What kind of character does ODay represent?
Roth: Well, I think they are–I don’t know whether O’Days still exist, those guys. They probably do, but in small numbers. I think that during the Depression and during the war and afterward they existed in large numbers. As working-class men who discovered Marx and discovered books. Generally books that had some political or social impact. Occasionally literature, but mostly it was writing that … it effected change. And they educated themselves, sometimes crudely, sometimes badly, but it added to their force. And they were polemicists, they were proselytizers, and they gathered other people in with them, and then– Q: But not much other focus in their lives. Roth: None, zip. He’s a real revolutionary. O’Day is a real revolutionary. He lives for the revolution. [PC wav (794K)] [Mac/UNIX aiff (843K)] Q: Now Nathan as a student goes to visit O’Day, because Nathan goes to the University of Chicago, and he spends time with O’Day and now he’s drawn between really taking up as a true revol
