A great American novelist dies
Philip Roth: A Life Recalled
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The Schmooze Philip Roth Turns 80
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…
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The Schmooze Will the Real Philip Roth Please Stand Up?
For Philip Roth’s upcoming 80th birthday on March 19, New York magazine assembled a “Literary Caucus” to assess the career of a writer that some love, others hate, but everybody who knows anything about literature respects. While Roth himself had no hand in the piece, the 28 men and five women who weighed in on…
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Culture Philip Roth’s Guide to Old Age
The Backward is the Forward’s annual satirical Purim edition. Enjoy! More stories here… Philip Roth, considered by many to be America’s greatest living novelist, recently announced his retirement after a distinguished career in which he authored 31 books, redefined America’s relationship with liver and garnered multiple awards. Now, freed from the constraints of the writing…
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Life What Does It Really Mean To Be A ‘Jewish Writer’?
I loved Lenore Skenazy’s recent essay about how immersion among gentiles can make even the most secular Jew feel suddenly Jewish — and conversely, how being in a very Jewish environment can make us feel, well, not Jewish. Then this week Phillip Roth insisted that he doesn’t “write Jewish”; rather, he writes American and regional….
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Opinion Requiem for the American Jewish Novel?
I may be one of the few writers who was not surprised this past November to read about Philip Roth’s retirement, nor was I inspired to sit shiva for the American Jewish novel. When our media announced the news (a month after being scooped by the French magazine Les Inrocks), a spate of commentary appeared…
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Culture Letting Go of Roth
One never knows why another human really does what he does. And as readers, we can’t ever really know why an author makes the decisions he does on the page. Authorial intent is somewhat sacred. All we can do as readers is speculate on the work as it sits, or sings, on the page. But…
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Culture The Humbling of Philip Roth
As word came over the transom last week (an actual transom, since I don’t have a working computer) that Philip Roth was retiring, I dismissed it as old, dull news. I’d read the report in the original French, and translated it myself into Turkish and then into Swiss-German just for fun. Then, along with the…
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Culture When He Was Good
There’s no consensus about when writers should put down their pens. Some, like J.D. Salinger or E.M. Forster, stop very early. Others, like Philip Roth until his recent announcement, keep publishing brilliant work well into their later years. There’s no conventional wisdom here, no right answer. Yet when such a decision is reached, IT’s time…
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