Person

Philip Roth

0 members

What's driving coverage of Philip Roth right now?

Comments

Ask Genius by OpenServe:

Free account · your comment posts right after signup

Philip Roth

Not who you're looking for? Others named Philip Roth: American actor (1930–2002) · 2021 book by Blake Bailey · Screen figure

0 members

What's driving coverage of Philip Roth right now?

Comments

Ask Genius by OpenServe:

Free account · your comment posts right after signup

Philip Roth across IJR

Ask Genius by OpenServe about Philip Roth Create in Studio Build a game Watch videos

Overview

Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America. Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague. Early life and academic pursuits Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 19, 1933, and grew up at 81 Summit Avenue in the Weequahic neighborhood. He was the second child of Bess (née Finkel) and Herman Roth, an insurance broker. Roth's family was Jewish, and his parents were second-generation Americans. His paternal grandparents came from Kozlov near Lviv (then Lemberg) in Austrian Galicia, and his mother's ancestors were from the region of Kyiv in Ukraine. He graduated from Newark's Weequahic High School in or around 1950. In 1969, Arnold H. Lubasch wrote in The New York Times that the school "has provided the focus for the fiction of Philip Roth, the novelist who evokes his era at Weequahic High School in the highly acclaimed Portnoy's Complaint.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.”
— As quoted in "Works in Progress" in The New York Times Book Review (15 July 1979), page BR1
“I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.”
— Deception: A Novel (1990)
“Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”
— Ch. 5
“Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
— Chapter 3, “Following Christians” (pp. 113-114)
“There’s a plot afoot all right, and I’ll gladly name the forces propelling it—hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.”
— Chapter 8, “Bad Days” (p. 315)
“There is an epidemic and he needs a reason for it. [...] That it is pointless, contingent, preposterous, and tragic will not satisfy him. That is is a proliferating virus will not satisfy him.”
— Nemesis, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, page 265 (ISBN 978-0-547-31835-6).

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Notable quotes

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.”
— As quoted in "Works in Progress" in The New York Times Book Review (15 July 1979), page BR1
“I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.”
— Deception: A Novel (1990)
“Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”
— Ch. 5
“Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”
— Chapter 3, “Following Christians” (pp. 113-114)
“There’s a plot afoot all right, and I’ll gladly name the forces propelling it—hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.”
— Chapter 8, “Bad Days” (p. 315)
“There is an epidemic and he needs a reason for it. [...] That it is pointless, contingent, preposterous, and tragic will not satisfy him. That is is a proliferating virus will not satisfy him.”
— Nemesis, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, page 265 (ISBN 978-0-547-31835-6).

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Not who you're looking for? Others named Philip Roth: American actor (1930–2002) · 2021 book by Blake Bailey · Screen figure

Overview

Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America. Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation. He received the National Book Critics Circle award for The Counterlife, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock, The Human Stain and Everyman, a second National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater, and the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 2005, the Library of America began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after Eudora Welty. Harold Bloom named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize in Prague. Early life and academic pursuits Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 19, 1933, and grew up at 81 Summit Avenue in the Weequahic neighborhood. He was the second child of Bess (née Finkel) and Herman Roth, an insurance broker. Roth's family was Jewish, and his parents were second-generation Americans. His paternal grandparents came from Kozlov near Lviv (then Lemberg) in Austrian Galicia, and his mother's ancestors were from the region of Kyiv in Ukraine. He graduated from Newark's Weequahic High School in or around 1950. In 1969, Arnold H. Lubasch wrote in The New York Times that the school "has provided the focus for the fiction of Philip Roth, the novelist who evokes his era at Weequahic High School in the highly acclaimed Portnoy's Complaint.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.

Philip Roth across IJR

Ask Genius by OpenServe about Philip Roth Create in Studio Build a game Watch videos