There's a quote in this book contrasting politics ("the great generalizer") with literature ("the particularizer") and while this book has a great many memorable characters in it, the overall feel is that these particular fabrications run dangerously close to serving as pawns in a generalized, polemical debate. Roth gives us Ira Ringold firmly planted in the McCarthy era to explore so much through a deeply flawed character, but much of it is told secondhand in ways where other characters heavily summarize, armchair psychoanalyze, and explain Ira to the reader.

Roth does a wonderful job of capturing and rooting a particular time and place in American history. And a three-star Roth is pretty much a 4-star anybody-else, but given my fondness for the other two books in this trilogy, this one felt a bit too pedantic.
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WORDS I LOOKED UP BUT PROBABLY WON'T USE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
chiropodist | schmattas | picayune | deprofanation | minatory | rostrum