When he placed his native city of Newark at the center of Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, Roth became indelibly associated with the state of New Jersey and what it means to grow up Jewish here. That National Book Award-winning novella masterfully depicted the tension between Neil Klugman’s working-class Newark background and girlfriend Brenda Patimkin’s more rarefied Short Hills world of tennis and nose jobs. Roth’s graphic, hilarious 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint was a bestseller. His Zuckerman novels, centered on alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, began in 1979 with The Ghostwriter; there are currently eight, including American Pastoral, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Parts of Roth’s work read like a narcissist’s confessions, but his wry, often pained, always exacting prose keeps readers hooked and gives deeper meaning to all the psychological self-examination. Last year the New York Times Book Review asked eminent literary figures to name the best American fiction published in the last 25 years; six of the 22 nominated titles were by Roth, prompting critic A.O. Scott to observe, “If we had asked for the single best writer of the past 25 years, Roth would have won.”
Of Epic Proportions
Philip Roth
By Jennifer Melick | | December 19, 2007
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