“I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, “Is he as crazy as I am?” I don’t need that question answered.” ― Philip Roth
Hello and Happy Thursday!
The other day I looked through all my posts I have written in just one year to see what else might be interesting to add. I have to say it is a lot for one year and I am proud of myself to be this committed. Even more surprised I was that I have not written anything about my favorite author Philip Roth. He wrote 31 books so far and I read all of them. Seriously, I am that crazy about this author. Some I like more and some less but I remember the time when his latest book [Nemesis] came out and I stood in front of the bookstore at 8am to purchase a copy. If you have never read anything by Roth I would recommend to start with The Dying Animal. This book is simply amazing and perfection from the first sentence to the last.
“No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex. With these words our most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book. The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college–as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete’s critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated.
The agency of Kepesh’s undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous and humblingly beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged–helplessly, bitterly, furiously–into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. The Dying Animal is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.”
This book has been made into a movie. Check out the trailer for Elegy here. I just love this friction, every time I read Roth. Here are some things I like you to know about this great author:
Philip Milton Roth (born 1933-in Newark New Jersey) is an American novelist and short-story writer. He is considered one of the leading authors of the 20th century. He writes provocatively about American as well as Jewish identity. Roth is also well known to focus on familial love, mortality and sexuality in his novels. He wrote his best-seller Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969 and has earned many major awards for all his other novels throughout the years. Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral and National Book Awards for Sabbath’s Theater are just some I would like to mention. Philip Roth is a controversial writer and got many Jewish readers upset when the story Defender of the Faith was published in 1975.
“I was suddenly being assailed as an anti-Semite, this thing that I had detested all my life, and a self-hating Jew,” Roth later explained to The New York Times.
Roth recently announced that he retired from writing but I believe this is difficult for him. He almost wrote a novel every year. And I don’t want him to retire – matter of fact. He is known as being a bit of recluse while living at his Connecticut home [Warren – and yes, stalker-me has been there to see if he is at the local coffee shop!] home.
Roth has been married twice. He married Margaret Martison in 1959. They separated but were not divorced when she had a car accident and died in 1968. He married Claire Bloom later on but they separated in 1993 and divorced two years later. Actually, Claire Bloom wrote the memoir Leaving a Doll’s House and of course I read it. It is awesome to see the other side of the coin sometimes. I read Roth’s autobiography The Facts when he spoke about her a bit but more in I Married to A Communist. It always takes two to tango, right!?
One of my favorite documentary is Philip Roth’s Unleashed BBC. It makes me feel good to just listen to him talking. Enjoy if you would like.
Have you read anything by Philip Roth? Do you like his writing? I would love to hear from you.
