Great American Novel, The

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 homerun sober. If you’ve never heard of them — or of the Ruppert Mundy’s, 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. Philip Roth's richly imagined satiric narrative, The Great American Novel, turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an unfettered farce featuring heroism and perfidy, lively wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee "Roth is better than he's ever been before....The prose is electric." - The Atlantic