I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here.
Interpretation
The quote reflects skepticism about the positive aspects of American culture and questions the future of aesthetic appreciation.
In this quote, Philip Roth expresses his disillusionment with American culture, suggesting that he struggles to identify any uplifting qualities within it. His statement about aesthetic literacy points to a broader concern regarding the value placed on art and beauty in society, implying that such appreciation may diminish over time in America.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on the state of modern art in America.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.
The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon. It will always be so while we live in this world. Sin will not spare for one day. There is no safety but in a constant warfare for those who desire deliverance from sin's perplexing rebellion.
We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?
My,' she said. 'We're lucky that you found the place.' We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.
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