Philip Roth Turns 80
Image by Getty Images
Today is Philip Roth’s 80th birthday, and the literary hounds are on the scent. Here’s what’s going on:
Roth’s hometown of Newark N.J. is celebrating with a photo exhibit at the New York Public Library, a bus tour, and an invite-only talk by Roth himself at the Newark Museum.
There is a two day conference hosted by the Philip Roth Society titled “Roth@80,” featuring notables such as Jonathan Lethem, Claudia Roth Pierpont (author of the forthcoming “Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books”) and Hermione Lee.
PBS is about to air “Philip Roth: Unmasked” (which, critics agreed pretty much unanimously, unmasks nothing). You can read our review here.
Flavorwire has Roth’s 10 grumpiest quotes. Here’s the best one, from Esquire, 1981:
“To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver.”
Fran Bartkowski describes in the New Jersey Star-Ledger how she, as a feminist, was eventually won over by Roth.
WNYC has re-posted a couple of appearances by Roth on the Leonard Lopate Show in 2008 and 2010.
Jason Cowley at the Financial Times raises the question, once again, of whether Roth could ever win the Nobel Prize.
And to sum it up, as Alex Balk does at The Awl, “Something something Newark, something something Jews, something something sex, something something misogyny, something something postmodernism and questions of identity, something something Nobel Prize?, something something alleged retirement. That should about do it.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
