Philip Roth Biography and List of Works

American novelist and short story writer. Roth first achieved fame with GOODBYE COLUMBUS (1959), a novella and five short stories that describe the life of a of Jewish middle-class family. Ten years later appeared PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, a 'masturbation story' about a young man's search for freedom using forbidden sex as his way of escape. The book gained great international success and has been translated into several languages.

"Between first discovering the Newark Bears and the Brooklyn Dodgers at seven or eight and first looking into Conrad's Lord Jim at age eighteen, I had done some growing up. I am only saying that my discovery of literature, and fiction particularly, and the 'love affair' - to some degree hopeless, but still earnest - that has ensued, derives in part from this childhood infatuation with baseball. Or, more accurately perhaps, baseball - with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategies, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspenseful ness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its 'characters', its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate - was the literature of my boyhood."
(Roth in 'My Baseball Years', from Reading Myself and Others, 1975)

Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, which became the scene for his early novels. His father was an insurance salesman of Austro-Hungarian stock. Roth attended Rutgers University for a year before transferring to Bucknell University. He studied at the University of Chicago, receiving his M.A. in English. In 1955 Roth joined the army but was discharged after an injury during basic training. Roth continued his studies in Chicago, and worked from 1955 to 1957 as an English teacher. He dropped out of the Ph.D. program in 1959 and started to write film reviews for the New Republic. In the same year appeared his novella, Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award. The turning point in Roth's career came in 1969 when Portnoy's Complaint became the number one bestseller, and a movie version of Goodbye, Columbus was released.

"What I'm saying, Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds - as though through fucking I will discover America. Conquer America - maybe that's more like it. Columbus, Captain Smith, Governor Winthorp, General Washington - now Portnoy."
(from Portnoy's Complaint)

From 1960s Roth has worked among others at the State University of Iowa, Princeton, the State University of New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. From 1988 onwards he was Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, New York. Roth's awards include Guggenheim fellowship (1959), National Book award (1960), Rockerfeller fellowship (1966), National Book Critics Circle award (1988, 1992), and Pen-Faulkner award (1993).

"Publishing a book is like taking a suitcase and putting it out in a public place and walking away and leaving it there... There is no way a writer can control what happens to his book when it is out in the world."
(Roth in the television document Mein Leben als Philip Roth, dir. by Christa Maerker, 1998, e-Motion-Picture/SWR)

In THE BREAST (1972) Roth's hero, David Kepesh, finds himself transformed into a massive female breast. Kepesh also appears in THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE (1977). Another veteran character, Nathan Zuckerman, is involved in several love affairs in MY LIFE AS A MAN (1975). He appeared as the author's mouthpiece in subsequent novels, including I MARRIED A COMMUNIST (1998), set in the1950s. The novels deals with divorce, the cold war, and the McCarthy-era witch-hunts. In OPERATION SHYLOCK (1993) Roth meets a doppelganger, a man, who lives an active political lifestyle and claims to be the author. A true incident inspired Roth: the novelist Richard Elman had recalled his seduction of a beautiful actress and his dismay the next morning when he learns that she thought he was Philip Roth. Elman allowed her to leave unenlightened. Another subject in the book was John Demjanjuk's trial. Demjanjuk claimed that he had had a doppelganger that committed all the crimes he was accused of, and murdered Jews in concentration camps. Roth's memoir of his family, PATRIMONY (1991), won the National Critics Circle Award in 1992. A Time reviewer called SABBATH THEATER (1995), about a retired puppeteer, one of the best-written works of 1995.

THE HUMAN STAIN (2000) was set in the 1990s. The narrator is Zuckerman who recalls the story of Coleman Silk, the dean of a small college who is forced to resign after alarming the guardians of politically correct language. "Does anyone know these people?" he asks about two students who consistently fail to attend class. "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They do, and turn out to be African Americans. Off-campus, with the help of Viagra, Silk starts an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia. "Most novelists wouldn't or couldn't handle the variety of elements that Roth does here. Few have his radical imagination and technical mastery. Fewer still have his daring." (R.Z. Sheppard in Time, May 22, 2000)

Portnoy's Complaint (1969) - Philip Roth's third novel marked a turning point in the author's career. Many found the book offensive and pornographic because of the protagonist's use of obscene language and its sex scenes. The story records the intimate confessions of Alexander Portnoy to his psychiatrist. Portnoy describes his adolescent obsession with masturbation and his relationship with his over-possessive mother, Sophie. "Then came adolescence - half my waking life spent locked behind the bathroom door, firing my wad down the toilet bowl, or into the soiled clothes in the laundry hamper, or splat, up against the medicine-chest mirror, before which I stood in my dropped drawers so I could see how it looked coming out." Portnoy's "complaint" refers to the damage done to him by the culture that has shaped him; although he is successful, his achievements are marred by a nagging sense of guilt. The novel uses a first person-narrative. Portnoy's approach is often ironic and has the rhythm of a stand-up comedian. The inspiration behind Portnoy has been attributed to Lenny Bruce's nightclub act. The Jewish family and its values are held up to ridicule. Particular criticism has been levelled at Roth's representation of the Jewish mother.

In 1990Roth married the distinguished Shakespearean actress Claire Bloom - their relationship began in the 1970s. After they separated Bloom published her memoir Leaving a Doll's House (1996). Her 1982 memoir, Limelight and After, centred on her early years and particularly the collaboration with Chaplin. Bloom has acted in several classic or modern plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire and The Cherry Orchard. - Films: Limelight (written and directed by Charles Chaplin, 1952), Look back in Anger (dir. by Tony Richardson, play John Osborne, 1959), A Doll's House (as Nora, play Henrik Ibsen, dir. by Patrick Garland, 1973), Islands in the Stream (based on Ernest Hemingway's novel, dir. by Franklin Schaffner, 1977), Crimes and Misdemeanors (written and directed by Woody Allen, 1989). - Television drama: Brideshead Revisited, Shadowlands, Shadow on the Sun. - Autobiography: Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress (1982).

For further reading: The Fiction of Philip Roth by John McDaniel (1974); Critical Esays on Philip Roth, ed. by Sanford Pinsker (1982); Philip Roth by Lee Hermione (1982); Reading Philip Roth by Asher Milbauer and Donald Watson (1988); Philip Roth Revisited by Jay Halio (1992); Beyond Despair by Aharon Applefield (1994); Philip Roth and the Jews by Alan Cooper (1996) - Nathan Zuckermann series: The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson (novels republished together with the novella The Prague Orgy), The Counterlife, I Married a Communist, The Human Stain (2000, Zuckerman is the narrator).

GOODBYE COLUMBUS, (1959)