person1950s-2018

Philip Roth

Disciplines:

Summary

American novelist who wrote some of the most ferociously intelligent fiction of the 20th century — exploring Jewish-American identity, desire, masculinity, and America through an alter-ego (Nathan Zuckerman).

Core Contribution

Portnoy's Complaint: Jewish-American desire, guilt, and the mother — an explosion of the repressed. American Pastoral: the destruction of the American Dream through the 1960s — the Pulitzer Prize winner. The Human Stain: race, political correctness, and the McCarthy-era academic. Sabbath's Theater: late career, unredeemed — his most uncompromising novel.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Was considered the most likely American to win the Nobel Prize for twenty years — he never received it, which became itself a minor literary controversy.
Retired completely from writing in 2012, having announced it publicly — an unusual form of public literary farewell that he maintained.

Notable Works & Achievements

Portnoy's Complaint

American Pastoral

The Human Stain

Sabbath's Theater

Historical Influences

Saul Bellow Franz Kafka

Intellectual Lineage

Jewish-American Literature American Realism

Contemporaries & Peers

Saul Bellow John Updike

Minds Influenced

Jonathan Franzen American Literary Fiction

Intellectual Posterity

American Literature Jewish-American Fiction

Discussing

Philip Roth

Ask anything about Philip Roth — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.

person1950s-2018

Philip Roth

Disciplines:

literature

Summary

Core Contribution

Key Spikes & Highlights

Was considered the most likely American to win the Nobel Prize for twenty years — he never received it, which became itself a minor literary controversy.
Retired completely from writing in 2012, having announced it publicly — an unusual form of public literary farewell that he maintained.

Notable Works & Achievements

Portnoy's Complaint

American Pastoral

The Human Stain

Sabbath's Theater

Historical Influences

Saul Bellow Franz Kafka

Intellectual Lineage

Jewish-American Literature American Realism

Contemporaries & Peers

Saul Bellow John Updike

Minds Influenced

Jonathan Franzen American Literary Fiction

Intellectual Posterity

American Literature Jewish-American Fiction

Discussing

Philip Roth

Ask anything about Philip Roth — their ideas, influences, contradictions, legacy.