Indignation
Crit
This was the last novel I loved in my Year of Reading Roth, and the film made from of it is altogether worthy. But whereas in the book I was most engaged by the relationship between the brilliant but naïve Marcus Messner and troubled shiksa queen Olivia Hutton (portrayed beautifully in the film by Logan Lerman and Sarah Gadon), what's riveting here is the clashes between Marcus and Winesburg College's Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts).
I've had some experience with rhetorical bullies--a Dominican sister in grade school, a supermarket boss when I was in college, even a newspaper executive when I was an ostensible grown-up--but they were all, you should forgive the boxing metaphor, Sonny Liston types, boring in relentlessly and unsubtly on the weaker, scareder, totally overmatched opponent.
Caudwell floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, or maybe a hornet, rhetorically rope-a-doping the smart and studied but callow Marcus, teasing him into launching what he thinks is an unstoppable haymaker, only to slip it and deliver a deadly counterpunch. Caudwell is--appropriate to Roth--a master baiter.
Trailer
- The Light between Oceans--Great cast, but frankly, it looks kinda Wally Lambish.
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