The Great American Novel [Paperback]

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."Shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself." —The New York Times

"Roth invents baseball anew, as pure slapstick.... An awesome performance." —TheNew Republic

"Roth is better than he's ever been before.... The prose is electric." —The Atlantic

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize forAmerican Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts atthe White House and in 2002 the highest award of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction.He twice won the National Book Award and the NationalBook Critics Circle Award. He won the PEN/FaulknerAward three times. In 2005The Plot Against Americareceivedthe Society of American Historians’ Prize for “the outstandinghistorical novel on an American theme for 2003–2004.”Roth received PEN’s two most prestigious awards:in 2006 the PEN/Nabokov Award and in 2007 the PEN/Bellow Award for achievement in American fiction. In 2011 he received the National HumanitiesMedal at the White House, and waslC-