Sunday Sentence

AlecBaldwinPhilipRothAnother Sunday in which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, which asks others to share the best sentence(s) we’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

The men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor-saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family’s books while simultaneously attending to their children’s health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale.

Source: Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, a copy of which I returned to this week after hearing Alec Baldwin read the opening pages–including the sentence above–at a Roth tribute on Tuesday afternoon.

2 thoughts on “Sunday Sentence

  1. Hooray for Roth on this one!!!

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Indeed, Sarah!

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