A young Philip Roth in 1968 about to set everyone alight with Portnoy's Complaint.
“I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.” (Deception)
My 1st Edition Philip Roth collection.
Philip Roth has not won the Nobel Prize. But it seems like he’s won everything else. And if the Nobel Committee were to realize that there are countries outside of Europe (hell, outside of Sweden – nine Swedes have now won the Nobel Prize in Literature – I know it’s your country, but that’s ridiculous), they would look at Roth again. He has written award winning books, award winning short stories, he has written on the art of writing and on his contemporaries. He has helped to build the knowledge of European Literature in the United States, being the editor of Writers from the Other Europe Series from Penguin that brought, among others, Milan Kundera to the forefront in the States. With John Updike and Saul Bellow now gone, he is the last of that breed, those writers who were obsessed with sex, obsessed with life, who gave us great novels that were cultural as well as literary milestones.
He is one of my favorites. You might not want to shake his hand, or even know him. But you should definitely read him.
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