Science,' Archie repeats, handling it more firmly, 'is a different kettle of fish.'
Mickey nods at this, seriously considering the proposition, trying to decide how much weight he should allow this counterargument Science, with all its connotations of expertise and higher planes, of places in thought that neither Mickey nor Archie has ever visited (answer: none), how much respect he should give it in light of these connotations (answer: fuck all. University of Life, innit?), and how many seconds he should leave before tearing it apart (answer: three).
'On the contrary, Archibald, on the bloody contrary.  Speeshuss argument, that is.  Common fucking mistake, that is.  Science ain't no different from nuffink else, is it?  I mean, when you get down to it.  At the end of the day, it's got to please the people, you know what I mean?'
Archie nods.  He knows what Mickey means.  (Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase at the end of the day--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it.  Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.) " (432-433)

Within that example of what I consider "padded writing," there are some alluring turns of phrase, so even though I may accuse Smith of tacking on a few words, there is no doubt that she is an extremely talented writer.

***

Sometimes when I'm struggling to figure out what to say about a book, I go on the Wikipedia page.  There I found that White Teeth was apparently named one of the 100 best books from 1923 - 2005 by Time Magazine.  It seemed like an alluring list, so I tried to check it out, but it's in one of those annoying slideshow formats where you have to click every time you want to see the next novel.  I thought I'd make a list of the things I hadn't read, but there were already many in the A-B section (The Adventures of Augie March, Appointment at Samarra, An American Tragedy, Animal Farm, Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret, The Assistant....) and then upon revisiting it, realized you may view it by simply clicking "view all."

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I guess people feel this book is pretty special.  I mean, I'm certainly open to the idea of reading more of Zadie Smith (I think she has a new book coming out very soon--Swing Time, due out November 16, 2016, upon investigation).  But I feel like none of her books after this have really made as big a splash.  I mean, she is like, eight years older than me, and she published this sixteen years ago!  It's kind of an old school preternatural literary debut.  Who knows, her best work may still be ahead.  (Of special note, this list does also include Watchmen in the W section so we agree at least on one book, and a few others it seems--I didn't formally name American Pastoral to the list, but I feel it belongs there.  So maybe that's a project for another day, updating that list--it's on my Profile to the right if you don't know what I'm talking about.  I haven't added anything to that list since January--but let me put it this way: I really liked this book, but I also really liked The Goldfinch and I think that book moved me more deeply.  And on that so-called "second tier" I would still place higher Then We Came to the End.)

***

In a way I read this book to try to understand my own privilege as I have lately been accused of being blind to it.  Once I was attacked upon an argument involving the issue, and directed to read an article online that someone had written, a white girl who had every conceivable woe foisted upon her, including a particular poverty-stricken childhood, and who had doubted her own privilege until she made a certain realization.  One of them was seeing a person of your own race on the front of the newspaper.  The most poignant passage on the topic comes on the heels of a brief conversation about Salman Rushdie, though he is not mentioned by name (it has to be Rushdie, right?):

"'You read it? asked Ranil, as they whizzed past Finsbury Park.
There was a general pause.
Millat said, 'I haven't exackly read it exackly--but I know all about that shit, yeah?'
To be more precise Millat hadn't read it.  Millat knew nothing about the writer, nothing about the book; could not pick out the writer in a lineup of other writers (irresistible, this lineup of offending writers: Socrates, Protagoras, Ovid and Juvenal, Radclyffe Hall, Boris Pasternak, D. H. Lawrence, Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov, all holding up their numbers for the mug shot, squinting in the flashbulb).  But he knew other things.  He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelled of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people's jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to his relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry-shifter, but not a footballer or a filmmaker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshiped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered.  In short, he knew he had no face in this country, no voice in this country, until the week before last when suddenly people like Millat were on every channel and every radio and every newspaper and they were angry, and Millat recognized the anger, thought it recognized him, and grabbed it with both hands." (194)

I am still not adequately convinced.  At least by the character of Millat.  There are a couple elements to the book that I find uneven, and one of them is Millat and his embrace of KEVIN.  I mean, I've just got to say, Millat to me, as a character, does not scream "underprivileged."  Much is made of his attractiveness, and how he sleeps with tons of girls starting when he is like 13.  He is one of the most popular kids in his class.  Ultimately his character flaws show by how sarcastic and casually disrespectful he is towards seemingly everyone, but that does not mean one would not want to have his life (or think he had any less options than them).  He seems to have it pretty good--so why would he join KEVIN?  I think if this book were written today, he would not be nearly as popular at school.

***

This review has taken a long time to write because a lot of things happened during the month of September.  I feel that I've said enough, but a quick summary, as I read through the plot summary on Wikipedia:

(1) Yes, the book starts on a high note--and opening up a book with a major character's attempted suicide seems like it was pulled out of The Crafty Author's Bag o' Tricks (not a real book).

(2) The scene set in World War II is particularly memorable, and the "twist" at the end (despite my general misgivings about the "plot") is almost masterful, one of the highlights of the novel.

(3) All of the stuff about Mangal Pande is boring, to me at least.  I think it's funny how the other characters are also bored by it, and the novel seems to keep putting off telling his story, even seeming to refer to it in one of the "years" that the chapters of the novel are organized by, only to skirt over the story briefly, which turns it into an intriguing delusive move.

(4) The Chalfens are an interesting curveball to throw into the novel, to set the plot in action, and actually the last "set" of chapters before the "plot" commences at page 343 is probably my favorite part of the book.

(5) Irie is the one character that rings most true in the novel.

(6) I do not believe that Samad would get away with sending Magid to Bangladesh.  That is another major element of the novel that I just do not find realistic, I'm sorry.  Not that he would go, but that he would go in the manner he does.

Now I've also found that a television adaption of the novel was made for Channel 4 in 2002.  Perhaps I'll seek that out.  Even though I am kind of drawn to the idea of reading and watching The Girl on the Train, in the same way that I did with Gone Girl, that movie isn't getting very good reviews and I feel like this would be a more interesting adaptation to see.

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

We have a new first on Flying Houses--the first book to merit two different posts. This is what I wrote back in May: http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/05/american-pastoral-philip-roth.html

Recently my parents were lent a copy of American Pastoral and after finishing Ulysses, decided to finish off the last 120 pages before I went back to something even easier to read than Roth in comparison with Joyce. I loved the beginning of American Pastoral--up through page 300 at least, but I have to admit the ending is a bit of a letdown. It is still a good book all in all.

But I see I am getting ahead of myself. I wanted to deliver on an unkept promise of the story of the beach reader in Nantucket. This occurred in the summer of 2007--early July. I was on a beach there with my family. The five of us or so tromped in, laid down our blankets, and chattered a bit as we completed this process. We put on suntan lotion and prepared to either go swimming or lay in the sun and read. Nearby us was a man who appeared to be a hippie, and I only say that because he had long hair. This is not to cast aspersions on hippies, but perhaps sometimes they possess this quality of being total asses when all along they feel they are behaving in line with the commonly-accepted paradigm of the hippie--which is, it's all good, I don't care, everything is permitted. Anyways he moved the five or so feet over to us that separated our spots, and said, "Hello. How are you?" We said, "Good." He said, "Are you enjoying yourself to day here on the beach?" And we said, "Yes, it's nice, thank you." And he said, "Well, I am trying to enjoy myself too, and I would appreciate it if you would keep it down a bit. We're all trying to enjoy the beach here, let's share it respectfully." Or some garbage like that. And I said, "I'm sorry! I'll shut up!" And he said, "Don't misunderstand me." And I think I said, "Oh, I understand you perfectly." And that was the end of it. He went back to his beach chair and he was reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.

The other anecdote is pretty much already told, and is not such a castigation of the type of readers Philip Roth can attract. That is to say, he is very popular, and though most people that like to read are cool, many people that like to read still do in fact suck horribly. I have read Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, Everyman, and The Professor of Desire. Actually, one of the first posts on Flying Houses. http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/professor-desire-philip-roth.html. Post #4. The 2nd book reviewed after Mann's Doctor Faustus. American Pastoral is automatically the best book I have read by Roth--but I have to say that I consider it on equal footing with Goodbye, Columbus. I have liked everything I've read by him though and look forward to many of his other works. I do not know if I can find anything to quote, primarily because I am so far removed from the majority of the novel, seven months ago. But I did want to comment on not enjoying the ending as much as the beginning.

Actually, the book takes a while to get started. For the first 120 pages or so, I wasn't really that interested in it. Oh, I was going to finish it alright, but it wasn't especially great. But then for about a 180 page stretch, it became truly great--right around the point where the Swede is talking to Merry about staying overnight in New York with dangerous people.

There are long stretches about running a glove factory which may bore some readers. I was slightly bored, but Roth kept it reasonably interesting. It seems like he did a lot of research to make the depiction of this business very accurate. These characters, and their setting, are fully lived in, they are almost 100% human. I think that is what separates this from the rest of his.

The ending though, vaguely disappointed me. It's like, after Merry does what she does, and becomes a fugitive, Roth goes into this description of the Swede's marriage to Dawn (but I feel like--didn't he have another wife after her? Wasn't that described early in the book? I have a hard time remembering.) in Old Rimrock, NJ and what basically amounts to one really long scene with the Swede's father and mother, Dawn, their neighbors Bill and Jessie Orcutt, and friends and speech therapist/protector of Merry, Sheila and Shelly Salzman, having a barbeque, and talking about Deep Throat and Nixon. This scene has its moments, such as the final shocking revelation about the fidelity of their marriage, and there was at least one hilarious moment (spoiler!):

"Well, perhaps not all, the Swede discovered as he stood peering in through the kitchen door from the big granite step outside. Why he hadn't just opened the door and gone straight ahead into his own kitchen to say that Jessie was in serious need of her husband was because of the way Orcutt was leaning over Dawn while Dawn was leaning over the sink, shucking the corn. In the first instant it looked to the Swede--despite the fact that Dawn needed no such instruction--as though Orcutt were showing Dawn how to shuck corn, bending over her from behind and, with his hands on hers, helping her get the knack of cleanly removing the husk and the silk. But if he was helping her learn to shuck corn, why, beneath the expanse of his Hawaiian shirt, were his hips and his buttocks moving like that? And why was Dawn saying--if the Swede was correctly reading her lips--"Not here, not here..." Why not shuck the corn here? The kitchen was as good a place as any. No, it took a moment to figure out that, one, they were not merely shucking corn together and two, not all of the effervescence, flamboyance, boldness, defiance, disappointment, and despair nibbling at the edges of the old-line durability was necessarily sated by wearing those shirts.
So this was why she was always losing her patience with Orcutt--to put me off track! Making cracks about his bloodlessness, his breeding, his empty warmth, putting him down like that whenever we are about to get into bed. Sure, she talks that way--she has to, she's in love with him. The unfaithfulness to the house was never unfaithfulness to the house--it was unfaithfulness. 'The poor wife doesn't drink for no reason. Always holding everything back. So busy being so polite,' Dawn said, 'so Princeton,' Dawn said, ' so unerring. He works so hard to be one-dimensional. That Wasp blandness. Living completely off what they once were. The man is simply not there half the time.'
Well, Orcutt was there now, right there. What the Swede believed he'd seen, before quickly turning back to the terrace and the steak on the fire, was Orcutt putting himself exactly where he intended to be, while telling Dawn exactly where he was. 'There! There! There! There!' And he did not appear to be holding anything back." (335-336)

And the book does end on a somewhat shocking note. On the whole, something I will definitely read again, and a very tough one for Roth to top. But I look forward to trying to find something I like even better in his oeuvre, because it's possible that exists.