‘When She Was Good,’ by Philip Roth

When She Was Good (1966)
by Philip Roth

Newark’s Literary Lion Philip Roth could have an acerbic and biting sense of humor. Not one character in this 1966 funny, heartbreaking family drama is likeable. They’re all trying to live life within their own means and moral compass but the book’s greatness lies in their tragic flaws. Set in the 1950s Midwest, Roy Basart comes home from the service, marries Lucy (whose alcoholic father rules the roost). Her mother is a weak simpleton with a will of iron whose impatience always ruins everything.

Roy is a man of big dreams but little ambition, big ideas but little follow-through, big talk but no talent for anything. His narrow-minded parents are straight-laced conservatives. When Lucy’s drunk dad beats on her mom one night, she turns him in to the cops. Philip Roth is at his best when he’s plumbing the depths of the human mind when people lie to themselves, using all sorts of excuses to make themselves feel better. The humor comes from the fact that it’s always the biggest scumbag who tells the biggest lies and starts believing them in an effort to fool the self into righteousness.

They are all delusional. Every single damn one of them. Including Roy and Lucy. Lucy seems to be the most reasonable…until she too shows her true colors. Call it a “ship of fools.” Roy rebels against his own unforgiving bitch of a wife. But he’s really too weak to do anything about it. The characters yell and scream on each other in a St. Vitus dance of conflicting emotion. In some ways, this is Roth decrying the “American Dream” as unobtainable.

---

(Advertisement)

---