NFT: R.I.P. Philip Roth

Roth's Portnoy's Compliant and Goodbye Columbus in high school. Really mind expanding for me at the time.

That's a big one. RIP.

can't say I read even half his books because he wrote a lot of them. but "Goodbye Columbus" and "Portnoy's Complaint" I did read. "Portnoy's Complaint" I read when I was about 17, which was a pretty good age to read it. (You know what I mean if you've read it.)

Anyway - RIP.

We need a voice like Philip Roth, who explored the complexities and nuances of sexuality and how we are shaped unconsciously by our families and culture.

Really sad news.

In comment 13972172 Del Shofner said:

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I read when I was about 17, which was a pretty good age to read it. (You know what I mean if you've read it.) Anyway - RIP.

Like my generation's Jim fucking the apple pie

Goodbye Columbus was a great novella and an even better movie with Ali McGraw at her loveliest, Richard Benjamin at his quirkiest.
Loved it

"Roth's literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said that the author died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure."



Pulitzer Prize winner - ( New Window )

and then a few years later, he used my room at WIlliams to fim a short story of his for PBS. Odd that I kept running into him for a few years. Reserved guy, but we both thought it odd that we met again when I was in college.

In comment 13972174 Vanzetti said:

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We need a voice like Philip Roth, who explored the complexities and nuances of sexuality and how we are shaped unconsciously by our families and culture. Really sad news.

Try David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) and Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections).

Ray Bucknell!

One of the founding members of my fraternity.

Roth, Wolfe, Bernard Lewis and Richard Pipes all within about ten days.

I liked Roth. Really enjoyed American Pastoral.

Agree on every point.

Read and absorbed a lot from each of them and i am sure you did as well

Portnoy's Complaint, Goodbye Columbus, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, Human Stain, Plot Against America. Not all were great, but all were thought-provoking. Smart, nuanced insights into the American experience. RIP to one of the greats.

He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here." —Philip Roth, Sabbath's Theater (1995).

In comment 13972254 Dunedin81 said:

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Roth, Wolfe, Bernard Lewis and Richard Pipes all within about ten days. I liked Roth. Really enjoyed American Pastoral.

Both Nathan Zuckerman Trilogies are outstanding. The Ghost Writer is one of my favorite books. The characters he chose to write about in the early trilogy with Anne Frank in the Ghost Writer and Herb Stempel in Zuckerman Unbound was awesome. I also think American Pastoral is such a brilliant novel, in creation an execution. His choice to have Zuckerman "imagine" the life of the Swede was a brilliant narrative device.

I also loved the Plot against America and not for any comparison between today and that time. I think he genuinely thought Lindbergh was a hero, probably a hero of his somewhat and he had to invent a way in which he thought it rational that a hero of his had so many abhorrent views. I won't spoil the ending, but I think if you look at it through that lens, you get a better appreciation for what I know most people considered a terrible ending.

In comment 13972201 Nomad Crow on the Madison said:

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In comment 13972174 Vanzetti said: Quote: We need a voice like Philip Roth, who explored the complexities and nuances of sexuality and how we are shaped unconsciously by our families and culture. Really sad news. Try David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest) and Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections).

Two of my all-time favorite books.

And for more on Roth, I would highly recommend Patrimony.

but it was an absolute slog of a book as a whole.

...is no longer living. That's a big loss indeed. Even though he never wrote another novel after nemesis in 2010 and officially retired two years later, when asked I would always immediately say that Philip Roth was hands-down my favorite living author. I guess that comment needs to be amended.

I've read more than more than half of his novels and my faves are American Pastoral, Sabbath's Theater and the Ghost Writer series. But even when reading one of his smaller, less ambitious books like Everyman, Indignation or The Humbling you could see the master's hand at work.

I started the new NYRB re-issue of Berlin Alexanderplatz yesterday but when I get home something is coming down from my Roth shelf to start instead...maybe The Counterlife, Patrimony, Exit Ghost, Deception or Nemesis. Anyone have any suggestion among them?

And Essex, I have no idea how you managed to pull that quote out of Sabbath's Theater but it sure was spot-on!

In comment 13972739 richynyc said:

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...is no longer living. That's a big loss indeed. Even though he never wrote another novel after nemesis in 2010 and officially retired two years later, when asked I would always immediately say that Philip Roth was hands-down my favorite living author. I guess that comment needs to be amended. I've read more than more than half of his novels and my faves are American Pastoral, Sabbath's Theater and the Ghost Writer series. But even when reading one of his smaller, less ambitious books like Everyman, Indignation or The Humbling you could see the master's hand at work. I started the new NYRB re-issue of Berlin Alexanderplatz yesterday but when I get home something is coming down from my Roth shelf to start instead...maybe The Counterlife, Patrimony, Exit Ghost, Deception or Nemesis. Anyone have any suggestion among them? And Essex, I have no idea how you managed to pull that quote out of Sabbath's Theater but it sure was spot-on!

I am not a genius that pulled it out of somewhere, it was the last line of the book and it always stuck with me and it was literally the first thing I thought about when I heard last night that he had passed. I am not a person who can go around quoting authors!

Also, for any big Roth fans, recently a former girlfriend of his wrote a book called Asymmetry. The book is three novellas that seemingly have little to do with each other and I will leave it at that. The only thing I will say is that the first novella's main character is based on Philip Roth. Roth, who probably hated the idea that he was written about in that way, remarked to the Times that he thought the book was brilliant. I really enjoyed it and everyone I know who has read it has really liked it a lot.

Yes, my daughter has read Asymmetry and liked it, as have quite a few people at my favorite bookstore, Three Lives in the Village. I have a copy but haven't yet gotten to it. And I didn't know the backstory that Lisa Halliday was a Roth ex-girlfriend or that he was possibly the basis for a character...very interesting!

gigantic writer. RIP. God bless.

all time favorites. (On my "Mount Rushmore" of books along with Suttree by Cormac McCarthy and The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas.) I enjoyed most of his other books as well.