A Jewish Invention

Zuckerman Unbound By Philip Roth Farrar, 225 pp., $10.95

The decline of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the unfulfilled promise and wasted talent of Ralph Ellison and Norman Mailer, the suicides of other best-selling novelists (chronicled in Leggatt’s Ross and Tom’), warn how American authors have been destroyed by the genies of inflated success. In The Green Hills of Africa Hemingway knowingly explained what threatens and traps the modern writer: “Politics, women, drink, money, ambition. And the lack of politics, women, drink, money, and ambition.”

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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Zuckerman Unbound By Philip Roth Farrar, 225 pp., $10.95

The decline of Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the unfulfilled promise and wasted talent of Ralph Ellison and Norman Mailer, the suicides of other best-selling novelists (chronicled in Leggatt’s Ross and Tom’), warn how American authors have been destroyed by the genies of inflated success. In The Green Hills of Africa Hemingway knowingly explained what threatens and traps the modern writer: “Politics, women, drink, money, ambition. And the lack of politics, women, drink, money, and ambition.”