Philip RothEssay Preview: Philip RothReport this essayPhilip RothFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchThis article is about the author. For the cellist, see Philipp Roth.Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933)[1] is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award;[2] and became a major celebrity with the publication, in 1969, of the storm-provoking Portnoys Complaint, the humorous psychoanalytical monologue of a “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor,” filled with “intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language.”[2][3]
Roth has since become one of the most honored authors of his generation: his books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, which featured his best known character, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roths novels. His 2001 novel The Human Stain, another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdoms WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. His fiction, set frequently in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its “supple, ingenious style,” and for its provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity.[4]
LifePhilip Roth grew up in the Weequahic neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, as the second child of first-generation American parents, Jews of Galician descent, and graduated from Newarks Weequahic High School in 1950.[5] Roth attended Bucknell University, earning a degree in English. He then pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. in English literature and worked briefly as an instructor in the universitys writing program. Roth then taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and Princeton University. He continued his academic career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught comparative literature before retiring from teaching in 1991.
While at Chicago, Roth met the novelist Saul Bellow, as well as Margaret Martinson, who became his first wife. Their separation in 1963, along with Martinsons death in a car crash in 1968, left a lasting mark on Roths literary output. Specifically, Martinson was the inspiration for female characters in several of Roths novels, including Lucy Nelson in When She Was Good, and Maureen Tarnopol in My Life As a Man.[6] Between the end of his studies and the publication of his first book in 1959, Roth served two years in the United States Army and then wrote short fiction and criticism for various magazines, including movie reviews for The New Republic. Events in Roths personal life have occasionally been the subject of media scrutiny. According to his pseudo-confessional novel Operation Shylock (1993), Roth suffered a nervous breakdown in the late 1980s. In 1990, he married his long-time companion, English actress Claire Bloom. In 1994 they separated, and in 1996 Bloom published a memoir, Leaving a Dolls House, which described the couples marriage in detail, much of which was unflattering to Roth. Certain aspects of I Married a Communist have been regarded by critics as veiled rebuttals to accusations put forth in Blooms memoir.
CareerRoths first book, Goodbye, Columbus, a novella and five short stories, won the National Book Award in 1960, and afterwards he published two novels, Letting Go and When She Was Good. However, it was not until the publication of his third novel, Portnoys Complaint, in 1969 that Roth enjoyed widespread commercial and critical success. During the 1970s Roth experimented in various modes, from the political satire Our Gang to the Kafkaesque The Breast. By the end of the decade Roth had created his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. In a series of highly self-referential novels and novellas that followed between 1979 and 1986, Zuckerman appeared as either the main character or an interlocutor.
Sabbaths Theater (1995) has perhaps Roths most lecherous protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, a disgraced former puppeteer. In complete contrast, the first volume of Roths second Zuckerman trilogy, 1997s American Pastoral, focuses on the life of virtuous Newark athletics star Swede Levov and the tragedy that befalls him when his teenage daughter transforms into a domestic terrorist during the late 1960s. I Married a Communist (1998) focuses on the McCarthy era. The Human Stain examines identity politics in 1990s America. The Dying Animal (2001) is a short novel about eros and death that revisits literary professor David Kepesh, protagonist of two 1970s works, The Breast and The Professor of Desire. In The Plot Against America (2004), Roth imagines an alternate American history in which Charles Lindbergh, aviator hero and isolationist, is elected U.S. president in 1940, and the U.S. negotiates an understanding with Hitlers Nazi Germany and embarks on its own program of anti-Semitism.
Roths novel Everyman, a meditation on illness, desire, and death, was published in May 2006. For Everyman Roth won his third PEN/Faulkner Award, making him the only person so honored. Exit Ghost, which again features Nathan Zuckerman, was released in October 2007. According to the books publisher, it is the last Zuckerman novel[7]. Indignation, Roths 29th book, was published on September 16, 2008. Set in 1951, during the Korean War, it follows Marcus Messners departure from Newark to Ohios Winesburg College, where he begins his sophomore year. In 2009, Roths 30th book The Humbling was published, which told the story of the last performances of Simon Axler, a celebrated stage actor. The announced title of Roths 31st book is Nemesis.
Roths’ second novel, Indignation, is a three-part historical story that also features Roth. It takes place sometime before the Great Depression. Following the demise of a successful company, the founders run a farm and go about rebuilding it. One of their most important achievements, however, is that they are unable to restore their land and are forced to sell it to their creditors. Written for both literary and prose audiences, the novel was distributed by the same publisher as the first. In an initial push to re-launch their book franchise, Simon Ritz (who also directed The Godfather) turned down an idea to create a separate brand, which Ritz had been working on for years. In a final push to re-launch their success, Simon was forced to cancel his third book, Nemesis, in April 2011, when it got out of print. Indignation was released in November 2013, and while he left the publishing business to become a real-life lawyer, he wrote a few poetry novels and even a memoir, but not a novel.
Roths has not addressed much to his own novels since he came off as self-confident and self-absorbed. He has a few books of note under his name: A Place Before Mankind, a New Girl After Thematic, and even an occasional series of short stories that are written for writers and young readers. Among his titles, The Last Hope, is about two ex-girlfriends living at the present time, each of whom seeks a different path to freedom (along with her family). When they finally cross paths for almost 15 years, however, there is a twist to the tale that makes for a great story, and it’s in that last book that Ritz opens his eyes to what is truly the meaning of his life.
Roths is a self-proclaimed “real” author; that is to say, a person with the deepest sense of the human condition, and the ability to think out loud, write about that which can’t be explained. If it weren’t for Roth, I’d have written a book about what he knew, but it would not have been enough, and we’d be dead. After being an actual person, and having studied this world for ten years, to have the courage to write about what happened to me, I realized that if I did it the right way (not in a way that got people thinking about me), my book would not even have been on the books of Robert R. Patterson and John J. Purdy.
Roths was very passionate about the world of literature. He was not sure that reading his work would have a positive effect upon your thinking, but in the final years of his life, he was convinced that “everything that interests me”
Roths’ second novel, Indignation, is a three-part historical story that also features Roth. It takes place sometime before the Great Depression. Following the demise of a successful company, the founders run a farm and go about rebuilding it. One of their most important achievements, however, is that they are unable to restore their land and are forced to sell it to their creditors. Written for both literary and prose audiences, the novel was distributed by the same publisher as the first. In an initial push to re-launch their book franchise, Simon Ritz (who also directed The Godfather) turned down an idea to create a separate brand, which Ritz had been working on for years. In a final push to re-launch their success, Simon was forced to cancel his third book, Nemesis, in April 2011, when it got out of print. Indignation was released in November 2013, and while he left the publishing business to become a real-life lawyer, he wrote a few poetry novels and even a memoir, but not a novel.
Roths has not addressed much to his own novels since he came off as self-confident and self-absorbed. He has a few books of note under his name: A Place Before Mankind, a New Girl After Thematic, and even an occasional series of short stories that are written for writers and young readers. Among his titles, The Last Hope, is about two ex-girlfriends living at the present time, each of whom seeks a different path to freedom (along with her family). When they finally cross paths for almost 15 years, however, there is a twist to the tale that makes for a great story, and it’s in that last book that Ritz opens his eyes to what is truly the meaning of his life.
Roths is a self-proclaimed “real” author; that is to say, a person with the deepest sense of the human condition, and the ability to think out loud, write about that which can’t be explained. If it weren’t for Roth, I’d have written a book about what he knew, but it would not have been enough, and we’d be dead. After being an actual person, and having studied this world for ten years, to have the courage to write about what happened to me, I realized that if I did it the right way (not in a way that got people thinking about me), my book would not even have been on the books of Robert R. Patterson and John J. Purdy.
Roths was very passionate about the world of literature. He was not sure that reading his work would have a positive effect upon your thinking, but in the final years of his life, he was convinced that “everything that interests me”
In October 2009, during an interview with Tina Brown of The Daily Beast website to promote The Humbling, Roth considered the future of literature and its place in society, stating his belief that within 25 years the reading of novels will be regarded as a “cultic” activity:
I was being optimistic about 25 years really. I think its going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them but it will be a small group of people. Maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to