DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: Philip Roth’s most recent novel, Everyman, is excellent. Ratty vets his books before I read them, and she singled this one out as action I should get in on.

It’s… well, it’s sort of the miniature Sabbath’s Theater. That’s just not possible, really: Sabbath’s Theater is Roth’s masterwork (so far), a novel completely one-step-beyond–not a “good Roth novel,” but a great thing in the world. It’s devastating, and its length is part of how it gets its effects. Everyman is necessarily diminished by the contrast. But the themes, and the musicality of the writing, are similar: Everyman has the same rhythm of crescendo and new movement, or diminuendo and new movement, or repeated motif. Its structure isn’t dependent on plot, on causal connection, but on a rhythm of intensity, relief, and exhaustion.

When Ratty told me about the explanation of the title (it’s the name of the jewelry store owned by the protagonist’s father), I was skeptical. Why would you need an explanation? Either the book earns the archetypal title or it doesn’t. But when I got to the passage where the store gets named, it was really powerful: commerce vs death (diamonds are forever), assimilation vs outsider status (if you call yourself “everyman,” maybe every man will buy from you), an attempt to resolve all the conflicts on both the ethnic and the metaphysical levels of the American Dream.

I really, really liked this.