Synopses & Reviews
Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, "The Babe Ruth of the Big House," who never hit a home run sober. If you've never heard of them—or of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history—it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.
In this ribald, richly imagined, and wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Review
"Roth invents baseball anew, as pure slapstick....An awesome performance." New Republic
Review
"Shameless comic extravagance....Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself." The New York Times
Review
"Roth is better than he's ever been before....The prose is electric." The Atlantic
Synopsis
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--a richly imagined novel featuring America's only homeless big-league baseball team in history delivers "shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself (The New York Times).
Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman, John Baal, The Babe Ruth of the Big House, who never hit a home run sober. If you've never heard of them--or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys--it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.
In this ribald, wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.
About the Author
In the 1990s Philip Roth won Americas four major literary
awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle
Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for
Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbaths
Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for
American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book
Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist
(1998); in the same year he received the National
Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the
National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife
(1986) and the National Book Award for his first book,
Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human
Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos
of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received
his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britains W. H.
Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he
received the highest award of the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six
years “for the entire work of the recipient.” In 2005 The
Plot Against America received the Society of American Historians
Award for “the outstanding historical novel on an
American theme for 20032004.” In 2007 Roth received the
PEN/Faulkner Award for Everyman.