FFWD Weekly
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| Books by FFWD Staff FELIX ROTH Felix Roth is a New York, coming-of-age story told through the eyes of a 21-year-old Torontonian and would-be writer who arrives in Manhattan in 1979, purportedly to look out for his elder brother. As one of Fagan's characters observes, "It hardly feels like a story, but like life itself. If anything, almost too much happens." And so it does. In the span of one sweltering weekend, Felix Roth sleeps with his boss's wife, loses his brother to a Brooklyn Hasidic sect, pursues his hero, I. B. Singer, to his Belnord apartment, falls for Singer's gorgeous niece, makes $200 writing pornography, attends a SoHo auction, meets the keeper of the "Mortuary of Forgotten Writers" and chases the same nut through the Museum of Natural History trying desperately to extricate his cherished manuscript from the mouth of this crazed editor. The novel is full of writerly musings and the dropping of names, but rarely does this serve the story well – too often it plods along under the weight of all this name-dropping. In fact, the thread I most wanted to follow was Felix's hell-bent quest to have the great Jewish writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, read and appraise his short story, "The Goat Bride." It takes 175 pages for Singer to make a real entrance, albeit in an early morning dream sequence – Felix's brother Aaron is falling from the top of the Chrysler Building while the aging Singer jots in a little notebook and whispers in Felix's ear, "If you miss catching him, it makes for a better ending. Even better, you should miss on purpose." Sadly, amusing moments like this one are obscured by pages and pages of tedious excursions. |
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