Lots of indignation here, but not from me. Roth's protagonist, Marcus Messner, is filled with enough of his own youthful and idealistic indignation to justify the book's title. But the title word could just as easily apply to Marcus's butcher father, to the Winesburg college dean and president and a number of other minor characters, as well as to the Chinese Communist hordes swarming down through North Korea in that frigid and often nearly forgotten conflict of the fifties, which forms an ominous and omnipresent background to the story. Indignation, which is a surprisingly slight book, nearly a novella, marks a return to the kind of stories that made Roth famous over forty-some years ago. Like Good-Bye Columbus, it looks at college life and all the excitement, mysteries and sexual frustrations that accompany it. Winesburg College is, of course, an obvious nod (or perhaps eye-rolling shaking of the head) to Sherwood Anderson's classic collection of interconnected stories, Winesburg, Ohio - a book which I first read in my own college days in the sixties. I was reading Anderson, in fact, around the same time I first discovered Philip Roth, in his then-bestselling and then-scandalous novel, Portnoy's Complaint. A novel which finally put the sin of Onan right out there in the open. I thought it was about time too, as I nodded and chuckled my way through Alex's adventures with milk bottles, a slab of liver, and, finally, the Monkey. In fact, I was naive and stupid enough to adopt that book as required reading in one of the first Lit classes I taught in 1970. And I actually got away with it. I have read many other Roth books since then. My favorite is one of Roth's earliest novels, Letting Go, which I have re-read several times and would highly recommend. More recently, The Human Stain is, I think, one of Roth's best realized works, and its film version, with Sir Anthony Hopkins, is equally good. (Which makes me remember Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw in the classic film, Good-Bye Columbus. Benjamin also brought Alex Portnoy to life on screen, an effort which was less successful.) Indignation, with its showers of semen high into the air, stained socks and the unstable but beautiful "Olivia the Expert" does indeed mark a kind of restrained return to the Portnoy days, albeit under a shadow of war and imminent death. I read this book in just two sittings. It's funny, it's disturbing, and it's immediate, despite its setting of over fifty years ago. A real page-turner, entertaining and real. ( )

SPOILERS
A good serious book. A Philip Roth book. I want to say this:
First, I'm not sure what the connection is to Winesburg. I just read Winesburg, Ohio which feels like serendipity. The first thing to come up with of course, is the issue of sexual agency in women. The existence of it, the importance of it, the constant denial of it in proper company for so long. The punishment of women for it. But I don't know what else, what might be second or third. What did he mean? Was he just doing a homage, or something more?
Second, the story. I don't know what it means that the thing I thought of at the end was that it reminded me of the end of Stranger Than Fiction. Why would Philip Roth have seen Stranger Than Fiction, but why not? I think it is one of the better movies made in Hollywood recently, but then...what he is saying/showing isn't that different, is it even less formulaic? I think I had a little bit of hope that, like STF, he would change his mind about killing off Marcus but he didn't.
Third the presence of the war and the threat of the war on the young men, and the finale we don't see, where Marcus finally isn't willing to go along with what is demanded of him in order to maintain his deferment. I don't think I normally read a book taking place in 1951 & think about how the fear of the draft affects everything; I am more like to do that in a book set in 1970; but it such a dominant thing in this book & should be.
(I'm trying to write down what I think before I read reviews.)

Although verbose in places, Indignation is witty and engrossing with wonderful caricatures.

I spent time in Ohio eons ago, not that far from Sherwood Anderson's old haunts, and enjoyed Philip Roth's depictions of the mythical Winesburg College. Roth lives up to his reputation with hilarious attacks on moralists, blended in with the protagonist's libido-and-ego-driven fondness for defying them.

What's more, I enjoyed his clever use of the bleeding motif. Those who've read Indignation will know exactly what I mean; Marcus Messner's story is not for readers who shy from the sight of blood. Fittingly, Marcus's father is a butcher intent on controlling the son's life; quite unintentionally and indirectly, through the events depicted in the novel, he ends it.

And one other little detail: Marcus is dead or near-dead at the start of the story.

No, my revealing this is not a spoiler; other reviewers have, too. You'll still want to know all the history that lead to Marcus's current condition, and like me, you may be so engrossed in Indignation's plot and characterizations that you really won't care he's already a corpse. I used a somewhat similar technique when I wrote The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel---beginning Chapter One with mention of the suicide of one of the journalists, at the Watergate. The "Why?" counts as much as, "What'll happen?"

For reasons that I won't discuss here, lest I do spoil things, Indignation should especially appeal to those who came of age during the Vietnam era--even though Korea is the war of the moment. ( )

Set during the Korean war, young jewish boy tries to grow up, go to college and break away from him suddenly controlling father. Absolutely engrossing story. Loved it!! ( )

Another beautifully written novel that left me cold. What am I to take from this? That the 50s were so oppressive that dying in Korea is the only reasonable end for a bright, ambitious, intellectually active teenager? By the end I wondered if it was one of those novels where the whole thing is a joke and I didn't get it. ( )