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This new biography of the controversial, influential, and prize-winning American novelist Philip Roth, a writer with an international reputation for inventive, original novels from
Portnoy's Complaint to American Pastoral and
The Plot Against America, is based on new access to archival documents and new interviews with Roth's friends and associates.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1. Newark, Newark
- 2. Declaration of Independence
- 3. An Education in Intensity
- 4. "Walked out on the Platinum!" or New York, New York
- 5. Death and Freedom
- 6 Portnoy: Let it Rip!
- 7. Jewish Wheaties
- 8. Traveling with Kafka
- 9. Supercarnal Productions
- 10. Zuckerman Live!
- 11. Psychoanalysis and Laxatives, or Democracy in America
- 12. Quintet or The Jersey Style
- 13. Coda: "It's a miserable life"
- Index
About the author
Ira Nadel is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and is the author of biographies of Leonard Cohen, Tom Stoppard, David Mamet and Leon Uris. He has also published Biography: Fiction Fact & Form, Joyce and the Jews and Modernism's Second Act, in addition to a Critical Companion to Philip Roth.
Summary
This new biography of the controversial, influential, and prize-winning American novelist Philip Roth, a writer with an international reputation for inventive, original novels from Portnoy's Complaint to American Pastoral and The Plot Against America, is based on new access to archival documents and new interviews with Roth's friends and associates.
Additional text
Philip Roth: A Counterlife engages and illuminates the scenes of discontent, betrayal, illness, and rage in Roth's own life that allow for new understandings of his work and relationships. Drawing on such primary source material as interviews, personal correspondence, and site visits, Nadel's biography penetrates the carefully composed narrative Roth presented publicly in order to present a "counter" Philip Roth, one who is at once more sympathetic to his readers than critics realize and more dynamic than even his self-creation allows. Nadel seamlessly weaves his interpretations of Roth's most provocative texts into the story of Roth's own life: a life shadowed by pain, illness, and personal injustices, but also illuminated by the joys of writing, ideas, and friendships that will persist long after his death.
