A great American novelist dies
Philip Roth: A Life Recalled
The Latest
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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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The Schmooze Why Philip Roth Will Keep Writing
We’ve reached a strange point in the ongoing saga, “Philip Roth: America’s Greatest Living Writer.” After releasing a new book every year from 2006 through 2010, he stopped without anyone noticing. In an interview with a French newspaper, partly translated by Salon on Friday, Roth announced that he was done writing novels. “Nemesis” would be…
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Fast Forward Philip Roth Announces Plans To Retire
Seminal author Philip Roth, whose novels explored modern Jewish-American life, has told a French magazine that he will write no more books because he has lost his passion for it. The author of such novels as “American Pastoral”, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and “Portnoy’s Complaint” slipped his retirement announcement into an interview…
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The Schmooze Philip Roth to Retire
Salon is reporting, on the basis of an interview with a French magazine, that Philip Roth is putting down his pen as a novelist. “To tell you the truth, I’m done,” Roth told the magazine, in the most definitive statement he has ever made about his future plans. “‘Nemesis’ will be my last book.” Roth…
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Culture ‘Portnoy’s Prescience
Promiscuous: ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness By Bernard Avishai Yale University Press, 240 pages, $25 ‘Promiscuous: ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ and Our Doomed Pursuit of Happiness” is a very serious and very funny book about a very serious and very funny book. Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” published in 1969, was not only an instant…
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News For the Glove of the Game
Whether for catching balls, protecting hands or knocking your opponent’s block off, gloves have played many roles in American sports and culture — and Jews have been a big part of practically all of them. Jewish ingenuity outfitted Hall of Famer Hank (The Hebrew Hammer) Greenberg with a revolutionary baseball mitt, made the boxing glove…
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The Schmooze Jewish Novels From the Finnish Saul Bellow
The modern history of Finland’s Jews, who during World War II fought on the Nazi side to combat the Russians, is genuinely surreal. It seems appropriate that the leading novelist of Finland’s tiny Jewish population — today estimated at around 1,500 people — should be equally expressive of a surrealist sensibility. Daniel Katz, born in…
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Culture Roth’s Latest Award Comes, of Course, With a Complaint
Unless he wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, Philip Roth will win no bigger international literary award than the Man Booker International Prize that was announced May 18. As well as being worth £60,000 ($100,000) to the winner, the International Prize has become an instant milepost on the world literary circuit due to the importance…
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