INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Author Philip Roth poses in New York September 15, 2010
(Reuters)
Author Philip Roth, who was both
hailed and derided for laying bare the neuroses and obsessions that haunted the modern Jewish-American experience, died on Tuesday at the
age of 85, his agent said.Roth died in New York City at 10:30 p.m
local time of congestive heart failure, his literary agent Andrew Wylie said.Roth wrote more than 30 books, including the 1991 memoir
"Patrimony," which examined his complex relationship with his father and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.In his later years, Roth
turned to the existential and sexual crises of middle age, never abandoning his commitment to exploring shame, embarrassment and other
guilty secrets of the self, although usually with a heavy dose of humor.After more than 50 years as a writer, Roth decided that 2010's
"Nemesis," the story of a polio epidemic in the Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood where he grew up, would be his last novel
He then went back and reread all his works "to see whether I'd wasted my time," he said in a 2014 interview published in the New York Times
Book Review.For his conclusion, he quoted Joe Lewis, the heavyweight boxing champion of the 1930s and '40s: "I did the best I could with
what I had."In 2017 he published "Why Write," a collection of essays and non-fiction works written between 1960 and 2013.Roth's best-known
work was the 1969 novel "Portnoy's Complaint," a first-person narrative about Alexander Portnoy, a young middle-class Jewish New Yorker
The book featured several notorious masturbation scenes and a narrator who declared he wanted to "put the id back in yid."Roth's first
published book was the 1959 novella and short-story collection "Goodbye, Columbus," which won the National Book Award
Several of his novels, including "Zuckerman Unbound," "The Ghost Writer" and "The Anatomy Lesson" feature Nathan Zuckerman, a character who
came to be seen as Roth's fictional alter ego.Roth liked to play with the distinctions between fact and fiction, often writing about
neurotic novelists and even naming some characters "Philip." Yet he was frequently annoyed and amused by readers' desire to project the real
Roth onto his characters.Although his novels often explored the Jewish experience in America, Roth, who said he was an atheist, rejected
being labeled a Jewish-American writer."It's not a question that interests me
I know exactly what it means to be Jewish and it's really not interesting," he told the Guardian newspaper in 2005
"I'm an American."Some critics said Roth's novels exposed him as a self-hating Jew who played on negative stereotypes or generally cast Jews
He would recall the hostile reception at a symposium at New York's Yeshiva University in 1962 as the "most bruising public exchange of my
life."MULTIPLE HONORSRoth won the Pulitzer Prize for 1997's "American Pastoral," which examined the impact of the 1960s on a New Jersey
He was the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, honored for "Operation Shylock" in 1994, "The Human Stain" in 2001 and
Roth also received the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 1998.Philip Milton Roth was born on March 19, 1933, in Newark, New
The son of an insurance salesman, Roth earned a bachelor's degree at Buckle University and a master's degree in English from the University
He dropped out of the doctoral program in 1959 to write film reviews for the New Republic before "Goodbye, Columbus" came out.Roth taught
comparative literature, mostly at the University of Pennsylvania
He retired from teaching in 1992 as a distinguished professor of literature at New York's Hunter College.Roth had a long relationship with
British actress Claire Bloom but their five-year marriage ended in divorce in 1995
A year later, she published a bruising memoir, "Leaving a Doll's House," in which she portrayed him as depressed, remote, self-centered and
verbally abusive.Roth had been especially prolific in the years leading to his 2012 retirement from writing, turning out novels nearly every
His more recent books included 2001's "The Dying Animal" and "The Human Stain," published in 2000 and released in 2003 as a movie starring
Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman."The Plot Against America," published in 2004, imagines what would have happened had flying ace Charles
Lindbergh, an isolationist who expressed anti-Semitic views, defeated Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 election and signed a peace accord with
Adolf Hitler.Following the death of several friends, including novelist Saul Bellow in 2005, Roth wrote "Everyman," a short work of fiction
about the physical decline and death of a successful advertising executive.Roth was considered a difficult interview subject and told the
Guardian he disliked discussing his books
"You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not."Roth said the act of writing
for him is "filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety." But, he added, "There are some days that compensate completely
In my life I have had, in total, a couple of months of these completely wonderful days as a writer, and that is enough."In a New York Times
interview in 2018, Roth reflected on his 50-plus years as a writer, describing it as: "Exhilaration and groaning
Inspiration and uncertainty
Blazing forth and muddling through."© Thomson Reuters 2018(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent
staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
