A great American novelist dies
Philip Roth: A Life Recalled
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Community How Philip Roth Helps Us Understand Our Immigration Crisis
In his 2004 novel “The Plot Against America,” the late Philip Roth depicted an America that loses its soul: A wealthy celebrity wins a presidential election by scapegoating an entire community and goes on to turn the U.S. government into an instrument of bigotry and authoritarianism. While Roth’s first-person account weaved together an alternate past…
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Culture Philip Roth And The Yiddish Tradition
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In the course of their ongoing debate, the literary critic Irving Howe used to complain that Philip Roth’s writing suffered from a weak connection to the Jewish tradition and that he was a writer with a “thin personal culture.” What strikes us more than 40 years later,…
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Culture Did Michael Pollan Kill God?
Michael Pollan had enlightenment envy. Unlike most patients in clinical trials of psilocybin, when Pollan ate a magic mushroom, he wasn’t terrified by a terminal illness, he wasn’t suffering from alcoholism or depression and he hadn’t been diagnosed with a personality disorder. But he “envied the radical new perspectives” of the people in psychedelic therapy…
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Culture Philip Roth’s Forgotten Tape: The Beginnings of The Great American Writer
I last spoke with Philip about a week before his death. A few days earlier, I had emailed him the tape that I discovered of the 1962 Yeshiva University symposium that he’d remember always as a crucial turning point — one, in equal measure, dreadful and indispensable. It was just the sort of experience that,…
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Fast Forward Philip Roth Won’t Be Having A Jewish Funeral
NEW YORK (JTA) — Philip Roth forbade any Jewish rituals from being performed at his funeral. The prolific Jewish-American author, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, will be buried on Monday at the Bard College Cemetery, his biographer, Blake Bailey, told JTA. Roth had originally looked into being buried next to his…
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The Schmooze Remembering Philip Roth, ‘Fauda’ And More To Read, Watch And Do This Weekend
Dear readers, it’s Memorial Day weekend, and as we remember those who have given their lives for our country, we have also earned a bit of rest. If your version of rest includes getting out and about to do cultural things, by all means do so. Read on for our weekend culture recommendations in New…
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Culture Why Philip Roth Pissed Off So Many Jewish Readers
The novelist Philip Roth, who died on May 22 at age 85, was showered with honors for his 31 books. Yet from early in his career, he was also confronted by charges of anti-Semitism, even from professional critics who admired his literary talent. The vehemence of this opposition, which Roth countered energetically for most of…
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Culture That Time Donald Trump Boasted Of Reading Philip Roth
Among his fans, the late Philip Roth boasted Zadie Smith, Saul Bellow, the Library of America, and just about every awards committee save for the one named after Alfred Nobel. Roth could also have counted two presidents who enjoyed his work; Barack Obama, who awarded Roth with the National Humanities Medal, and, apparently, Donald Trump….
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