Curious that the writer didn't feel Norman Mailer rated inclusion in that "triumvirate" who towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century. One can easily argue that he rated over Bellows, Updike, and Roth in not only his talent but in his ability to successfully alternate between fiction and non-fiction.
3
And no mention of The Plot Against America -- which should have given him the Nobel Prize IMO.
25
Unless I missed it, and I don't think I did, the times did not send out a breaking news alert on the death of Philip Roth. That seems very strange when The Times sends out breaking news alerts on subjects like the death of Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of the Cranberries, and many other people who I have never heard of.
Doesn't the death of a "towering figure" in American literature deserve at least a breaking news alert?
9
My wife and I live two doors down from Philip’s house. He liked to walk on our road for exercise, and we bumped into him right after “The Human Stain” was made into a movie. I asked him what he thought of the film. He briefly paused then said, “As long as the check clears.”
We will miss you Philip.
15
I started, but did not finish, "The Plot Against America". It was so vivid and scary about that first "America First" movement and what it would've felt like to be feeling your way forward through terrible times.
I had nightmares and had to quit! That's some powerful writing!
19
By all means, please finish it!
Went to a friend’s home for supper one night. She brought calf’s liver to the table, and I became an on-the-spot vegetarian. All these years later, I’m still one.
5
I can still remember being a boy in high school and reading the stories in "Goodbye, Columbus," the stories in New American Review, edited by Ted Solotaroff: the most amazing one became "Portnoy's Complaint" though I always was fond of the bizarre, surrealistic "On the Air." One after another, I read his books in college, in grad school, at work in the world and then in retirement. The only time I ever saw him in person, he was sitting across the aisle for me at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home at Ted Solatoroff's funeral. At one point I caught his eye and we exchanged sad nods. I learned so much from him. He was the best.
2
When "Good-bye Columbus" was published my mother -- a native of Newark, NJ -- put it in my hands.
I was enthralled with it and began a lifetime of reading Philip Roth.
Not that I enjoyed every last thing he wrote, but I certainly found enough to keep me going to the next book.
I especially enjoyed "The Plot Against America" as well as "Nemesis." Each book had an enriched Newark context.
A month or so ago I read the Library of America volume comprising Roth's non-fiction writing. I found it to be superb and highly recommend it. This volume reminded me of his deep intelligence and his connection to European writers.
Then again, again very recently, I tried to read his "Great American Novel" about baseball. I couldn't make heads-nor-tails of it, I must admit. Instead I hunted down his all-too-brief essay "My Baseball Years" that appeared in the NYT in 1990. Most satisfying.
I also appreciated Philip Roth's lifelong devotion to Newark. He has donated his personal library to the wonderful Newark Public Library, to his immense credit.
Some years ago the Times produced a geographically-centered essay on Philip Roth's Newark. My mother and I discussed it extensively, because some of Roth's favorite places in the city struck a deep chord for my mother.
I also should note that my mother (d., 2006) dismissed what I regard as Roth's protracted sexual obsession.
But "Plot against America" struck my mother as quite accurate.
I will miss Philip Roth.
13
I have never understood the adulation of Mr. Roth and of his writing. The only one of his works that I has succeeded in reading past the first few pages is The Plot against America. That book is decent, but nothing remotely exceptional. If one wants to read outstanding writing by a USA author, one might read the works of William Faulkner, for example. Many other good writers, but Mr. Roth not one of them.
11
I stumbled on to "Patrimony" a few months after my father died in 2013. Glad I did. I also listened to a long interview Mr. Roth gave on NPR as I was driving down South years ago. It was riveting and gave one faith in human intelligence, very smart and humorous. What a body of work he has left behind. To all the naysayers criticizing him, you're paid-up firemen in "Fahrenheit 451."
7
Thank you to the editor who fixed the lede on the early version of the obit. The sexual references are now where they belong -- pushed to the nether regions of the next graf. Because, it wasn't all sexual urges, was it. His writing was astonishing, and wickedly funny, and unexpectedly would tug at your heart and mind.
6
Gone too soon. Perhaps in his memory I’ll direct my writing on; lust, losing religion and America after November 2016. If only I can complete one book on these themes it’ll be because of his fearless inspiration.
3
I could never get past Roth's complete objectification of women. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he was unable to attribute women with needs, wants, ideas - lives - of their own. To him, women were the "other" that he needed to bend to his will, to possess. If a writer like Roth had substituted his need to objectify and subjugate, say, African Americans the way the Roth did to women, he would already be consigned to the ash heap of history. We aren't there yet. But someday that will be the norm and writers like Roth will be look upon the way we now view D.W. Griffiths. Brilliant, but utterly compromised.
19
As a feminist, no!
Great literature is meant to provoke, to feel uncomfortable, to explore themes you would never otherwise consider.
When we stay in our "safe zone" we learn nothing.
10
'seemed to liberate its author, and yet the work that followed' -- was not dominated by sex because that was what he had been liberated from.
When I recall my reading of Roth's 'The Plot Against America' (2004) it brings to mind 'CSA: Confederate States of America' (2005) by American filmmaker Kevin Willmott. Both explore counterfactual realities. The first proposes Charles Lindbergh, a Nazi sympathizer, wins the presidency. The second explores the proposition that the South won the Civil War. They are equally provocative, equally horrific when considering the probability that either could have occurred.
I will be seeking out a copy of CSA and will view it while re-reading Plot. I think approaching both together will be quite illuminating.
2
I find his work dated, not timeless.
It’s tiresome.
13
Full credit to Philip Roth and also to Saul Bellow and John Updike. But another great white male author has been overlooked, namely, Herman Wouk, who is now 102.
6
One of my all-time favorite authors. R.I.P. Mr. Roth
2
Somewhere, can't remember where, I read an interview with Philip Roth, in which he was asked whether he was satisfied with his work, the body of fiction that he had produced. Roth hesitated a moment, and then quoted an athlete (I think it was a football player but unfortunately cannot remember that either), who had said, in response to a similar question "I did the best I could with what I had." Roth had never forgotten that summation, and neither have I.
5
So sad that Philip passed. Met him 10-12 years ago when he was looking for a massage therapist in CT. So many people said "DON'T GO THERE!" So happy I met him and saw him over the years. My wife, Joan, gardened at his place in Warren. He came to our wedding in 2006 and wrote,"Hope you last longer than me." His wry comments cracked us up. Not a perfect person, but a great soul.
10
Agree with Mark: I was truly upset by learning of Mr. Roth's death. He was a friend since the early 60s with "Goodbye, Columbus" in which I was induced to visit the Newark library or museum where the film was shot. I found the several books I've read always interesting and a pleasure to read. Plan to go back and cover the half of his output I have not yet read.
2
3/4 of the way through American Pastoral when I heard the news this morning. Remarkable book (s) and a remarkable man. A mind fully engaged with the essential questions of life and the American experience. Thank you, Mr. Roth!
3
The "Last Word" is absolutely beautiful and it offered me a Roth whom I could associate with his books.
What a gifted and understanding man.
1
Too bad that the Times felt the need to intercut the Roth video with clips from films. Despite a number of attempts to translate Roth’s sensibility to movies, none succeeded.
Better to let the man’s words stand alone. They are plenty powerful and need no visual aids.
4
Too many writers like Roth write about life but have left little time to actually live life. They have spent their life at a desk and type writer. It's all make up. Who cares what they think.
Contrast this with Hemingway.
1
Yes, Hemingway...The Most Interesting Man in the World. I like his books but occasionally one can catch the barest wink, just the ever so slightest hint that he knows that you know he’s full of hot air.
2
Maybe it's my age but it is tough to find writers these days who satisfy like Roth, Updike and Bellow did, and I keep returning to them for a fix. I might wince at their depictions of women, but their bracing truth, eloquently told, is worth the discomfort. Their stories are not about how things should be but how things are from their perspective, the only place one can learn from.
7
In one of his books he wrote in detail about the making of gloves. I did not have the slightest interest in the subject, but I found his description quite interesting. What is that line about a great actor and the Manhatan phone book?
3
I have been living with(in) Philip Roth’s books for about five months now and just last night as I was feeling a bit lazy and put down “Letting Go” instead of reading a few more pages before going to sleep, I grabbed my phone, opened the CNN app and the first title at the very top announced the cause of my ensuing self-denunciation and mental quake. Of course, as I’ve been spending these past months completely submerged in Mr. Roth’s works, I was feeling entitled to at least a “Hey, you, here I am, here I am going away.” or some clue to help soften the blow.
Now that the first layer of shock is slowly dissipating and I’m starting to see things clearer, I realize that clue has been with me ever since I started holding the novel I’m currently involved with in my hands and wondered “Letting go of what? Let whom go?”. Every few pages I continued to wonder what the exact object or subject of relinquishment or renunciation would be. Just like that, I got my answer.
Master Roth, we are indebted to you for allowing torture overtake you in producing all the treasures you have left us with. May you rejoice in the company of the other marvels of letters. Farewell.
3
From the first novel I read by Philip Roth, I was hooked and read everything that he'd written up to that point. I was astonished at the talent which touched me deeply. And as the years went on and he kept writing, I felt he captured "getting older" better than anyone I'd ever read. He was a hero of mine. RIP. You made my world a better place for having been in it.
5
RIP the beloved and brilliant Philip Roth; an American humorist and confirmed humanist who, like Mark Twain, couldn't help but see the human condition, for all its devastating limitations, as being hopelessly amusing, any more than he could help sharing that magnificent gift. What sad news. Still, his oeuvre patiently awaits to delight.
3
Another great towering master of words sadly gone. His books his writing has been a thrill. 30 books and 85 years old is a staggering body of work. God bless.
4
Roth would probably be horrified if he saw how many commenters have brought up the Nobel Prize. He obviously wanted it but that's a lousy thing to append to comments about his death - he was so much bigger than any prize he didn't get and the Nobel Literature Committee has given the award to some very questionable people. Roth also knew that Proust, Borges, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Nabokov (possibly the 20th Century's greatest writer) also didn't receive the Prize. A famous great American novelist - who's often mentioned as a future Nobel laureate - said to me a few years ago regarding Roth: "He's no Nabokov." No commenter has mentioned Roth's championship of neglected European writers like Bruno Schulz or Tadeusz Borowski, who would probably never have been published in the U.S. without Roth's advocacy. I wish I could thank Roth personally for his championship of the great Milanese writer Primo Levi, who likewise saw his world reputation and reknown raised because Roth tirelessly promoted him - thankfully while Levi was still alive. Roth's use of his fame to champion these lesser known great artists, some like Levi while they were still alive to appreciate the recognition, is likely something he would prefer to be known for - rather than a prize he never received.
One way to thank Philip Roth today would be to buy a book by his dear friend, the great Primo Levi. Roth would have liked that.
17
I will miss him terribly. Although many of his characters and settings were Jewish, his themes were universal. Reading American Pastoral makes this clear: He wrote about people trying to be good, about parents' desperately trying to connect with their children, and people wrestling with their demons and the horrible coincidences of life. He wrote with a brilliant eye for the dangers of demagogues (The Plot Against America) and the dangers of intolerance and mob justice (The Human Stain). He wrote a lot about sex and male desire (Portnoy's Complaint, and many more), and he wrote about aging and death (Patrimony). He was funny, funny, funny. This PBS documentary is a great portrait: https://www.amazon.com/Philip-Roth-Unmasked/dp/B00BCXVYKO . Thank you, Philip Roth, for giving us the gifts of your typewriter.
6
Like many in my generation I grew up with Philip Roth from "Good bye, Columbus" and "Portnoy's Complaint, of my own Jewish adolescence to "The Breast" and "The Human Stain" of my academic years to "The Plot Against America" that now seems so frightening real in my sunset years. While Roth clearly had much more testosterone than me and often with David Kepesh for me, I found him a constant guide through the Freudian labyrinth of life (and I say that as a Jungian). For me, he was the most important American writer of my life and deserved all his awards.
5
The best writer this country produced in the 20th century. I rank him above Bellow (actually Canadian by birth) and definitely Updike. What an honest voice he had and how admirable it was the way he broke taboos and told it as it was. He was a novelist, and a superb one at that, who employed narrative techniques not for the sake of novelty or fads like post-modernism or magical realism but because it came out of the necessities of what he was trying to say. In "Operation Shylock" his ambivalence about being a Jew, a progressive, skeptical of Zionism as practiced by modern Israel for example, necessitated the eerie doppelgänger in the narrative, as well as the thinly disguised Edward Said as the Palestinian apologist with perhaps a deep message, and perhaps not. I believe The Plot Against America (which did not get much coverage in this article) is another superb example of literary technique married to the message. A parallel universe where Nazi's manage to get elected to the US Presidency and its effects on our society as the perfect way to show the thin line we walk in this country today. Roth was a special writer for me. I will miss his brilliant voice and sightings at the Hudson Valley/Wingdale train station of his Blue XC70 Volvo, one of the things we shared as well as a country house in Litchfield County. Rest in Peace Roth and shame on the Nobel Committee for not rewarding you. Their loss.
6
I am sad.
Hopefully, Woody Allen will live for ever. Who else can protect us from Donald Trump?
2
With Mr. Roth's passing, we can only hope the Nobel Committee doesn't try to make amends by awarding one of its Prizes to Donald Trump.
3
Not a fan. Read one of his later books about the Nazis taking over American via Lindbergh. Boring poorly written pap. Never finished it. I view him as a navel gazing narcissist.
9
I am not a Roth fan, but honestly anyone who criticizes an author while admitting to having not finished even one book...?
4
You're speaking of 'The Plot Against America', a thought provoking novel. How unfortunate you failed to glean any insight from it.
5
As a screenwriter who lives on the UWS, I would often see him on the street. I never said hi, he didn't really invite that, but I would smile or nod and he would nod back. It was enough for both of us.
But the idea that the greatest living American writer was a neighbor was secretly enthralling. I suspect over time critics will put him on a list with Twain, Hemingway and very few others.
4
I found a copy of Portnoys Complaint on my father’s bookshelf when I was 11. I was reading it in the bathroom when he yelled through the door, “Don’t expect me to bring you a liver!”
8
My mother wrapped Portnoys in brown paper so she could read it on the train going to work.... Australia in the late 60’s was not receptive to Roth.
2
The other, more truly gifted Roth (not related) was Henry Roth and his novel "Call it Sleep."
6
Someone said the most beautiful flowers bloom when the plant roots into the most putrid soil. If this is true, literature has a bright future in Trump's America.
2
Like many others, who have commented, I feel a profound sense of loss. When I revisit his early work I am amazed by the prodigious talent he exhibited before he reached the age of 30. Then I read the late work and I amazed by his longevity. I contrast his description of the refrigerator filled with fruit in the in the Patimkin household (Goodbye Columbus) and savoring of eating a peach with Dr. Steinberg, Marcia's father (Nemesis). I never knew that a description of the manufacture of gloves could be raised to such literary heights. For years I thought the reader had to a New York area Jew to to understand Roth. I was disabused of this when a participant in a book discussion group, who was a polio survivor, told the group how spot on Roth's description was of a polio ward.
Oy Philip, did you have to die to convince us that you really weren't going to publish again.
5
Roth may be famous, but I'm curious how many non-Jewish readers actually like him. He is clearly a narcissist who can only write about people who share his ethnic background and religion, and all his characters are basically him in disguise.
That's probably why he never won the Nobel prize. He was never broadminded or inclusive enough to speak to all of humanity. His biggest fans tend to be the same ones that worship Woody Allen. His Jewishness is more important than whether the work is actually relevant to people who aren't.
8
Total nonsense. I'm not Jewish and I loved him.
8
This WASP feminist woman likes his work big time.
7
I'm not Jewish, but immediately identified with his work, as I also did with I.B. Singer.
2
The failure to award Roth the Nobel Prize was an injustice. Unlike the last American to win the prize, he would have appreciated it. For what it is worth, my favorite works of his are the stories collected in Goodbye Columbus, and his prescient The Plot Against America.
Overrated, self obsessed, sometimes wry. In a reach for Freud's distillation of love and death, he couldn't go deeper than sex and death. And in life, a betrayer of love.
12
The best that can be said about Philip Roth is that he was a minor comic novelist of very modest abilities. His primary talent was for prurient shock - writing about things that offended square, middle-class sensibilities. However, you can only play that game for so long, hence his later attempt at writing "great" novels which dealt with something other than himself and sex. As with Updike, Salinger, and a host of other lesser-known writers, once the wheels of public relations have stopped turning for him, he'll gratefully fade from our collective literary memory.
7
Now let us don
sackcloth
and ashes.
Now let us mourn
for Philip Roth.
2
I will miss his brilliant writing, the fictional tokens of my grandparents and great-grandparents, marking a time when assimilation was still in process. I won't miss the misogyny of his characters.
3
If nothing else, Roth's works will serve as a telling document of contemporary American culture: trite, sanctimonious, and childishly self-involved.
7
Apparently Philip was a difficult man to love, like most of us. I liked his work and am sorry he's no longer with us. Thank you Philip for all your books which so many of us enjoyed.
4
To describe Philip Roth as brilliant and fearless is an understatement. He was America’s social and political thermometer. May he RIP in the power of his legacy.
3
If you are an American of a certain age, kind of left in your politics, the child or grandchild of immigrants, had a loving but in many other respects dysfunctional family, a romantic but had troubled or unfulfilling relationships with women, if you are Jewish, (Catholic will do, too), if you are bright, vain and lusted for justice almost as much as women, and--in spite of all this--could really make people's side split with laughter... He talked so much about aging and dying toward the end of his life that we all seemed to get a head start on dealing with his demise, and, yet, like Norman before him, his absence diminishes us all.
3
Phillip Roth, Z"L
May his memory be a blessing.
And a reminder...
Roth bores me almost as much as Woody Allen does. Perhaps it is because I am not a Jewish man or perhaps it is because I don' like angst. Whatever, I find these two "artists" totally boring.
6
"You Don't Have to be Jewish to love Levy's"
4
The best writers are prophetic; they last because what they write is true and remains so. It's called fiction, "The art of truth telling." Roth foresaw Trump, described him, knew him well. Now we are living in a state he told us may be true - and is.
3
We were, all of us old enough to have lived it, blessed to have grown up and lived in a time when there were true literary giants walking the same Earth. Philip Roth was one of the very best of the best.
3
Twenty years from now, as boomers join the choir invisible at great speed, who will we eulogize?
I am the grandson of immigrants who escaped from Bushwick to Clinton Place in Newark in 1910, the year of my father's birth. He, in turn, migrated to the suburbs in the 1930's after graduating from Rutgers -Newak. I was the child who raged against my privilege in the 1960's. I married a shiksa (said lovingly) and after witnessing nature's attrition around me, face mortality. If I could have asked one question of Mr. Roth, it would've been: How did you know?
2
Kind?
I know Claire Bloom and her daughter Anna Steiger and I witnessed his cruelty and misogyny. Great novelist, yes. Good person, definitely not.
7
Besides his many other works, Mr. Roth gave us "The Great American Novel," one of the best baseball books ever written and my favorite Roth novel. Loved his sports-writing narrator "Word" Smith and the misadventures of the Port Rupert Mundys. Although outrageous, his insightful satire showed he loved baseball, too.
I have been countless times inspired, amused, and appalled by Mr. Roth over the course of these past five decades. At his very best he could inspire, amuse and appall at the same time. My personal favorite, "Sabbath's Theater". By turns revolting and laugh out loud, set the book down, hilarious. The eloquence and clarity of his writing unsurpassed. A singular pleasure for me was sitting down with the new Roth, opening it at the first page, being drawn in by his intellect, narrative force and sense of history. No one wrote better about private lives and how they are shaped by public events. I have been missing that for the past six years and am saddened by his passing. His writing has meant a lot to me. I envy those of you who will be reading him for the very first time. Thank you, Mr. Roth.
2
Stunning intellect. Amazing gift for expression. Zero ability to reach out and understand the half of the human race that is not male.
Such relentless focus on himself consigns him to the category of writers who only want to talk about themselves--again, and again, and again.
4
I started reading Mr. Roth with 'Goodbye Columbus' and even at that young age I found so much to contemplate. The short stories resonated with my sixteen year old mind.
Over the years there were hits and misses for me but always something to contemplate.
His ability to pinpoint small moments in human life and illuminate them for you is what I'll remember.
Goodbye Mr. Roth. It wasn't just about lust that teenagers experience or experiment with. It was a human condition often puzzling but always worth considering.
RIP and thanks.
1
My son called me from Shanghai, about midnight his time. He said" I expected that you would call"....it took me a second until I realized he was referring to the death of Philip Roth.
We lived in one of the small CT towns near his home and had a mutual friend. We talked one evening in the bar of an Inn ...stylish and urbane, just as he was. Intellects are interesting things...his was worn close to the surface and he could not help but be commanding. The light was really on and illuminated many things and people.
My son knew, at some inchoate level, that i would feel Roth's passing. He was a man writing about men and a Jew writing about Jews. He told the story as we all lived the story. It was the gift of a chronicler and the accuracy of a microscope.
I was struck how he walked away a few years ago. Simply stopped writing , began reading and thinking. I hope he listened to Leonard Cohen for , though the muse was different, the genius was shared.
I feel a bit older today. Roth was a way back to youth and the folly of being a man....He got it right and most men of his time loved that about his stories. It is hard to see that light dim and die.
6
Who did (or didn't do) the sound mixing on the 12-min Roth video? It's terrible. The narrator is very loud and clear, Roth himself is sometimes quite clear and sometimes not. The interviewer's voice is so soft it's pretty unintelligible. I live in an apt. and don't want volume louder than necessary so I had to keep turning volume up or down to match the decibels of the various speakers. Very amateurish production!!!!
I guess there is no accounting for taste.
I could not bear to read anything he wrote.
6
Thanks to Philip Roth (and his portrayal) by Richard Benjamin) for enhancing my literary knowledge growing up in the late 60s. Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye Columbus, considerably brightened my horizons and showed the challenges we experienced growing up.
1
THANKS, NYT. he is my favorite, and your treatment or writeup reinforces the bias.
But I've only read 3 or 4 including movie versions, so I'm certainly no scholar nor lit expert.
AMERICAN PASTORAL is frighteningly humorous.
PORTNOY is humor supreme.
GOODBYE COLUMBUS is controversially great too.
Thanks again for filling-in whatever details and gossip.
PMR changes my perceptions of ... subjective reality, and I am forever grateful he chose literature instead of the glove business or dermatology.
Philip Roth got so much right about being the son of Jewish immigrants in New Jersey in the 40's and 50's. I love his wicked sense of humor about it all.
He also captured the flaws of our country as epitomized in the "Plot Against America". He nailed our current president. I'm sorry that he will not live to see DT meet his fate.
His female characters weren't perfect, but you can't have everything.
2
Judge his female characters by the time period they represented not present day.
1
Men like Philip Roth were excellent writers one and all. But the "towered over American letters in the second half of the 20th century" is applied to him and other white male writers but other white males. It's a bit one-sided.
4
I am devastated today by the loss of this literary giant. Others have already expressed the loss here better than I can.
Charles McGrath, one small quibble with the obituary: Roth's mother was never a "housekeeper," which is an employee paid to clean others' homes. She was a "housewife." There is a huge difference.
1
The Ghost Writer, what a book. what a career. I'm a lapsed Catholic from Philly and Roth made me feel like a Jew from Newark.
1
R.I.P. Philip Roth. A cultural, literary icon. Thank you for your work. You influenced a generation of American readers.
Roth could win the Nobel price for literature . He is one of the best writer in the world .
2
A great writer. Too bad those Swedes never awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature. He certainly deserved it many times over.
2
I always thought Philip Roth showed the fallacy in that writer's maxim, Write What You Know.
3
Nil nisi bonum for Philip Roth - here's my MeToo moment:
I dated Philip Roth once - we were on the Metroliner from Washington to NYC in the 1970s. He had fiercely ogled me in Union Station and sat down next to me on train, and he invited me to stop off in Elizabeth, NJ to meet his Mother,
I said no. He invited me to GO with him to Czechoslovakia. I said no, and then we spent hours together talking somewhere in the east 80s. Then he married Claire Bloom. The marriage from hell He had a house in Cornwall Bridge, CT. He told me he and first wife (in Chicago - he was 23) were married for "a few minutes", and told me his middle name (Milton) was "Middle". I told him about my relative, Uncle Thanatos. He laughed. We laughed. R.I.P. Philip Middle!
25
Thanks for your story. A great summation of this writer's life, except for one small, pervasively sexist trope by McGrath: I highly doubt Roth was "tricked" by his first wife, whom you mention (and who sounds awful). However, Roth knew how babies get made. If he didn't protect himself before engaging in intercourse, then he didn't protect HIMSELF. He was not tricked. He was a volunteer, despite the fact that no actual pregnancy occurred.
3
Well, I have the books which I do love and can lways turn to which is what Roth wished for from readers.
4
Thanks to Mr. Roth, I have not eaten liver for 35 years. You will be missed, sir.
32
I grew up in the Weequahic section of Newark, one generation later than Roth, but equally formed in the "Family, Family, Family, Newark, Newark, Newark, Jewish, Jewish, Jewish" tradition. My wife is Russian and we have many Jewish, ex-Soviet friends who live in some of the posher Newark suburbs. I've told them that they just didn't miraculously land in Millburn or Mendham or Mountain Lakes; there was an arduous trek out of Newark, through Irvington, and Maplewood to points west. Read your Roth! He was the chronicler of the Newark diaspora.
25
The next generation of male writers might write about what it's like to tame their lust, to treat women as creatures of thought and mind. Some might even write well.
58
Zzzzzzz, Give me a good tale of befouling the family's liver before dinner and exploring the joys of empty milkbottles any day.
Are we reverting to puritanism?
Adieu, Mr. Roth!
1
Hear, hear.
Sounds like we are in for some really boring books, but at least we won't hurt anyone's feelings.
5
A great loss.
8
I would not say it was a joy to read Mr. Roth's books; sometimes it seemed like work. But, it was good work. He is a masterful writer, able to tell a story in detail and poetry to make it beautiful, even if the subject matter is uncomfortable. I was broken up when Saul Bellow died, now I'm depressed we've lost another great American voice.
17
The details of the lost civilization of Newark permeate most of his work with the accuracy of a historian. The sudden loss of the place he came from (due to destruction and abandonment in the 1960s) might have led him to recognize the importance of memory. His characters occupy places whose reality became remote and cherished, mostly for the people that could be there with him. He kept those places as reality for everyone who had not been there and for those who had.
10
Very well said. I live near Newark and work there and find myself wondering from time to time what life was like before the 60s there. I feel the closest I can come to knowing it is solely through Roth’s work. He created a tremendous sense of place, sprinkled throughout all of his work.
May 23, 2018
Why James Joyce the greatest writer of Finnegan’s Wake comes to mind?
To quote::
Nations have their ego, just like individuals. James Joyce
Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance. James Joyce
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/james_joyce
As such we can say four quarks for the Muster Mark
“Three quarks for Muster Mark!”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Jja Manhattan, N.Y.
6
My favorite American author. Thank you Philip Roth! Rest in peace.
16
A vastly gifted writer who produced masterful novels, and yet I was always conscious that I, as both a gay man and a privileged WASP, was absent from his literary universe. Roth wrote chiefly about people like himself which in a writer as fiercely intelligent as Roth seemed to me to underrepresent the complexity of the urbane human comedy he lived in. I had the same problem with Updike: in both their literary worlds, gay men and women don’t exist. I can only explain this as a phenomenon of their generation coming of age in the 50s when gay people lived closeted lives. Neither seems to have had gay friends whose struggles they knew well enough to include in their depiction of upper middle class American life.
34
I thought that writing about a culture that was not yours was considered "cultural appropriation" nowadays
1
Along with the absence of gay men and women there are notable abscences of, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, disabled Americans, and a host of other classes of people we could mention. Each writer brings a particular perspective to the work that best suits his style and temperament. They write about what enables them to write best. No writer should be expected to include the entire population in their scope.
5
Wasn't Updike a friend of John Cheever's?
Portnoy’s Complaint. Roth’s best . I was at the university of Iowa and playing with the commie softball team . Roth played with the Writers/poets . I was a famous lefty at the college and Roth cursed me out . He hated Reds . His loss .
8
To the end of time, I think--when people think of Philip Roth, they'll think of "Portnoy's Complaint." Concerning which I have two--no, three--recollections.
(1) My father (long deceased)--horrified beyond words to learn, his own daughter was reading this book. He spoke of it in a letter I got at graduate school. "Can you not," he implored me, "dissuade her from reading this EXCREMENT?" And yes--"excrement" was the word he used.
Full disclosure: I never tried.
(2) Three good friends I made in grad school were Jews--all from New York City. (I know, I know--"Some of my best friends are Jewish. . .."--please don't trot out that old, tired line!) All four of us were together somewhere, chatting aimlessly. Venturing out (as it were) on a creaking, swaying limb, I told them I'd looked into Mr. Roth's latest book.
OH! MY! GOODNESS!
You'd think I'd urged them to join the Nazi Party.
Long, frigid silence. Then someone spoke.
"He shoulda called it 'Great Masturbations.' "
The subject was not pursued.
(3) And oh yes! I did indeed "look into" Mr. Portnoy's "Complaint." I read great swatches of it. Kinda racy.
Also--very funny.
Imaginary headline (from the book) "Human Oppy Commissioner Found Headless in Go-go Girl's Apartment." ("Oppy" means "Opportunity.")
Or the psychiatrist at the very end. "And shall we now begin?"
You were quite a guy, Mr. Roth.
Rest in peace.
11
In Roth's book SABBATH'S THEATER, fearing his mortality chooses his grave site, and his forced to bargain for a choice spot, remains one of the greatest comic scenes in American literature.(Almost anything you ever need to know about America and not simply Jewish Americans.)
With him Robert Indiana passed today, born they were less than a year apart and had Indiana was surely his kindred spirit as a great American 'POP" artist, also a comic wonder, with embittered irony. Both chose reclusive lives. It is a terrible double loss today for America for two of the most courageous artists that America has ever produced
4
STONE
I’m sure I’ve missed something, but I could never keep my eyes on Roth’s prose. Unlike Updike’s paintbrush, Bellow’s fist, or Mailer’s explosions, it always seemed like only Roth’s forearms. He never quite managed to write sentences to be savored, that stopped the reader for long pauses of awe and appreciation not just for their thought but their beauty; rather, his prose was too busy shoving what it wrote about out of the way, through a door, into a chair, against a wall, or onto a bed. While Updike could shift from the ordinary to the philosophic with elegant ease and Bellow could assess what it jabbed at with restless intensity and Mailer could compress thoughts into aphoristic eruptions, Roth could only force his ideas through raggedy sentences made of more burlap than light. Or so it seemed to me. I must be wrong, because there are too many talented people who say he was right. Perhaps it's time to read him again.
Let that be my stone on his grave.
13
I entered the freshman class of my state university in the fall of ‘69, the fragrance of the Summer of Love still wafting, even at our Southern outpost. We believed in the liberating power of great fiction - Pynchon, Coover, Donleavy.
My first encounter with the world according to Roth was Goodbye Columbus. I saw the movie version first, at a drive in of all places. Ali MacGraw whispered ‘read this book.’ Then Portnoy’s of course, just out then. Great because you could get somewhere talking about it with the few- and far-between coeds then extant at the great University. (We lived for weekends when bus loads came in from the ‘Women’s College’ some 90 miles to the west.) I could never possibly forget one dawn encounter, a girl I was chasing and I getting drunk and doing an extended riff on the art and science of masturbation on the town Post Office steps. I still have my journal with notes.
By my senior year the university population was approaching 50/50. Though the female dorm floors were off limits ‘after hours’, it only added more fun to the challenge. The previous summer I’d literally won the draft lottery in my hometown. No barrier was too great, I figured I’d get a leg up on scaling and rappelling.
Liberation indeed.
5
He was, and is, a literary titan. Thank you, Mr. Roth.
16
He was arguably - ok, inarguably - the greatest American writer since WW2. I’ll always think that Portnoy’s success cost him the Nobel. The pinheads couldn’t get over its success. But name a funnier book. As for immortality - reread American Pastoral. Name a better novel in the past half century. As a Newarker, as a reader, as a second-rate scholar with a PhD (!), as a lover of the best in lit - I miss you, Mr Roth.,
26
A better novel than American Pastoral: Gravity's Rainbow.
A greater writer, not of novels but of short stories:
John Updike.
I tell people in Brazil that if they want to know what (Middle) America was like in the half century post WW2, they need only read the "Rabbit" quartet.
Roth was great, but Updike was greater.
2
and 'pastoral's' mate, i married a communist was for me the most penetrating look at mccarthyism and betrayal-- now that 'life and fate' by vassily grossman is available i have something to compare (kind of roth set in stalingrad and treblinka=not for the faint of heart- but neither was roth).
1
Sophie's Choice?
One of the great American novelists of the second half of the 20th century. What I loved most about his writing was its energy. Every thought, every sentence, had its own compelling life force. One of his last interviews, which he conducted with the NYT over email, was filled with his great mental energy, despite his advanced age. I loved every book I ever read by him, and I am glad there are still a few left that I have not yet read.
18
"What does it mean to be an American?" "How do we process today the historical legacy that is ours as Americans?" Surely, these are questions Roth was contemplating when he wrote his Zuckerman triology - I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, and (my favorite, though not by much) The Human Stain. These questions will make Roth worth reading in any decade.
Reading Roth is thrilling. Listening to his work read by Ron Silver is too.
8
Oh, my heart is broken. Along with Kurt Vonnegut, Mr. Roth was one of the two great novelists who changed my life when I was young. Thank you, New York Times for a wonderful film and article detailing one of the most powerful writers this country has ever produced.
I'm probably preaching to the choir, but my online book cart at the library is now loaded (again!) with books I read as callow youth that need revisiting. So much reading, so little time.
Mr. Roth taught me what it's like to be a Jew in America, and his childhood in Newark was much like my own white, lower-middle class, goyishe experience in Chicago. Both worlds have largely disappeared now, but live in my memories and in his words. Thank you, Philip. The world may never see your equal.
(Aside) Alexander Portnoy taught me I was not alone in my tortured adolescent yearnings.
11
I am so grateful for Philip Roth's bouquet of American literature. His work is a gift to us all.
11
I am an American Jew of similar "religiosity" as Mr. Roth but a generation younger. I did not recognize the Judaism he described in his books. It was a bleak dark Judaism devoid of joy. It was filled with guilt and recrimination.
I experienced a Judaism of color, excitement, and joy. I derived meaning through my experience, he seemed to experience embarrassment and depression.
It is surprising two people's Jewish experience in the same country, same synagogues, and same city could be so diametrically opposed. I never read much of his work as a result. I couldn't relate to it.
He was a great writer and I enjoyed his work. I will miss his presence as a voice of culture and accomplishment. I am sorry he derived so little joy and fulfillment from his religious identity.
5
I read "Call It Sleep", borrowed from our military library in late sixties RVN, to fill months in the empty parts barn while the real TV war was being photographed all around me. Parts clerk arrived at the signal corps battalion after finishing second in huge class of radio repairing. There were already many radio repair men in the huge bunker next door. I smoked too many Camels and read between rare requests for a radio part during 84 hour work weeks. Mr. Roth told a good story. I enjoy good stories. We all get old and die, eventually. Knowing the ending is not why we read books, is it?
7
Call It Sleep is by Henry Roth, right? Regardless, a very great book!
1
Henry, not Philip, Roth wrote "Call it Sleep."
“Call It Sleep” is by HENRY Roth.
1
Though sad that a great writer has passed away, we are fortunate as we are with all great artists, that their body of of work lives on. He left the world with a treasure chest of creative, provocative, enlightening fiction. Rest in peace.
9
His books had great truths
expressed with the prose of
one who loves words, one
who understands the power
of words. For much of his
life, he lived, breathed, ate
and slept “writing”. He left
us words to last our lifetimes
and the lifetimes of future
generations.
Thank you Philip Roth.
You will be a writer who
lives on, never to drift
into obscurity.
Thank to to others who
have shared favorite
passages in your comments.
9
I've been a fan since I first read "Goodbye, Columbus" at 19. Words just naturally oozed out his pores. A prolific, great American writer who consistently engaged his readers. RIP, Mr. Roth and thank you.
5
The hysterical relief of feminists ("so glad he never won the Nobel Prize!) and self righteous indignation of the "Friends of Claire Bloom Society" would be hilarious if it weren't so chilling. Whether Roth was a misogynist or not he was a great writer. And, emphatically, he had no interest or ability to tell the story of women. Is that now a crime? He told the stories he wished to tell and he did so with beautiful language and imaginative, often hilarious prose. That is a far greater accomplishment than his critics can boast.
The only "proof" offered of his misogyny is the FICTIONAL portrayals of female characters and the memoir of an embittered ex-wife. No sexual harrassments, no assaults. Nothing. Just "I don't like his portrayal of women", and "he wasn't nice to his ex-wife." Living an exemplary, if reclusive life for 85 years no longer counts at this #metoomoment in history.
I assumed intelligent adults can make distinctions between a great writer and a great man. Apparently I was mistaken.
24
Eye roll.
4
Yes, we can make that distinction, just as we can between a not-so-great-man, Pound, an anti-Semite who wrote beautiful poetry. Rilke too was an anti-Semite (it's in his short stories) and a lousy father. I throw up my hands in despair - I won't admire the bigotry and the child abandonment, but I feel compelled to keep reading.
1
I went to the University of Chicago to get an A.M. (not an M.A. as you erroneously state) in English. “Letting Go” (a roman a clef of Roth’s time in the English department) was published shortly before I arrived. The book was called the “Gripes of Roth” reflecting his reputation in the U of C English Department. Faculty members and fellow students were easily identified and unfairly savaged.
Bellow got his well deserved Nobel in 1976. Updike didn’t, which is a shame. Roth will never get it, in part because he may have tried to pull strings to get it, but ultimately because his work is being judged against great novelists from across the globe, not just other Americans.
7
He will be missed.
4
Mr. Roth really did write "The Great American Novel". He will be sorely missed.
6
For some mysterious reason, he never won a Nobel Prize.
Neither did Herman Wouk, who will turn 103 on May 27th.
http://jochnowitz.net/Essays/Sailor-And-Fiddler-M.html
3
Nobody could touch him -- as a mind, as a craftsman of the English language, as a fearless explorer of American life. Sure, you can disagree with Philip Roth, but that's irrelevant. We are beyond lucky, we are blessed, to have been readers on his planet. Nobody could touch him. Nobody.
36
Grateful always for Philip Roth and his work.
Let's not forget Patrimony, a perfect memoir of his father in old age.
18
A single anecdote re: Roth's misogyny. Personally, I thought and still think of him as an outstanding, unique, expressive voice. Of course I recognized the racist overtones, his simplistic view of the female gender. But at the time, it represented his own experience.
During the early 80's I enrolled in a writer's workshop. Students were required to submit writing samples, projects in work. It appeared only those who had the abilities that matched their needs were accepted. So I felt I made the grade, whatever that was.
Session one, area nondescript but adequate. I checked out my fellow students; in a decent size class, there were only two males. Interesting mix. We met and introduced ourselves, experience, goals, authors of influence. "Updike," I said, "Roth definitely. Cheever."
By that point all the air seemed to have been sucked from the room. I had been labeled like it or not. I did get to know each of the talented attendees. At one point or another, casual one to one conversations, at least ten of my colleagues mentioned how brave I must have felt, naming Roth especially.
Like or dislike, I had to remind myself that even then, Roth had alienated a good number of possible readers. On the other hand, his body of work did manage to transcend the "haters." Everyone had read his work.
9
Updike was the greatest American novelist of the second half of the 20th C. Updike's prose style is matched by that of only Nabokov and Fitzgerald (Martin Amis is a league below). Rabbit Redux is the most probing novel on race written by a white person not named Faulkner. It might even surpass A Light in August and Absalom Absalom. I'd argue that, along with Beloved by Morrsion, Rabbit Redux is the most important American novel written between Faulkner and White Noise (important in its own way).
Pornoy's Complaint was/is one of the most important books in my life. Rading it, alone in my two bedroom apartment in Queens, in "our" tiny room, with my brother and sister, our parents a breath away, I recognized this person. I recognized that mother. I recognized everything. I couldn't believe this book existed. I finished it and handed it to my mother, "Here your should read this, it reminds me of you, your bathroom-door-banging " this I finished up with "Is me." Three days later she walked up to me, smacked me across the face. Point made.
36
Thanks for the laugh!
8
Mr. Roth, I am expecting big things from you. If anyone can write back and tell us, minutely, what experiencing the afterlife is like, you will.
11
Sorry, that's not his thing. It's all right here, that's why sex and politics is so important.
6
I feel compelled to write something but know nothing could adequately describe our loss. Roth was the last giant. It was a comfort to know he was still ticking somewhere not too far away. These giants, they leave their pile of works, and then disappear. They used to be replaced, in olden days, with new giants offering new piles. But somehow, the replacement process seems to have ceased. I haven't felt such a loss since Vonnegut passed. He too, was not replaced.
11
That not one work by Philip Roth is on the PBS Great American Read list is a travesty. Just reinforces my impression that list is a joke! IMHO.
11
Speaking of jokes, let's not forget that hilarious example called the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Bob who??) ROFL
5
Curious that many commenters look to The Plot Against America as prescient for today's times, and virtually no one sees the dark irony in how the body of his work is so counter to the current "me too" climate.
8
I noticed Philip Roth's satire of the Nixon administration was not mentioned. "Our Gang" was published in 1971. The New York Times Book Review at that time wrote, "Disturbing, logical, … and very funny... In short, a masterpiece." The preface provides two quotes, Jonathon Swift, "A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms" (1726) and George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" (1946), which serve as an overture to the novel identifying the main themes, politics and lying. The story opens up with President Trick E. Dixon telling a citizen that the popular thing to do was "convict the twenty-two unarmed civilians of conspiracy to murder Lieutenant Calley" (My Lai) "Our Gang" is a very contemporary satire and political commentary on our present times.
10
You placed him in the wrong company. He belongs with Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Joseph Heller. He was an iconoclast. Updike and Bellow were not. They were landscape painters. Roth, like Vonnegut and Heller, was a surrealist.
28
fair point, but Roth was a far better writer than either Vonnegut or Heller. Folks love Vonnegut, but he was a mediocre writer. Pynchon, for example, simply torches Vonnegut. Vonnegut had some interesting ideas, but P. K. Dick had even more interesting ideas yet nobody would argue that Dick was a serious writer. I group Vonnegut with Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls get the Blues, Skinny Legs and All).
people group Roth with Updike and Bellow, because most people consider Updike and bellow to be not only tremendous minds but also exceptionally gifted writers. I enjoy Vonnegut, but I enjoy him DESPITE his poor prose. When I read Updike, Roth, and Bellow, I underline sentences and passages just because the writing is so good.
2
"He (Roth) spoke about the appalling nature of the Trump administration even before it took hold..." - BBC/NPR
10
AMERICAN PASTORAL is his masterpiece but I remember being overcome by laughter reading PORTNOY when it first came out. It is a disgrace that his Nobel Prize will have to be posthumous.
9
Nobel prizes cannot be posthumous. The extensive work is much more than any prize can recognize.
8
I wish I'd had the chance to meet him. Yet I felt that in a way, I knew him, having read his books and followed his career, with all its twists, turns, and re-inventions, for almost half a century--sometimes with admiration, sometimes with exasperation, always with fascination. Every time it seemed that he had hit a creative dead end, he found an exciting new path. He will be deeply and sorely missed.
7
There is an old Jewish joke that I think nicely summarizes Roth’s essential take on American Jews:
Three rabbis were having lunch and discover that all of them were having a mouse problem in their synagogues.
The first rabbi says that he called in an exterminator, but without great success.
The second rabbi says that he set mouse traps all around his synagogue, but when one of them went off with a loud bang it greatly disturbed the service and he had to remove them all.
The third rabbi says he found a solution.
What is it, the other two ask.
Put good Swiss cheese all around your synagogue, he says.
How will that help, he is asked.
Easy, says he.
Bar mitzvah them all when they come out, and they’ll never come back again.
Thank you Philip for the many, many laughs.
26
Love this! I immediately thought of my Catholic confirmation. If I ever set foot in a church again for something other than baptisms, weddings, and funerals I fear the roof would cave in...
8
Time for Newark to support a young Newark artist to create a Philip Roth outdoor wall mural here. Perhaps scowling down at the Whole Foods, what with its overpriced, all-natural bespoke condoms.
5
Thank you Philip Roth for your wisdom, your beautiful writing, and for your accurate and so elegant description of Donald Trump:
"A massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac."*
* Interview by Charles McGrath
No Longer Writing, Philip Roth Still Has Plenty to Say
NYT, January16, w018
11
I'm very sad. He was my literary hero. I used to think his towering masterpiece was American Pastoral. But that was before discovering Sabbath's Theater a couple of years ago, a book that is even more intense, almost unbearably so at times. The passing of a Giant. RIP.
8
Agree completely
4
Read every book he ever wrote. A true literary genius.
11
Not getting the Nobel Price shows the permanent distance between the US and Europe. The first acknowledging reality and the latter being the hypocrite.
3
Phillip Roth's "Plot Against America" is more relevant now than when he wrote it.
11
Could the "triumvirate of writers who towered over American letters" not be a quartet and include Mailer?
2
No. Mailer was a gifted reporter. a commenter, somewhat like Tom Wolfe, but not a great novelist, not a great creator of characters and not endowed a great literary imagination.
6
I respectfully disagree. Norman Mailer to me was a great writer of fiction and non-fiction, who, compared with Bellow, Roth, and Updike, wrote with a very large canvas.
What a sad day for literature. He will be sadly missed.
6
PHILLIP ROTH Was a towering figure of American letters. I met him briefly when he was at Penn and gave him a piece I'd written. He returned it unread. I'm sure that was for the best. Of his works, the ones I have enjoyed the most were, When She Was Good, Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint, which caused a great ruckus since it was generations before the Internet, where porn such as it was in Roth's "Complaint" was like insipid chicken broth compared with red meat. Not to mention Deep Throat. One central theme in Portnoy's Complaint has gone unmentioned by most who make allusion to it. It is, by Roth's own description, a spoof on psychoanlaysis. It begins with Portnoy free associating with his analyst, bringing up erotic material that is considered to be the main theme of the analysis. The ending line in the book is a dead giveaway, when the analyst, Dr. Spielfogel (meaning "plays with a bird" or masturbation as a Yiddish neologism), says something to the effect of, so can we get down to business already?
8
I feel like I’ve lost a close friend. I started reading Roth 50 years ago (Portnoy, of course) as a college freshman and never stopped. He combined intricate looping sentences that rival anything in Henry James with amazing colloquial power. He was sometimes criticized (unfairly, in my view) for creating characters too much like himself, but what else can any writer draw on except his or her own experience? His output was prodigious. Taken as a whole, his work showed us what it was like to be a certain kind of man in modern America. . Roth is, along with Henry James, our greatest novelist. The ridiculous Nobel committee blew it big-time in not giving Roth the prize. And oh yes, he was screamingly funny about certain uses for liver and many other things. There was laughter in every one of his books. RIP, Philip Roth.
56
As a Swede I am deeply embarrassed that the really bizarre society called the Swedish Academy should award the Nobel prize. It is indeed beyond comprehension that Philip Roth was never awarded a Nobel considering his vision of man´s condition - THE one condition for a prize as put down in the testament by the prize donator, dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel. Add to this Roth´s most magnificent command of English.
30
Yes, it's really incomprehensible.
4
I remember reading Good-Bye Columbus in the early 60's, and loved it: The title novella, when Neal's girlfriend, Brenda Patimkin, refuses to rush the net in a tennis game, because the ball might hit her nose job and mess it up; Defender of the Faith, which Irving Howe denounced; Eli the Fanatic. I knew a star had arrived. Perhaps most poignant was his memoir, Patrimony, about his father, Herman, dying of an inoperable brain tumor. His last or next to last novel, Indignation, was a page-turner, about Marcus Messner, a teen-ager from Newark, who went off to Winesberg College in Ohio to get away from his controlling father only to be dismissed by an anti-Semitic dean, even though his grades were excellent. He thereupon was drafted, sent to Korea, and killed in the winter of 1951.
Roth had tumultuous relations with women, and his women characters were not as fully drawn as his men. But he was among the great Jewish-American novelists of the 20th century, including Abraham Cahan, Mike Gold, Henry Roth, Bernard Malamud, and Saul Bellow. Their work has made a permanent contribution to American literature.
15
I thought Philip Roth would eventually die but not so soon. He lived a bourgeois life, he took care of himself, he wrote and he wrote some more but he also ate three meals a day and didn’t smoke. He didn’t let booze or other antagonisms of American society sicken him. Maybe he shouldn’t have given up writing? There are studies that indicate retiring early is to invite Death’s knock. And, for sure, if Roth could see this comment he’d make Mickey Sabbath fun of it, laughing at life’s carnival like absurdity.
Life today is lonelier than yesterday knowing Philip Roth isn’t around to observe it with us.
23
I grew up next to Philip Roth in CT and I will always remember watching the turtles in his pond. For all of his faults, he was always nice to me and my brother and our misbehaved dogs who would sneak in to his pond to swim and chase ducks.
I definitely did not appreciate how wonderful it was to grow up next to a literal literary giant until we moved from Melius Rd when I went to college.
16
Those who watch ducks & particularly domestic ducks, will notice that sex is not welcomed by the hen, but endured & after the act both she & the drake splash & flap wings before returning to a blissful sharing of all a duck is capable of within the confines of a monogamous relationship.
Lord love a duck & Philip Roth for keeping them.
I'm not going to add anything worthy enough except to thank him. Roth had universal ideas and beautifully crafted sentences with the power to shock and make me laugh, book after book after book. Who's just moved from the on-deck circle to the batter's box? No one.
8
Philip Roth represents the kaleidoscope of great things about America dying in America. And, as the great thinker-writer would have said, I hope I'm wrong.
7
Some years ago while looking after a garden in Boston’s Back Bay, a well-dressed older man came up to me to inspect my work. After an exchange of pleasantries and some conversation, I introduced myself. He did the same, by simply saying, “I’m Philip Roth” and then he was off. It took a while for it to sink in, but I was always amused by the nonchalance of our brief encounter and that I had so easily met a great author while gardening on such a lovely spring afternoon.
17
James,
How do you know it was THE Philip Roth? Did you later look up a photograph? Did he own a property in Back Bay at the time? Just curious. I'm sure you must have some reason to be sure.
Every Philip Roth I read is an education and a vacation. My dad, who was 10 years older than Roth, was born and raised in Newark, and he passed his love of Roth's books on to me: We were a Philip Roth book club of two. Roth has passed, and may he rest in peace, but he has left behind such energy in his books, and his voice is as clear and present as ever.
14
I wrote a letter to Roth's agent about 10 years ago, asking him to forward it. I had heard that he was writing a novel about a protagonist who deals with polio in his Newark neighborhood. I told him that my parents lived on his block in Newark at the time and lost two sons to polio in 1945, in the same week---one was 7 and one was 3. We exchanged letters for several months--he was so kind and interested and even asked if he could use one of my stories in his book (he didn't). He reminisced about an uncle of mine who was obviously a character in Portnoy, but he even said that "he wasn't a bad guy." His heart and memories obviously softened as he got older. I took my daughter on a pilgrimage to his block when she was writing a term paper about him in high school; she is mourning today too. I too miss the neighborhood in which he lived; it was full of life, fights, dreams, love, laughs. That specific world is no more; he captured it and breathed life into it for so many people.
1
"Call me Smitty." Thank you, Mr. Roth, for this wonderful beginning to "The Great American Novel", my favorite among your oeuvre. This book is for me the peer of "A Confederacy of Dunces", two majestic comic novels that make you laugh out loud and just love the glories of the English language, or, to quote Smitty, of "the Big Twenty-Six" letters of our alphabet. Thanks for enriching my life with this fabulous baseball book, which I urge any baseball fans reading this to read. You will not be disappointed.
3
If you have one book to read this year or indeed any year, I suggest American Pastoral. It is brimming with brilliant insights. You think, as you read it, does Roth simply fall out of bed with an ability to write so lyrically? Because there is such an abundance of literary sparkling throughout the book. Yet as the father of a late teenage daughter when I read it, it was disturbing as to what a similarly aged daughter goes through and the impact it has oh her father the "Swede," who gave his daughter so much only to watch her disintegrate and be helpless to do much about it.
So you need a strong stomach to make it through some of the elements of the book. Yet it is a dazzling novel, perhaps the single greatest piece of writing I've ever read.
10
Mr. Lobel: I was reflecting on your paragraph. This is precisely how I fell about this astonishing book. I have read it through fully five times and have felt each time as though it is an entirely new experience with context. The startling character creations together with his almost miraculous lyricism transport me. The final paragraph is one of the most beautiful in all literature.
Goodbye, Mr. Roth, I wish I had gotten in touch sooner...In my youth, I was a devout fan and morphed into a lifelong Roth reader. Thank you for the hilarity, drama, and humanity. Oh, and thanks for turning me onto Flaubert, Kafka and Eastern Europe way back when ... You'll be missed, Good Sir
11
A wonderfully-written sendoff for a wonderful writer. "A kind of vanished Eden: a place of middle-class pride, frugality, diligence and aspiration." Perfect summation.
36
An interesting obit about a great writer. However, was it necessary to carry the tone of misogyny he was accused of into his death notice? His first wife “tricked him” into marriage? His second wife, dismissed? I thought obits were there to provide a bit of perspective?
22
Nil nisi bonum, but for this reason I've always had a lukewarm appreciation of the mid-century male American novelists presented to me as great in my English lit classes in the 1970s. They were supposed to possess profound and perhaps universal insights into humanity, and yet the lives of women were always treated as secondary. As a woman, I found their vision thus limited, but at the time no one offered a compensating explanation of why this was no bar to greatness. Male writers could be thoroughly androcentric if not outright misogynistic and still be "great" (I'm suddenly drawn to the scare quotes, though I'm not disputing the adjective), but women were considered hobbled by the narrowness of their experiences, even Woolf and Lessing, because female lives by nature mattered less.
Writers such as Roth and Bellow used their undeniable talent to consolidate and justify a worldview in which men were the rightful and entitled protagonists. It isn't that I'm incapable of appreciating them as writers; it's that I have no interest in being defined by them. I don't feel that way about all male writers; far from it. It's that particular mid-century American male writer, whose dominance perhaps only began to wane in our contemporary literature with the passing of DFW.
49
Nothing bad will happen if Roth and the others stand down from the pedestal for a few decades or more, and writers who write well about all people are elevated to it.
9
Both wives were dismissed for very good reasons.
A thoughtful survey of the life and work of a significant American writer marred by an opening swipe of hostile racialism, and a closure of gratuitous and blatant political correctness regarding gender as if a mantle were being passed. Hardly. A snarky and coy tell all in fictional form that flips the MeToo movement on its head. Looks like exercising power through maximizing opportunity and access, predation, and exploitation goes both ways, the female of the male; the young of the old, hard earned accomplished, and lonely. After solely one short story published 13 years ago how excellent for Halliday the timing of his death just as this, her first book, is launched. I'm sure she and her publisher were sprinting to the printer.
8
This article does not give enough attention to "The Plot Against America," which was so prescient about Trump.
32
Like most great novelists, Roth embodied several seemingly inconsistent abilities: the satirist's sharp sense of what is most ludicrous in human nature--especially in dangerous people, the dramatist's sense of the point in human interactions at which what is comic meets what is tragic, and the philosopher's sense of what is most absurd in the lies we tell to get along and the myths we sell ourselves to believe we are unique. Add to this an uncanny combination of anger and compassion, a refusal to knuckle under to the passing demands of literary political correctness, and as his life went on, a deeper understanding of what the particular memories of his family and upbringing had to do with American history--especially what they contributed to each other. An admirable sense of authorial willingness that sometimes edged into a less admirable willfulness. Always interesting and often exasperatingly funny fictional anti-heroes whose outrageous behavior suggested nothing so much as a good Jewish boy challenging a silent God to show his face. And sometimes, more deeply saddened heroes disappointed and even destroyed by having succeeded, apparently, in achieving what we call the American Dream.
14
Philip Roth created Americans that seemed on the outside to be normal well adjusted middle class people. Then he showed us how human passions can destroy even the most well cultivated personal myth. He showed us how no matter how much we, as a species, try polish away our primeval animalism, we ultimately are weak, lustful and violent creatures. He wrote about how we are capable of acts of violence and self sacrifice usually driven by some wildly irrational and self delusional passion. He understood humans and more specifically Americans better than any other writer that I have read. I am sad that he will never put pen to paper again.
17
For almost 50 years I have enjoyed his novels as did so many others.
8
With tens of thousands of authors writing (mostly boring or sophomoric) fiction, I find some satisfaction in knowing that a few of my favorites, Updike, Bellow, and Roth, are on the Times' A-list. I think, in "Portnoy's Complaint", Roth might have written one of the funniest novels I ever read; alas in "Nemesis" probably the saddest. I suffered almost physical pain reading the tragedies due to polio that he portrayed. Since that reading, I have considered Jonas Salk and his associates to have made the greatest contribution to humankind of all time.
13
A whole passel of white male writers who reached middle-age in the 60s became obsessed with the sexual revolution and wrote about it obsessively, as though they were missing out. Roth was right there in the middle, along with Bellow, Updike, Vonnegut, Heller and even Robert Heinlein, among many others. I've never quite known what to make of that.
21
Vonnegut?
Roth was a racist who gloried in sexually humiliating gentile women in his books. He faced no professional consequences for his nihilistic and grotesque vengeance fantasies only because he chose his victims well. In the process of acting out, he also reinforced pathetic stereotypes about himself. While Bellow and Updike delved into American life with generosity, to show us our flawed and beautiful humanity, Roth remained forever adolescent, morally stunted and blinkered. The classlessness he dreaded was ultimately the product of his own hand. As it were.
32
Wholeheartedly agree. I am relieved that the Nobel will never be awarded to him if they do, in fact resurrect it next year and it remains a prize for living authors only) because I never thought his lurid scene after scene after scene and the way he depicted women -- us -- was so vile.
12
I understand feminists not being big fans of Bellow, Updike and Roth, but I don't get how you like two and hate the third. I have read all three and I would have trouble calling one of them more misogynistic than the other two. Not that I would necessarily call any of them that.
7
Just wondering how many of his books you actually read from start to finish? American Pastoral, Everyman, Deception, Nemesis, The Plot Against America? Any of them? Your critique seems grounded in hearsay rather than fact.
1
Roth wasn't only about drawing open the curtain on sex and, especially, male lust. He was also a formidable political writer, in the sense that politics is always first about culture.
For insight into how fragile the line is between ethno-nationalist instncts in our national culture, and the universalism of our official Enlightenment values, you can do no better than read THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA. This chilling counterfactual account of the 1940 election has "America First" founder Charles Lindbergh becoming president after Franklin Roosevelt declines to run for a third term. Most impressive is how Roth details how easy American culture could accommodate (and welcome) a slide into an authoritarian self-absorption that witnesses a cozying up to Nazi Germany and among other horrors a government campaign to destroy the communal presence of American jewry by forced emigration from population centers and the Aryanization of Jewish children.
20
Thanks to Portnoy's Complaint and Goodbye Columbus Philip Roth made Jewish women look very bad. Roth helped create the sexist stereotype of the spoiled Jewish American princess which lingers to this day. I'm not ready to forgive or forget.
26
So, as a Jew, he should have only written Jewish women in a good light? He didn't create the stereotype, he just wrote about it. As for making Jewish women look bad, the sexism and antisemitism of American society would have done that just fine without him.
6
I stopped following him when I saw him as a great white male, flexing his intellect for his own renown. There are many skilled wordsmiths out there. As one commenter remarked, Roth’s talent did not impact the culture at large. Others, like Dylan, did. Instead, Roth was promoted by loyal east coast curators within a closed system. His duels with the Jewish establishment were part of his allure — with them. What he chose to spend his intelligence doing his entire life was a dream of the world he grew up in — The Great American Novelist — one that I felt faded decades ago. Basically, I matured from reading fiction, and from clever writers working fiction’s House of Mirrors. But it seems he amused himself for quite a while.
17
No way. Dylan has impacted no one other than some baby boomer fans. His legacy will be negligible at best. Roth however, love him or hate him, will continue to be read and discussed.
3
Both Roth and Dylan have much to offer. It doesn't need to be a neither nor proposition. It is both. Both have managed to capture the essence of America albeit in different ways.
My remark has to do with the comparative impact the two writers have had on American culture, not which one is better.
In this #metoo time, let us not forget his deplorable treatment of Claire Bloom.
31
"The last of the great white males": let's hear more about how he abused Clare Bloom.
23
Other than Bloom's words, there is no proof of this.
8
Don't compound the problem with a blithe "Other than Bloom's words" (which, to my mind, carry as much weight as his or yours) to dismiss this issue. There is nothing in the truth of Roth's writing that would lead me to think Bloom is not telling the truth.
2
You can’t read everything, so I mainly read books I hope will make me laugh.
Philip Roth supplied more than his fair share of these.
If the Nobel Committee had had its head on straight it would have awarded him its prize for comedy.
12
We must rid ourselves of the value of "prizes."
The Nobel in literature especially. Roth wouldn't be a great writer because he won this prize.
Greatness has nothing to do with awards.
18
So what if Roth never won the Nobel Prize?
It was awarded when Tolstoy was alive, and he never got it. Yeah, Tolstoy.
But Pearl Buck got it.
Thoroughly overrated prize. What makes a small group of Swedish intellectuals the great arbiters of world literature?
27
“Blackly comic novelist” and “ family, family, family, Newark, Newark, Newark, Jew, Jew, Jew” gets it right.
I think he must gotten a good horse laugh when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize instead of him.
And probably another one more recently when Dylan had a brand of whiskey named after him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/business/media/bob-dylan-heavens-door...
Anyway, thank you, Mr. Roth.
You’ve been very stimulating company over the years.
And I still have more than half-a-dozen of your books to go.
Before, I hope, starting over again.
15
Dylan, for what it's worth, was as surprised as you when he won.
What does this have to do with whiskey or Roth?
5
Brilliant and fearless. His work will never die.
16
Rest in peace Philip Roth
6
The Plot Against America. Didn't Roth write that?
4
Yes
Thank you, Mildred Martin.
1
He should have won the Nobel.
Instead of Dylan.
Who didn't deserve it.
8
Your opinion (and mine) plus $2.75 will get you a NYC subway ride.
3
Every nation has native writers who some critics and readers in that country feel should have won the Nobel Prize.
2
This "last of the great white males" thing is really curious. I really just don't understand what Mr. McGrath meant in writing it.
Were/are Updike, Roth, and Bellow known in lit circles as the Great White Males? Like how Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin...known as The Rat Pack. If so, you'd have to capitalize it, right?
If not capitalized, it seems Mr. McGrath is making some sort of pronouncement about a certain type of writer--that writing like Roth's, by Roths, has had its day, and that day is now over? Was this a political statement re who "gets" to make "serious" literature going forward? Maybe it was more innocent than it looked, and maybe it's a term of art or industry term to which I'm ignorant...but I'm not satisfied as a Times reader and a Roth fan until I understand just what the heck Mr. McGrath is attempting to say.
7
I interpreted this to mean that he was, in nearly every sense, a product of his times. Taken in today's context--particularly Me Too, as several people have pointed out--his work almost reads as a series of period pieces.
7
I was also taken aback by that phrase. I don't think it was innocent at all. I am so tired of identity politics infecting every aspect of art, culture, academia, etc. I know it is not a particularly hip point of view, but can't we please stop nitpicking at skin color and gender, and simply appreciate literature, music, art, on their own merits?
8
One of the best. Yes, he should have received the Nobel Prize.
2
Yesterday, Robert Indiana, today Philip Roth: a sad week indeed for American arts and letters.
4
What a genius. Both Mickey Sabbath and Merry Levov were truly haunting creations the likes of which I don’t think I’ve encountered in any other medium (scarier than real life, if that’s possible). His work was a form of alchemy and he took it seriously...you could sense every synapse was being directed at telling the tale, at uncovering. Looking for an American hero? Here’s your guy.
5
So many great stories and characters, thank you Mr. Roth.
8
I am very sorry for your loss. You will see him again. In the Bible at Acts 24:15 it says "..there is going to be a Resurrection...". So have hope that you will see your loved one again.
Philip Roth dies. Sure seems like the right day to see the Soutine exhibition at the Jewish Museum. I stayed in the small house where he wrote "his writing house" next to the large house he lived in in Connecticut one night many years ago. The reasons I was there are not interesting but what is is the many drawings by Philip Guston scattered around his writing room. All of them were personal momentoes from Guston, who was apparently the inspiration for the main character in "The Ghost Writer". There were caricatures done by Guston of "Phil & Phil inRome" that sort of thing.
A year or so later I accidentally met Roth, noticing that hews standing next to me inBooks & Co. So I told him I had spent a night in his writers house, etc. The thing about the conversAtion that ensued, which was friendly enough, was how I immediately had his complete attention, it was like a tractor beam. It was that intense interest in what anygivenmomnet could bring him that was most impressed me.
51
You were the best Philip! Only regret is that I never met you... Thank you for all the great novels and memories!
6
As a Bucknell graduate I can say that we've lost a legend. He was our most famous alum and should be commemorated on campus.
8
Goodbye, Mr. Roth. Thank you for the many thought provoking novels you wrote. You always left me yearning for more. May you rest in peace.
6
As Flannery O’Connor said of Gogol, Roth was as necessary as the air. RIP
10
It is ironic, maybe even appropriate, that he has passed after PBS announced the country's top 100 novels which did not include one of his great novels. He found great company here as Updike and Bellow were also shut out. A very sad day.
12
If we're to write of Roth as one of "the last of the great white males" of American letters, McGrath's Saul Bellow and John Updike are better notes as nominations for the list than parts with Roth of a "triumpherate." Many would also include Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon and, yes, this virtual nomination, from a passage from Roth's EXIT GHOST describing another literary notable -- as he moves forward to speak at George Plimpton's 2003 Memorial Service at St John the Divine. "The Norman Mailer. Overwhelming. I'd never seen Norman Mailer off the screen before. Guy's eighty now, walks with two canes, can't take a stroller if more than six inches alone, but he refuses help going up to the pulpit....The Twilight of the Gods.
3
I can't think of Philip Roth without thinking of John Updike. We are blessed that both dedicated their prodigious literary talents to the perhaps impossible task of comprehending this country.
11
The most European of the great, truly American writers of the 20th century. To the point that nobody could explain the USA to us European better than he did.
8
How extraordinary that the hysteria of the initial adverse reaction to Roth's brilliant early work on the part of some Jewish intellectuals reflected the same inner frustrations and shame that Roth boldly revealed in his writing, becoming a recursive process. The more they protested, the more he revealed, the more they protested. Our nonchalance about these issues in his writing today betokens just how dramatically he changed American literature so fundamentally and permanently.
6
I only ever read the novelette "Goodbye Columbus," but I can see the story in my head as if I'd watched the movie (which I did not).
That's the sign of a good writer to me.
5
He was a giant of literature, a genius of language with a almost manic vision of America that was both comic and remarkably incisive. He will be missed but his remarkable novels will live on to edify future lovers of literature.
8
Growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s I discovered Roth and was mesmerized by his depiction of middle class Jews who were struggling to define themselves in mid century America. His characters provoked my sensibility. I could follow the course of life through his novels, from adolescent abandon to adult conflicts and finally to encroaching mortality, all with comic and insightful writing. Oh the lessons I learned! Philip Roth...so sorry to see you go.
42
Growing up middle-class, Catholic, and the daughter of Irish immigrants in 1960s Jersey he also appealed to me. His description of the struggle of middle class Jews captured universal themes of many peoples navigating a different culture. The desire to embrace new experiences and fit in.
While I didn’t read Roth until I was well out of high school his writings also remind me of the great discussions some of my Jewish friends and I had concerning religion, religious rites, and secularism including the commonalities and differences of our experiences. If only our current political climate allowed the same loud passionate exchanges of ideas we engaged in back then.
8
It really impressed me in his willingness to admit at around 80 that both his mental and physical powers had diminished to the point that he decided to simply stop writing because he didnt like the quality of his work anymore. Bravo Mr Roth. That is not sad: he knew what was up about the aging process and made a huge decision to change his daily life purely out his choice. If only more of us could make those sorts of assessments at 80 plus AND meaningfully act on them.
13
Nice that he had the financial means to stop working when he wanted to. Many in physical labor jobs are beaten down, know they can’t perform at the same levels (and that it may be unsafe to continue to do so - so not just writing something not as sharp as it used to be!!) and want to make this “choice” but can’t financially.
5
"he decided to simply stop writing because he didn't like the quality of his work anymore. "
This is false. He never said this.
2
David, read the nytimes article "No Longer Writing, Philip Roth Still Has Plenty to Say." There's your reply.
Roth spoke repeatedly about the aging process and how it was affecting the quality of his writing. Here for example:
"I was by this time no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the verbal energy or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack of any duration on a complex structure as demanding as a novel.... Every talent has its terms — its nature, its scope, its force; also its term, a tenure, a life span.... Not everyone can be fruitful forever.”"
1
Nice obituary in general, but the last of the great white males? Ever read Cormac McCarthy? Rest in peace, Mr. Roth, you've brought me countless joy with your humor and poignant insight on the human situation.
12
Props to McCarthy, a writer for whom I had s strong fixation at one time, but I think he belongs in a different category of writer. The others wrote Great American Novels. He writes Great American Nightmares.
2
Roth, like Henry Miller, was often misunderstood.
Tempting as it was to think he wrote about "himself" in his fiction, this is wrong.
He always said his novels were IMAGINED, rarely intersecting his actual life.
3
This is simplistic. Do you know writers? Their emotional lives are often starting points to virtually _everything_ they write. And if you know writers well, they will eventually write you into their stories, which can be very amusing what they see.
8
A great writer. A great Mensch. A fearless explorer of the human condition. Proof that the Nobel Prize committee know zilch about literature.
32
Eh. Once I discovered him, I devoured his books for a time. They lost their hold on me pretty quickly.
7
In the face of the young Roth in the family photo here you could tell...this guy has something to say.
10
A handful of writers wrote 'a great American novel'.
Roth wrote many.
28
I loved his writing. I hid in the library of the YM-YWHA in Montreal reading the forbidden Portnoy's Complaint, trying not to laugh out loud. I feared the Plot Against America. I struggled over American Pastoral and yet another story of a Jewish family experiencing America in different ways. I read all his books and even wrote him a fan letter (which he never answered). I defended Philip Roth to my family and friends against the charge of his being a self-hating Jew. I wish he had treated Claire Bloom better, or even well. Even though he retired from writing a few years ago, I always hoped he was kidding and would be back. RIP, Philip Roth.
31
Exactly. I've been hoping for the clarity of his voice in the "Trump Era" and that hope is definitely gone now (unless he left something to be published after his death). I will miss his great gift for teaching me what I didn't know I needed to know.
8
If there’s a kernel of truth in what Claire Bloom said, then I have very mixed feeling about him.
6
I've read so many of his books, from Zuckerman to Portnoy...yet when I first read "The Plot Against America" I thought something like this could never happen here...yet here we have Trump. At least in Roth's novel, Lindbergh flies off never to be seen again...we can only hope that fiction becomes reality.
31
What goes unremarked is that he was a great teacher too. Whether holding class, or writing about others he admired, or revealing himself in interview,
Roth illuminated, never failing to add insight.
13
For me, the exceptional Roth novel is “The Plot Against America.” The way he let himself live inside that American nightmare is stunning, even more so today, with the book now a prescient metaphor of our awful presidency. The other novel that does justice to remembering Roth is a new one based on him that he didn’t write: “Asymmetry,” by Lisa Halliday, who, as a young woman, had an affair with Roth when he was in his 70s. The Roth character in the book has a superb, wry humor and wisdom that gives dignity and grace to the author. More, the character inspires the protagonist, Alice, to write, making him a kind of muse, even if he’s equally as much a satyr. Remembering Roth (who praised the novel) as a fictional character who's in character seems like the best tribute you can pay a serious novelist. In addition, perhaps, to the invigorating fact that the character is ever always an unrepentant rake.
8
Beyond the occasional shorts in The New Yorker, I wasn't "able" to read Philip Roth. By that I mean I never felt the necessary access to the cultural references, the privileges between the lines. I wanted to, but I was intimated and for that, I am the poorer. I feel strangely cheated.
1
It’s not too late. Philip Roth is dead but his work lives on. You can find his books in any library.
4
I'd suggest you start with The Plot Against America, or for something short, accessible, powerful, moving, and unexpected, Nemesis.
You still have time to read Roth.
5
I used to think Borges was the greatest writer to never win the Nobel for Literature, but humbly I must now give that title to Roth. To say a sadness washed over me as I read the news of his death is an understatement. We will not see the likes of his greatness in American literature perhaps again in my lifetime. He was indeed a towering man of literature but most of all a storyteller of American truths. RIP Mr. Roth, as a woman I never listened to or believed your critics because your body of work is what I chose to judge you on.
31
A remarkable writer whose legacy will live on in his books. Described the human condition in its unvarnished naked state. RIP Mr. Roth. You will be sorely missed.
7
Wolfe and Roth, both gone nine days apart.
Where are their equals today? Shall we ever see our days as clearly illuminated as they shone their light on their lives and times?
18
A loss that will be felt.
5
What is most tragic is that Mr. Roth did not receive the Nobel Prize for Fiction, which he truly deserved, and was unjustly denied. However, we have his work to console us. And that is one mighty big consolation.
9
I agree but point out the prize is for literature and Winston Churchill, who won the prize, did not win it for fiction, though maybe for friction. Of course, these days some purveyors of the new pseudo-intelligentsia cultural fascism (sorry, um, fashion) would say Churchill was a misogynist pig and even Golda Meir was a racist or something. In the digital age (we are now beyond post-modernism) we are starting to see that 20th century analog arts and letters may have been the pinnacle of our learning and wisdom. Maybe because it responded to mass tragedy in world history. But now, nothing in art, music, and letters is authentic. Arts go for irony and cute jokes now. Music is digital and derivative. Films are just commercial. And there’s no more Phillip Roth. RIP.
2
Roth voiced an imagery familiar to many while provoking thought to those unfamiliar with that same world. I would suggest reading The Plot Against America, a brilliant book full of Roth's classic autobiographical characters and places from Newark of the 1940s. Better yet, this novel takes the reader on a roller coaster journey, while posing posing questions and raising issues that we are grappling with in 2018 America.
5
I am deeply saddened to learn of Philip Roth's death. He was a stunning writer who had the ability to pierce the heart, make one laugh, move one to tears. The depth of his craftsmanship and imagination were magnificent. I have read all of his works, and they remain indelible; some of his books sustained me during some difficult times. The beauty, humor and profound truth of his sentences, and his observations about the human condition, particularly about the losses one sustains as one ages, are beyond price. He should have won the Nobel Prize, but that is beside the point.
He was a great American artist, and he was also a champion of world literature. A few years ago, upon reading of his decision to retire from writing, I summoned up the courage to write to him and tell him how much his work meant to me. He took the time to write me a gracious, hand-written thank-you note; it is on my desk and I treasure it. Thank you, Mr. Roth, for your genius, and for your humanity.
158
My thanks for this wonderful, understanding comment. You capture the strength of the author -- his capacity to illuminate the human condition.
5
So kind of you; thank you. Hopefully new generations will discover Philip Roth's books and be mesmerized by his wit, tenderness and extraordinary insights into human behavior.
3
Many years later, my favorite "celebrity sighting" in NYC is still the warm summer day that I walked down 57th Street toward Broadway and found myself approaching Philip Roth, who was walking the other way. I almost didn't believe it. Here was the man who had written all those great books I'd read. I'm a practiced New Yorker, I know you're not supposed to bother the celebs, they're just people, etc. But if ever there was a time for an exception, I thought, maybe it was this. Maybe I could shout, "Hey, Mr. Roth! Love your work!" Or maybe I could stop him and try to shake his hand, let him know how much I admired his writing. Then, as we got closer, he looked at me, and there was a recognition in his eyes as if he could tell that I recognized him, and for some reason that was enough to make me think, Nah, don't bother the guy. So we walked on past each other, he to whatever appointment he had, and me to tell my friends that I'd seen the one and only Philip Roth on the street. And I'm still telling people, years later. That's how big of a deal he was to me, and to a lot of us. It's sad to think he doesn't walk these streets anymore.
84
Thanks. That makes my day and I am most jealous of your experience!
9
The same thing happened to me in 1970 in the west 70s when I was in college. I saw him and discreetly walked behind him for a whole block, then peeled off because I was satisfied just to have seen him.
9
I read all the novels of Philip Roth and was fascinated by his humor, the openness an determination of his characters, and Roth’s way to take a close look at human frailness. And then, there was one novel that even changed my life: Operation Shylock. When I read of P.R.s meeting with Aharon Appelfeld at the Beit Ticho in Jerusalem, I set out to look for Appelfeld, found him, and became friend of his until he died in Jan 4th, 2018. Now both are gone, but they will stay alive with their outstanding novels and reflections.
9
An excellent obit, but I'm surprised that it doesn't mention Roth's 1991 memoir of his father's death, Patrimony: A True Story.
The memoir is a tour de force combination of grief, respect, and, yes, outrageous humor such as only Roth could have pulled off.
22
Absolutely! Patrimony is the book I recommend to friends who tell me they've never read Roth and ask where to begin. A completely brilliant book!
6
You are absolutely right. Patrimony: A True Story is a wonderful book.
5
Well, I think this should have mentioned "The Great American Novel." What other Roth book could you read to a 9-year old, and both enjoy it completely? The famous spitball scene ...
2
"The Great American Novels" seemed to be the one novel he wrote to prove that it's entirely possible to write for to the sheer fun of writing for your own entertainment, to let loose your exuberance for wordplay, wild humor and effortless virtuosity. No, not a serious novel. But the Roth novel I've read the most.
2
Roth was a giant of American fiction, seminal reading for everyone. He was a writer of great power, particularly in his probing of the male psyche under the conditions of modern life in the US. With Roth, Salter, and Updike the line of the Great American Novel, that testosterone-fueled myth, is extinguished, sadly. We shall (and have for the last few years) miss him.
I don't agree, however, that this does it for the great line of American fiction. There is a level above these writers, rarified though it is, inhabited by Nabokov, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald (at his best). There is one writer operating at that level now, Cormac MacCarthy. One can hope that the Nobels will take note before it is too late, if that matters.
3
I read "Everyman" in one sitting when it came out in 2006. Not something I ordinarily do. A critic called it perfect, and I must agree. For those who are dismissing him as one of the greats, they are wrong.
7
When Philip Roth said no more writing; my heart sunk. I knew he'd been ill as age got in the way; for goodness sake I'd been reading his writings for many years. Not everything, but enough to learn & connect to Roths observation of complex, strange America. Am America he loved & studied.
I've never read 'Portneys Complaint'. Perhaps its time to read his libidinous interpretation of youth.
What a wonderful, wonderful photograph of the unique Philip Roth with the unique Barack Obama - genuine warmth & sunshine radiates.
4
R.I.P.
2
My dear brother narrated the Times video obituary and conducted the interview. I happened to meet Mr. Roth a few years ago at a real estate closing. A wonderful man who will be deeply missed. Rest in peace.
4
Philip Roth is dead but his writing will live on. This is the legacy of a great artist. He is known through his writing and as he says in the interview, all his gifts are still there for all of us and for future generations to discover. I grew up in Philip Roth's New Jersey and my father went to the high school identified in American Pastoral. By writing so profoundly about a very particular time and a very particular group-- middle class secular Jews
10
How many Americas we have!
I did not find him easy to read; nor of any particular value. But then he did not write about my people or the world in which I have lived. But about his.
5
So if one isn't writing about your people then what they are writing has no value?
10
First Tom Wolfe, and now Philip Roth.
There is a passage in American Pastoral that I read in the late 90's that I never forgot. He wrote about something that has amazed me in my own life. That the closer you get to someone, the more you think you have them figured out, there is some invisible algorithm that dictates the opposite. The more I know someone, even over decades, the more I am amazed how wrong I had them. They are, like me, a constellation of ever shifting traits. This humbles me, and reminds me to be in the moment and not try to figure everything out.
Maybe a decade ago he was asked to read something he had written, and, to my amazement, chose this passage. I was enthralled. Rest in peace Mr. Roth.
"You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.”
176
This has always been my favorite passage by him. I actually photocopied the page of the book so I could always have it to refer to. (It was a library book.) Genius.
5
Thanks for that quote.
4
@Pete
Yes, exactly right.
I'm old now. Each day that passes reconfirms and increasingly reinforces: the more I know, the more I realize that I don't know. ... people, places, things, anything .....
9
Wonderfully written article by Mr. McGrath. Roth is/was a American literary giant by any definition.
The innocent plug at the end for Ms. Halliday's "debut" novel will certainly be helpful to her, but was not neccesary.
5
Yes, that plug for Halliday at the end was cheap and unnecessary
3
I've enjoyed reading you in "la Pleiade" edition of your novels.
Readers will miss you. Rest in peace
4
This is an extraordinarily beautiful appreciation of Roth's effulgent place in literature. The world is darker today.
22
A balsam, these days, to read about someone who actually deserves a measure of respect.
53
"Portnoy's Complaint" is hardly the work of a "giant." "Towering novelist" is a huge overstatement, sorry. Philip Roth was a famous American author -- not on the same level as Saul Bellow or Isaac Bashevis Singer. Roth was influential, representative of a time and a place, but neither timeless nor universal in reach, vision or execution. Nor did he seek to be more than he was able to be. He was what he was, and achieved success within his lifetime. Condolences to all bereaved.
8
Roth was every bit as good as Bellow and Singer and light years better than Malamud.
5
What's in an adjective? How odd to see the word "towering" rejected and "famous" here used to put someone down!
I have read Bellow and Singer with as much pleasure an appreciation as I found in Roth and I have no idea why/how you refuse to allow him comparable stature. The only novel you mention, in order to reject it, is "Portnoy's Complaint." While that book was a succès de scandale (and at the same time innovative and very very funny!), the article makes clear that Roth wrote a great many other major novels after that. I've read about two-thirds of them (the others are on my list), and have no doubt that he was a magnificent stylist who tackled many of the most important themes of our time. What else is a "towering" writer to do? I believe that people will keep reading him long after his lifetime, but only time will tell.
7
Good to know!
Roth fans will be happy to know that the BBC is giving lots of coverage this morning to the loss of Roth - particularly Radio Three (the Third Programme, to traditionalists like me): apposite music (as I write, Copland's 'Quiet City'), many comments from listeners, music associated with Roth and his writing (Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden').
p.
17
One of the greatest authors of our time. His fiction - a mirror of American soul - is in many ways a search into the depth and darkness but his characters not void of elements of comedy. My favourites are American Pastoral and The Human Stain.
8
Roth wrote so well about the neighborhood of my childhood, I could close my eyes and see the streets - I was transported to the Weequahic of my childhood.
Thank you.
8
He did the same for the children of your classmates, too. Roth was just a few years behind my dad at Weequahic and gave me another view of the school and the neighborhood that complemented Dad's (gentile) experiences.
I hope the English teachers at Weequahic introduce their students to Roth and his perspective. While the ethnic makeup of the community has changed, the voice still needs to be heard and embraced.
5
To borrow the words of a far superior writer, this obituary is longer than sorrow! It reminded me of the journalistic acronym "MEGO" = My Eyes Glaze Over -
2
Roth was a genius and deserved every word.
7
Philip Roth wrote the following in 2000, on page 3 of The Human Stain, about the summer of 1998:
“It was the summer in America when the nausea returned, when the joking didn’t stop, when the speculation and the theorizing and the hyperbole didn’t stop, when the moral obligation to explain to one’s children about adult life was abrogated in favor of maintaining in them every illusion about adult life, when the smallness of people was simply crushing, when some kind of demon had been unleashed in the nation and, on both sides, people wondered, “Why are we so crazy?,”when men and women alike, upon awakening in the morning, discovered that during the night, in a state of sleep that transported them beyond envy or loathing, they had dreamed of the brazenness of Bill Clinton. I myself dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadaistically like a Christo wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing the legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE. It was the summer when — for the billionth time— the jumble, the mayhem, the mess proved itself more subtle than this one’s ideology and that one’s morality. It was the summer when a president’s penis was on everyone’s mind, and life, in all its shameless impurity, once again confounded America.”
This passage always stuck in my head, and just yesterday I was wondering what he might have written had the setting been the summer of 2018 instead.
38
"Mr. Roth was the last of the great white males." Really? Your editor has failed stupendously in leaving this horrible, racist line in the review of a great writer.
26
I completely agree. The line rubbed me very wrong but I am glad I kept reading an otherwise very good article.
4
I agree. I am not even sure what it means in this context.
5
Racist? Because the author points out his exact standing within the cannon? And since when did calling out whiteness become racist?
5
He deserved the Nobel Prize, but the Nobel committee didn't deserve him.
38
I am convinced that middle age ends when every great New Literary Giant of your pubescent period passes.
I hope we’re wrong thinking nothing survives death, beyond the writer’s work between boards.
Mr. Roth, if we’re wrong, thank you.
4
Claire Bloom’s memoir of their unsatisfying marriage, noted here, comes with a cryptic footnote attachment to Carmen Callil, who, in 2011, quit the Man Booker International judging panel after finding Roth – that year’s winner – a '"narrow" writer. While some of Callil’s critics floated not-so-veiled accusations of anti-Semitism and radical feminism to explain her actions, others got to the vengeful heart of the matter, pointing out that Callil had founded Virago Press, publisher of Bloom's memoir! The concerted attack failed in its goal to reduce Roth to one of Claire Bloom’s heirlooms.
13
A brilliant, fearless, uncompromising writer. I cut my literary teeth on Philip Roth when I was a budding English major in college. I can still remember the shock--and awe--of reading "Goodbye, Columbus," and seeing reflected in the social satire of the shallow Patinkin family and the poor, besotted Neil Klugman the life of a poor Jewish girl (did I see myself as a klutzy, bookish Neil?) and her wealthy Long Island friends. And the short story "Defender of the Faith" fully ripped the wool from my eyes and has haunted me ever since. Although Roth wrote successfully in many genres and styles, reinventing himself but never far from his neuroses and lifelong preoccupations, never again did I feel that fresh sense of shock and awe that permeated my whole being at reading the dinner table scene in "Goodbye, Columbus." Could a fellow Jew so skewer and satirize his own with such calm precision? Again, brilliant.
17
Roth was and continues to be an inspiration to me. Go after what you want, without apologies. Life is hard enough without questioning one's own motives.
Modesty is overrated.
5
Philip Roth - simply the best.
11
I whole heartedly agree
2
what a great writer, goodbye Mr. Roth. i have trouble connecting with fiction and Portnoy's Complaint, which i read in my early 30s, was the first time i connected with a fictional character and felt like parts of my own personality were being described. it was also hysterical, i found myself laughing out loud on the subway while reading it. i recently finished American Pastoral and was floored by how powerful and sad it was. Roth just found a way to really touch his readers, his output is a gift to the world. definitely my favorite writer, glad he lived such a long and productive life.
12
There are only two writers whose books I've bought in hardback and reread regularly, both for enjoyment and education: Philip Roth, and Marilynn Robinson. Small tight books that reveal life and soothe and explain. The only way I could thank these writers is to buy the books, hence their presence on my bookshelves. Of all his books, American Pastoral took my breath away.
4
Cocteau said that a poet is a writer who doesn't write. Roth was the definition of what it is to write as a writer. Ironic that I waited nearly 50 years to read any of his works - absorbing the three or four hundred years of literature accrued before his oeuvre. And thus I'm in the midst of a tremendous feast I scarcely anticipated.
6
RIP, master.
Today - together with many fellow readers the world over - I am mourning my favorite author, and raising a toast to a life well lived, and to the continuing significance of his work.
For what it's worth, these are my personal top 5 Roth books (in no particular order):
Patrimony
The Counterlife
Sabbath's Theater
Goodbye, Columbus
Everyman
8
Roth was also extremely charming and witty in his on camera interviews. I remember David Remnick interviewed him a number of years back and asked him about the significant controversy surrounding the publication of Portnoy's Complaint
Roth said a few weeks after the book came out he walking through Central Park and some guy recognized him and shouted "Leave it alone Portnoy!"
Every time I'm in New York I think about that and laugh
22
A great novelist. I read all his books and was usually dazzled. I sort of met him once when I asked him to autograph one of his books after one of his swankier events. I'd waited for hours while he'd hung around drinking with 'notables.' He rudely blew me off. Given Roth's often cynical, nasty, sarcastic oeuvre, it seemed in character. For anyone who wants to dive in and doesn't know anything about his work, I recommend "Portnoy's Complaint," an easy and very funny read, revolutionary back in 1969, and "American Pastoral," his brutal novel about the hippie period when many people no longer recognized their children. It's as great as any American novel of the 20th Century. Roth reportedly used to wait in his editor's office every year on the day the Nobel Prize was announced, hoping in vain the phone call would come anointing him. Roth was bet as the likely winner of the Nobel in 2016, when the prize shockingly went to the great exemplar of the 1960s, Bob Dylan. In the big scheme of things, Dylan changed our culture far more than Philip Roth ever did. No word on whether Roth understood that was so.
9
His writing was honest, funny, and courageous. Until a few hours ago, he was our greatest living novelist.
11
The first novel by Philip Roth I read was The Counterlife nearly twenty years ago. Since then I have been an ardent fan. He taught me to take life both lightly and seriously, to see how deeply and beautifully flawed we all essentially are and smile about it, celebrate it, lament it and fight it at once. There are no perfect humans, in one way or another perfection is doomed, be it physical as in the portrayal of Bucky Cantor in Nemesis, moral as in Coleman Silk's case in The Human Stein or both as in Swede Levov's daughter in American Pastoral. Roth was the mentor of the human psyche. I will keep coming to his letters for instruction and guidance, to stay afloat in these unstable waters of life.
56
I read “Portnoy’s Complaint” in a sun-lit lounge section on the first floor of Sinclair Library at the University of Hawaii. Never a slave to class schedules, I read it in a sitting. The latest book I ordered from Barnes & Noble is “The Human Stain.” It arrived last week. In between was life, punctuated by Roth, as youth now naps in the afternoon, and the book falls open on my chest until I find my place again.
12
Call me contrarian, but this voracious reader never found any appeal in the parochial deliniations of Bellows, Updike, and Roth. Nothing to compare to the diversification and scimitar-sharp language that Norman Mailer wielded with the precision of a surgeon and the bravado of a toreador, that in certain works would cause my fingers to shake turning the pages.
4
Philip Roth: Bravo.
21
Thank you, Philip Roth, the hours spent reading your work were hours I felt more alive, electric, savoring the depth and complexity of our inner worlds.
33
Bless you.
1
The Plot Against America is ours now to carry. But no one was as prescient as you in the telling. Like Gertrude Stein I too believe that 'when a Jew dies he's dead.' I can not wish nor pray for what is there with you in death. But as with every death in the past year that has stunned or shattered, I can find a certain peace in knowing that you too will never suffer another word from, another word about Donald Trump. That matters to me. Because your life in words was LIFE. Your works, from the fevered passion of a Lucy Nelson to the final shattered shell of The Swede in American Pastoral, was life shown -- life offered to us -- LIFE. And the gorgeousness of those words, the growth of your work, all carrying the overt or subliminal song of the young man's optimism (which never left you). It was our privy look into America, your America, an understood America. I wish you might have lived long enough to see HIM ruined, brought to his knees, into whatever bunker he will crawl as it all caves in on him. My words are so small, but I could not have made it through this long night without saying what I could. I am so terribly sad.
113
Every year for the last 15 years or so I waited for the Nobel Committee to finally award their prize to Mr. Roth.
28
He didn't care.
4
Even in a comprehensive, thoughtful obituary, Roth's sweetest, most thankful book is omitted. That book is Patrimony. It displays Roth's protean nature as acutely and poignantly as any of his other works. I will read it again this summer and think of my own father.
27
Warren, you're right. A beautiful, moving book about his father.
7
I'm sad to see the passing of Philip Roth in tonight's news. What a fantastic, free, and funny writer, one of American literature's giants, and deservedly so. He dedicated his life to writing novels that showed us who we are. I will be revisiting his books on my shelf tonight and wish him godspeed. For many reasons, there won't be another like him.
63
American Pastoral is the best novel I’ve read about the soul of this country. A giant, he was, and blessed we were to have him.
24
Mr Roth may have died. He like all of us was mortal. His incredible body of work by contrast is immortal. His lifetime of insightful and entertaining novels will be enjoyed forever.Rest in peace Mr. Roth.
15
This is sad news, but what a life to celebrate. I didn't see "Patrimony" mentioned directly. It can be read with "The Facts" for an interesting biography, although I believe Nathan Zuckerman appears at the end of "The Facts" to challenge The Facts. "Towering Novelist"; so they say, but I just loved the laughs.
6
Philip Roth's streak of later-life successes, starting with OPERATION SHYLOCK and running through EXIT GHOST, is a second act--and maybe a third or fourth--in arts and letters that will stand long as an example to keep observing, thinking, feeling, and creating as long as you can. It took me a long time to appreciate that he wrote from every part of himself--not just the eyes, the mind, the heart, or the hormones--and wasn't afraid to get it wrong, as he wrote in his towering achievement, AMERICAN PASTORAL: “That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that–well, lucky you.”
17
I thought "This one hurts" when Tom Wolfe died a mere week ago. Turned out I didn't know what hurting was. It's devastating to see the towering figures of American literature - and my youth - pass away, one by one. I convinced myself not long ago that Roth was too tough, too cynical, and too cantankerous to die. Of course, I once thought the same thing about Lou Reed. Silly me.
Thank you, Philip, for the jokes and the horror. Thank you for the unrestrained ambition. Thank you for the warning of "The Plot Against America", which we promise we'll do better to heed once we get out of this current mess. And.... oh, yes! Thank you for the cow's liver.
33
Very sad to hear this. Roth was absolutely formidable. He explored - and exposed - the soul of America (including Jewish America) like no other twentieth century novelist. His prose displayed an intimate familiarity with the DNA of our country that comes only to one who has scraped its insides. If Roth did not deserve the Nobel Prize, almost no other American writer does.
80
He displayed nothing for the female gender.
6
I hope you won't mind if I tinker a bit with your last sentence...
"If Roth did not deserve the NP, NO other writer does."
4
Joymars,
Roth wrote from his perspective, just as Margaret Atwood writes from a female perspective. If you haven't read her I highly recommend you do. My favorites 'Cat's Eye' and 'Alias Grace'. The 'Handmaid's Tale' is perhaps her most recognizable. Also give Roth a try it will give you some insight into the male perspective.
4
The struggle with writing is indeed done.
RIP
10
AJ's Complaint:
"the last of the great white males?"
In Mr. Roth's amazing career and accomplishments, lumping him with the equally amazing Bellow and Updike seems right. But "the last of the great white males?"
That characterization says more about the article's author and the literary universe (as defined by white, often males) than about literature.
Without getting into the untold numbers of magnificently talented writers of color who never had a chance to get published while Roth was off winning awards, can we please stop extolling the domination of white males who "won" in an environment where the mass of humanity was treated as existing only to exalt their appetites and demands?
15
The writer - his voice - silence.
Philip Roth will always be in Hyde Park, Chicago.
“...a penny for the old guy...”
3
The year they skip a Nobel for Literature should be the year memorialized as the Nobel to Phillip Roth's Imposter. He would appreciate that.
9
Mr. Roth was not my contemporary but his writing gave an accurate account of the Newark my mother experienced especially American Pastoral, Nemesis and Patrimony. I feel unexpectedly sad hearing of his death.
15
Roth wrote some of the best novels I ever read. His death saddens me deeply. He was a genius in my opinion.
15
No. I refuse to believe it. He is so alive to me still. If my own father dies, I will believe it. We can believe it of our fathers. But our writers, no
51
It is a sad day for American literature. Roth's writing was luminous, and reading his work was a joy. That he could write so many great works is a marvel. Some years ago when the Times polled writers about the best fiction of the last twenty-five years of the twentieth century there were seven or so of his novels included on the list, telling and remarkable testimony to his talent by fellow writers.
100
I've read and reread some of Roth's books until they've fallen apart, my favourites being The Counterlife and My Life as a Man. So I speak as a fan when I say that I always found the idea that he deserved a Nobel Prize - more than writers from other countries who were less known to the American public - preposterous.
As for the rest, only time will tell.
6
Despite growing up in Brooklyn, I first discovered Philip Roth at the St. Kilda Public Library in Melbourne, Australia. I spent the whole Sabbath with Portnoy's Complaint. I fell under Roth's spell. In quick succession I devoured, The Counterlife, Operation Shylock, and Sabbath Theater. But most of all I enjoyed his wonderful non-fiction Patrimony.
Shalom!
Yossi Newfield
21
I traced passages of my own life by Roth's, from the army to Israel to the Swedish girlfriend, when it really mattered, to the perils of academia and the long regrets of aging. It's a literary disgrace that he never won a Nobel, but oh, what a life.
20
"It's a literary disgrace that he never won a Nobel,"
One could lament the same about one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, James Joyce. The Nobel Prize for Literature is hardly the be-all or end-all arbiter of true literary greatness. The award has been conferred upon far too many mediocre writers while ignoring the talent and genius of a great many exceptional writers. Oh, well, life is not fair.....
(And, by the way, having read the works of of both Philip Roth and James Joyce, I can clearly state that "Roth, though a fine writer, was no Joyce.")
6
Heartbroken, but relieved I have a pseudonym.
It's not that my profound admiration of his work has been a secret among my friends.
But what I have never been able to say out loud -- and what has kept Roth my companion for years -- is just how much those neurotic, lustful, flailing, insecure men gave my lust, neuroses and insecurity an eerily accurate voice.
That his voice that often brought me to anger and shame is the highest compliment I can pay.
52
Oh dear! Up there with Mahfouz for me...
5
Stone cold genius
12
I highly recommend Roth Unbound: A Writer and his Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont.
It’s a highly personal series of interviews with Mr. Roth, who discusses his life and his work candidly and in great detail.
16
Wow Philip Roth has passed away. I remember when I first read Indignation and American Pastoral in late high-school. Those novels shook me and broke my innocence far beyond what I had expected going into them. Roth will be memoralized as one of the great American authors who wrote about American ideal and life and culture in a way that few authors could hope to match.
70
What a legacy.
His reflections, characters,
truths will always resonate.
Let us also remember
what he did to advance
our knowledge of Central
European writers. Philip Roth
will live on in his brilliant
literature.
10
Back in the 70's, I named my first sailboat "Portnoy's Complaint." She could be so frustrating on those calm, windless summer days.
11
I honestly believed he would never die. So it comes as a shock. For me, he was the ultimate American Jewish male, both tender and difficult, drawn to women yet irritatingly obtuse about them, a difficult yet disarming man, and an endlessly enjoyable read. The announcement of a new book brought joy. I would sink into it, turning pages compulsively, re-reading and giggling over certain passages. Sometimes I wanted to throw the book across the room, like a bittersweet chocolate bar that, once you feel its burn on the back of your tongue, you have to nibble to the end. I loved them all, but of course so many of us Jewish writers were shaped, in part, by perhaps the funniest American novel of all time,"Portnoy's Complaint." However, my special thrill was "The Ghost Writer," an homage to a woman that almost appeased me, and sealed me as a devoted fan. I ate it up several times, and it was always delicious. RIP, Philip. I miss you already.
153
Thank you, Marti Klever, for this beautiful tribute.
16
The Ghost Writer is one of my favorites as well. Probably the second Roth work I ever read, after Portnoy in college.
It is also the story I would tell new Roth readers to start with.
5
RIP Phillip. But as for the obit, I can't help thinking of "The Great American Novel", Mr. Roth's crazy punning take down—in the form of a baseball book— of the most important writer idea to which Mr. McGrath seems devoted. John Updike may be an important—white male—writer but he won't last. Some of Bellow, some of Mailer, Salinger, Henry Miller and some of Phillp Roth's stuff will last, mainly because Phillip was so funny that even his failures, like ten particular pages of Operation Shylock, had me holding my stomach with laughter—in public.
Phillip Roth will be missed but he will not be forgotten.
11
Updike won't last?
I wish,with respect,
you would explain
your literary logic
in saying that.
the"Rabbit "novels
are among the most
important American
achievements of the twentieth
century and will most
certainly last,along with
the works of Roth.
9
A proud son of Newark and prolific giant of American letters passes into literary history. We shall not see his like again. RIP, Sir...
9
This year the Nobel committee squandered its last chance to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature.
239
They squandered it last year, too,
Roth > Dylan
4
Too late to have mattered to him. He should have gotten it decades ago (to the extent these prizes make sense at all) rather than one of the many laureates who've turned out not to matter to more than a few hundred people, prize or no prize.
1
"Elms grow on Elm St." Portnoy discovers when he goes to visit a gentile girlfriend.
I'm not as neurotic as Portnoy but those words were Roth's gift to me. They are my mantra when I become trapped by anxiety.
11
American Pastoral was the first of Roth's books I read. Perhaps the first great novel I read. I recall rereading passages within it and wondering how it was possible to construct such intensity. It opened my eyes to what is possible in writing.
46
Thank you, Professor of Desire, for all your important life lessons. I'm truly grateful for them. I grew up in your roots and soil and lived my life where I was born in the places you traveled and the journey you took me on. In South Orange and Short Hills, you made my home town come more alive for me by your writing. I laughed with you and cried and understood your lessons. One of them was this:
"If it weren't for sentiment, Zuckerman, one person would not pass another person a glass of water"
I know how terribly angry and distressed you were about our president, like many of us are daily and how soul crushing it is! Now you are in peace and I am mourning the loss (while saying Kaddish for you).
I honored your life by reading everything you wrote and I am so much richer for having done so. A rich Jewess!
I feel such sorrow right now that its like a true member of my family is gone. Perhaps, more so, since you gave and gave and these treasures of yours will live on in my soul. I bow in respect and love, Philip Roth.
46
I knew this day was near. Nevertheless, it is still a shock, a mournful shock. If ever there was an artist of the novel, it was Philip Roth.
67
I am curious about the author's reference to the "last of the great white males." While it is certainly true that white male authors have been overrepresented, overread, and overrecognized as compared with women authors and authors of color (a deplorable trend that is thankfully beginning to change), I am somewhat confused by the reference to this phenomenon within this piece. I frankly fail to see its relevance in an obituary, which is supposed to be a celebration of the life and accomplishments of the deceased, rather than an implication that he would have been unable to succeed in a society in which he were not given an unfair advantage.
I also find fault with the selection of Bellow and Updike as the only white, male, American authors able to contend with Roth (what of Pynchon, DeLillo, McCarthy, Vonnegut?), but this complaint is secondary and should not even have had the opportunity to be made in the first place.
42
The short answer is that the three authors in the 50/60s mentioned in the article were "mainstream" in a manner that Vonnegut and others you mention were not in that same time period.
6
American Pastoral is, in my opinion, the elusive Great American Novel.
I feel sorry for anyone growing up in the 20th century who did not make the effort to read novels. Donald Trump, I’m talking to you. You are the embodiment of the wretch we were warned we would become if we watched too much television.
I can’t speak to Mr. Roth’s personal life, but his literary legacy is not only prodigious but profound and beautiful. Sincere condolences, with highest regard and appreciation.
261
Absolutely agree. But while tv may have maimed novel-reading it's the internet that has delivered the final deathly blow. Years ago I began reading American Pastoral on a five-hour train ride to Boston, got bored, and wanted to abandon it after 100 pages. However, in the pre-internet age with nothing else to do I was obliged to try again. It turned out to be the most engaging book I've ever read. His legacy will never die, even if fewer e-anesthetized people will find the time and patience to read him.
22
I had exactly that experience-- albeit while listening to it as an audiobook. After about 1/3 of it, I didn't want to go on, abandoned it for a month and returned because it was what I had to hand. And then, I wasn't so much hooked as committed, feeling that I had to hear the anguished narrator out, and witness that tortured historical moment with him. A truly brilliant piece of writing.
2
Many critics say the reason Roth never won the Nobel Prize is because he apparently tried to lobby for it. And no doubt his often outre and misogynistic characters didn't help his cause either, particularly in recent years.
Somewhat ironically, the Nobel Committee decided not to award a prize for literature this year due to a sexual harassment scandal of its own. I had joked to my wife that this is probably the year Roth would have won it because he had been put off long enough.
I think instead it would be appropriate to say the Nobel Committee is honoring Roth with a year of silence. He was such a literary giant that he truly commands quiet introspection for that length of time.
57
To think Roth didn’t live long enough to win the Nobel Prize for literature is sad. Also sad is the fact that the Nobel literature committee has imploded. Sad but not surprising. In some ways the literature award has been trivialized for quite some time. So has literature and the humanities in general. This is also sad but not surprising.
Goodbye Mr. Roth.
15
He was our greatest living author. RIP.
15
Was he though?
Harlan Ellison still lives (but does not seem capable of work any longer)
As he was a”genera writer”, pidgin-holed as “a Science Fiction writer”, many of you will have never heard of him.
He was also at his best with short story work, which somehow gets neither the respect of poetry or novel.
But please get a copy of his last great work, The Deathbird ( not the 1970s Deathbird Stories) and one of the best-of collections-
Yes, it is comparing apples and oranges, Dylan and Roth - all three GREATS.
But do not ignore a man because his work is cubbyholed by publishers.
How fitting that Philip Roth should die the year they decide to not award the Nobel prize in literature. His talent and his body of work transcended awards.
29
I hope the Nobel Prize committee is sad -- because they really blew it here. Roth deserved the Prize, far more than Elfriede Jelinek, just to pick on one of their recent choices.
6
"And more than just about any other writer of his time he was tireless in his exploration of male sexuality. " I am guessing this explains my yawn at his writing,
15
Yeah, I'm not sure that explains it.
12
Why be so dismissive? I like reading about how other people think and feel, especially if they're very different from me. It can be eye-opening.
12
The end of Everyman:
“Nothing could extinguish the vitality of that boy whose slender little torpedo of an unscathed body once rode the big Atlantic waves from a hundred yards out in the wild ocean all the way in to shore. Oh, the abandon of it, and the smell of the salt water and the scorching sun! Daylight, he thought, penetrating everywhere, day after summer day of that daylight blazing off a living sea, an optical treasure so vast and valuable that he could have been peering through the jeweler's loupe engraved with his father's initials at the perfect, priceless planet itself — at his home, the billion-, the trillion-, the quadrillion-carat planet Earth! He went under feeling far from felled, anything but doomed, eager yet again to be fulfilled, but nonetheless, he never woke up. Cardiac arrest. He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing it. Just as he'd feared from the start.”
187
That sort of writing that is very archaic, but it is what Americans of a certain generation love, striving for the huge nothingness, an air balloon of vapidity.
5
I see what you mean! Thanks for the model of good writing you offer.
Kind of reminds me of the closing narration in American Beauty, Lester says something like, "gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."
5
RIP, Mr. Roth. I so love your work.
9
Not too terribly long ago, Roth wrote, "Old age is not a battle; it's a massacre." Brilliantly succinct, Phillip Roth continued his brutally honest assessment of the world and our maneuvering through it. Thanks, Mr. Roth, for sharing your sarcastic wit with all the rest of us. You will be much missed.
32
As a woman, I felt guilty about thinking too highly of him. That I saw too much of myself in poor Drenka was a character flaw - no, wait, it was just me, and it was just his gift for catching that morbid wanton wanting in the human condition.
I'm glad he lived, glad he caught us, glad he captured himself.
173
Guilty? Me, too. Only it was a bit more personal, and I suppose embarrassment would be a better description. I worked Saturdays at a nature center in Connecticut with an extensive library and a gift shop. I read Philip Roth, but had no idea what he looked like until he took out books, which required a picture I.D. Oops. He returned many times and always paid for purchases at the shop with a check. I never asked for I.D. after that, but was still required to ask for his phone number by the manager. I always apologized for doing so during his subsequent visits. Sadly, I don’t think she knew or cared who Philip Roth was.
3
No one who knew him thought he was an easy man. But he understood all lives.
35
I enjoyed The Counterlife, American Pastoral, and Sabbath's Theater. Roth was often controversial, but he was a massive literary talent.
14
Pornoy's Complaint is one of the best and funniest books I ever read.
A giant has fallen; fare well, giant.
35
Sad. Ironically, I was almost fired for teaching "The Human Stain" (about a professor who is mistakenly accused of racism) to first-year students at Baruch College. One of my students didn't understand why the black Coleman Silk was passing for white, and when I tried to explain prejudice in the 50s, adding a few examples, she thought I was endorsing racism, complained to the powers-that-be, and I was subjected to a full investigation. Again and again, Roth got it right.
332
When you are teaching a book like that, it is prudent to let the students do most of the talking.
14
Then how would that be teaching, K Henderson?
2
As a graduate of a another CUNY college ( York 74') , a die heart liberal and a believer in a humanities education - I am truly disheartened to read your comment.
Students like that and those 'powers that be' that support that type of thinking give fuel to the right and the conservatives who claim the schools are filled with 'snowflakes' and illiberal's. So sad
Good for you for reaching into the corners of these closed minds -
Roth and YOU got it right!
27
Writing like this is vintage New York Times. Superb and timely.
126
Philip Roth was incredible, this is sad news. I will continue in my journey through his writing. I would like to point out that I cannot get past the first paragraphs in this obituary. What an accomplished writer and the first thing done is to make him sound sexually perverse, the second is to editorialize in a way that can easily be interpreted as dismissive, that he was a great white male writer. As a Jewish-American writer in the 20th century perhaps he should first be given credit for being so influential despite being a minority.
55
He wasn't a minority though. He was a white man in America. Fellow writer Ishmael Reed pointed out that he was a "petty bigot" to boot.
2
That is incorrect. Jewish people are minorities in America and in the world - one of the smallest populations, in fact. The differences as well as persecution were lived, and even more so in the middle part of the last century when Roth did much of his writing. Not sure why you wouldn't respect that fact?
2
I had hoped he would live, write and do interviews for many more years. There is no writer like him. One of the most moving scenes in any novel I’ve read: in American Pastoral, the Swede finally meets his runaway daughter, Merry, under the highway in Newark.
73
An example of Roth not pulling his punches.
"Playful seriousness, serious playfulness"
4
Philip had a description of his approach to writing and life that was far better than any critic could have ever written:
"The sinner/showman, seeking absolution/applause."
Thank you for the passion, humor, anger, love, disgust and brilliance of yourmany books, Mr. Roth. They have served as a touchstone for me since my adolescence, and I will return to them for the rest of my life as I do the few things that always bring me joy and reassurance that we are put here for a reason - whether it's to pleasure ourselves with a piece of liver or grapple with the many forces of evil.
29
Oh my...One of America’s Greats...A Roth novel is a blast...RIP
9
It is a crime that he did not receive the Nobel prize.
153
The Nobel is very overrated in literature.
8
Yes. Thank you for this. I hope we don't have to say that about Joyce Carol Oates.
10
No it's not. Anglophones keep forgetting that there's a whole other world of literature out there, and some of the writers are at least as interesting as Roth. Just because someone speaks to our circumstances doesn't mean he's more deserving than others.
18