[.uk] Spider's Web and Zipper and His Father (Works of Joseph ... (ISBN 1585674222)

Superb:
Both the stories here are superb and it makes a well-balanced anthology. The protagonist in "Spider," Theodor Lohse, is an anti-Semite who becomes easily used for political ends. I am better acquainted with Roth's semi-autobiographical "Zipper and his Father," having read it also in the Penguin edition with excellent introduction. It's heavy with lyricism and nostalgia for the bygone age of the Weimar Republic. A main preoccupation of Roth, European masculine angst, is epitomised in the uselessness of dislocated or disaffected heirs, especially when brutalised by war, trapped among bourgeois surroundings and objects. Zipper's actressy wife embodies the decadent money-grubbing German expressionist cinema industry. Roth/the narrator certainly gets in some anti-thespian jibes but has some acute psychological insights too. The book is a "slice of life", skilfully and poetically done. Recommended.