View source for Philip Roth

{{Short description|American novelist (1933–2018)}}
{{similar names|Phillip Roth (disambiguation){{!}}Phillip Roth}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2022}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]]  -->
| image            = Philip Roth, Author 2020732799 3x4.jpg
| caption          = Roth {{circa}} 1980s
| birth_name       = Philip Milton Roth
| birth_date       = {{Birth date|1933|3|19|mf=y}}
| birth_place      = [[Newark, New Jersey]], U.S.
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|2018|5|22|1933|3|19|mf=y}}
| death_place      = [[New York City]], U.S.
| resting_place    = [[Bard College]] Cemetery
| education        = {{ubl|[[Bucknell University]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])|[[University of Chicago]] ([[Master of Arts|MA]])}}
| occupation       = Novelist
| genre            = [[Literary fiction]]
| period           = 1959–2010
| spouses          = {{ubl|{{marriage|Margaret Martinson Williams|1959|1963|end=divorced}}|{{marriage|[[Claire Bloom]]|1990|1995|end=divorced}}}}
}}
'''Philip Milton Roth''' ({{IPAc-en|r|ɒ|θ}};<ref>{{Cite Collins Dictionary|Roth}}</ref> March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018)<ref>{{Cite news|last=McGrath|first=Charles|date=May 23, 2018|title=Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html|access-date=March 22, 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of [[Newark, New Jersey]]—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of [[American Jews|Jewish and American identity]].<ref>U.S. Department of State, U.S. Life, [http://infousa.state.gov/life/artsent/oal/lit8.html "American Prose, 1945–1990: Realism and Experimentation"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110304074205/http://infousa.state.gov/life/artsent/oal/lit8.html |date=March 4, 2011 }}</ref> He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection ''[[Goodbye, Columbus]]'', which won the U.S. [[National Book Award for Fiction]].<ref name="nba1960" /><ref name="Brauner">Brauner (2005), pp. 43–47</ref> Ten years later, he published the bestseller ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]''. [[Nathan Zuckerman]], Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history ''[[The Plot Against America]]''.

Roth was one of the most honored American writers of his generation.<ref>{{Cite news|date=May 23, 2018|title=Philip Roth obituary|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/23/philip-roth-obituary|access-date=March 22, 2021|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> He received the [[National Book Critics Circle]] award for ''[[The Counterlife]],'' the [[PEN/Faulkner Award]] for ''[[Operation Shylock]]'', ''[[The Human Stain]],'' and ''[[Everyman (novel)|Everyman]]'', a second National Book Award for ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'', and the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction|Pulitzer Prize]] for ''[[American Pastoral]]''. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural [[Franz Kafka Prize]] in [[Prague]]. In 2005, the [[Library of America]] began publishing his complete works, making him the second author so anthologized while still living, after [[Eudora Welty]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Philip Roth |url=https://www.loa.org/writers/260-philip-roth |access-date=2023-04-22 |website=Library of America}}</ref> [[Harold Bloom]] named him one of the four greatest American novelists of his day, along with [[Cormac McCarthy]], [[Thomas Pynchon]], and [[Don DeLillo]]. [[James Wood (critic)|James Wood]] wrote: "More than any other post-war American writer, Roth wrote the self—the self was examined, cajoled, lampooned, fictionalized, ghosted, exalted, disgraced but above all constituted by and in writing. Maybe you have to go back to the very different [[Henry James]] to find an American novelist so purely a bundle of words, so restlessly and absolutely committed to the investigation and construction of life through language... He would not cease from exploration; he could not cease, and the varieties of fiction existed for him to explore the varieties of experience".<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Wood |first=James |date=May 23, 2018 |title=The Unceasing Necessity of Philip Roth |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unceasing-necessity-of-philip-roth}}</ref>

==Early life and academic pursuits==
Philip Roth was born in [[Newark, New Jersey]], on March 19, 1933,<ref name="writers">{{cite book|title=Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of American writers|year=2001|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780877790228/page/350 350]|isbn=978-0-87779-022-8|title-link=American literature|publisher=Merriam-Webster }}</ref> and grew up at 81 Summit Avenue in the [[Weequahic, Newark|Weequahic]] neighborhood.<ref name="writers"/> He was the second child of Bess (née Finkel) and Herman Roth, an insurance broker.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eTslryuJyrwC&q=Herman%20Bess%20(Finkel)%20Roth&pg=PA23|title=Up Society's Ass, Copper: Rereading Philip Roth|first=Mark|last=Shechner|year=2003|publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0299193546}}</ref> Roth's family was [[Jews|Jewish]], and his parents were second-generation Americans. His paternal grandparents came from Kozlov near [[Lviv]] (then Lemberg) in [[Galicia (Eastern Europe)|Austrian Galicia]], and his mother's ancestors were from the region of [[Kyiv]] in Ukraine. He graduated from Newark's [[Weequahic High School]] in or around 1950.<ref>Lubasch, Arnold H. [https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/20/reviews/roth-highschool.html "Philip Roth Shakes Weequahic High"], ''[[The New York Times]],'' February 28, 1969. Accessed September 8, 2007</ref>

In 1969, Arnold H. Lubasch wrote in ''[[The New York Times]]'' that the school "has provided the focus for the fiction of Philip Roth, the novelist who evokes his era at Weequahic High School in the highly acclaimed ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]''. Besides identifying Weequahic High School by name, the novel specifies such sites as the Empire Burlesque, the Weequahic Diner, the [[Newark Museum]] and Irvington Park, all local landmarks that helped shape the youth of the real Roth and the fictional Portnoy, both graduates of Weequahic class of '50." The 1950 ''Weequahic Yearbook'' calls Roth a "boy of real intelligence, combined with wit and common sense". He was known as a comedian during his time at school.<ref>''Weequahic Yearbook'' (1950)</ref>

===Academic career===
Roth attended [[Rutgers University]] in Newark for a year, then transferred to [[Bucknell University]] in [[Pennsylvania]], where he earned a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] ''[[magna cum laude]]'' in English and was elected to [[Phi Beta Kappa]]. He received a fellowship to attend the [[University of Chicago]], where he earned an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] in [[English literature]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://chicago.suntimes.com/entertainment/here-are-5-essential-works-of-fiction-by-philip-roth-to-remember-him-by/|title=Here are 5 essential works of fiction by Philip Roth to remember him by|date=May 23, 2018|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref> in 1955 and briefly worked as an instructor in the university's writing program.<ref name="israelnationalnews.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/246318|title=Jewish American author Philip Roth dies at 85|website=Israel National News|date=May 23, 2018 |access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref> That same year, rather than wait to be drafted, Roth enlisted in the army, but suffered a back injury during basic training and was given a [[Military discharge|medical discharge]]. He returned to Chicago in 1956 to study for a PhD in literature, but dropped out after one term.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FRoth%2C%20Philip&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection|title=Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85|last=McGrath|first=Charles|date=May 22, 2018|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=June 12, 2018}}</ref> Roth was a longtime faculty member at the [[University of Pennsylvania]], where he taught comparative literature until retiring from teaching in 1991.<ref name="israelnationalnews.com" />After retiring from teaching at the [[University of Pennsylvania]], he picked up a part time visiting lecturer position at [[Bard College]] where his friend [[Norman Manea]] had been longtime distinguished writer in residence<ref>{{Cite web |last=College |first=Bard |title=Norman Manea |url=https://www.bard.edu/faculty/norman-manea |access-date=2025-12-29 |website=www.bard.edu |language=en}}</ref>, and where the two would eventually co teach a class together in 1999.<ref>{{Cite web |last=College |first=Bard |title=Written Arts Faculty |url=https://writtenarts.bard.edu/faculty/ |access-date=2025-12-29 |website=writtenarts.bard.edu |language=en}}</ref>  

==Writing career==
[[File:Philip Roth, seated, hands behind head.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.2|Roth in 1967]]
Roth's work first appeared in print in the ''[[Chicago Review]]'' while he was studying, and later teaching, at the [[University of Chicago]].<ref>Roth, Philip. "The Day It Snowed."&nbsp;''Chicago Review'', vol. 8, no. 4, 1954, pp. 34–44.&nbsp;{{JSTOR|25293074}}.</ref><ref>Roth, Philip. "Mrs. Lindbergh, Mr. Ciardi, and the Teeth and Claws of the Civilized World."&nbsp;''Chicago Review'', vol. 11, no. 2, 1957, pp. 72–76.&nbsp;{{JSTOR|25293349}}.</ref><ref>Roth, Philip. "Positive Thinking on Pennsylvania Avenue."&nbsp;''Chicago Review'', vol. 11, no. 1, 1957, pp. 21–24.&nbsp;{{JSTOR|25293295}}.</ref> His first book, ''[[Goodbye, Columbus]]'', contains the novella ''Goodbye, Columbus'' and four short stories. It won the [[National Book Award]] in 1960. He published his first full-length novel, ''[[Letting Go (novel)|Letting Go]],'' in 1962. In 1967 he published ''[[When She Was Good]]'', set in the [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant|WASP]] [[Midwestern United States|Midwest]] in the 1940s. It is based in part on the life of Margaret Martinson Williams, whom Roth married in 1959.<ref name=":0" />

The publication in 1969 of his fourth and most controversial novel, ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'', gave Roth widespread commercial and critical success, causing his profile to rise significantly.<ref name="Brauner" /><ref name="Saxton">Saxton (1974)</ref> During the 1970s Roth experimented in various modes, from the political satire ''[[Our Gang (novel)|Our Gang]]'' (1971) to the [[Franz Kafka|Kafkaesque]] ''[[The Breast]]'' (1972). By the end of the decade Roth had created his alter ego Nathan Zuckerman. In a series of highly self-referential novels and novellas that followed between 1979 and 1986, Zuckerman appeared as either the main character or an interlocutor.

[[File:Philip Roth - 1973.jpg|thumb|left|Roth in 1973]]

''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'' (1995) may have Roth's most lecherous protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, a disgraced former puppeteer. It won his second [[National Book Award]].<ref name=nba1995 /> In complete contrast, ''[[American Pastoral]]'' (1997), the first volume of his so-called American Trilogy, focuses on the life of virtuous Newark star athlete Swede Levov, and the tragedy that befalls him when his teenage daughter becomes a domestic terrorist during the late 1960s. It won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]].<ref name=pulitzer />

''[[The Dying Animal]]'' (2001) is a short novel about [[Eros (concept)|eros]] and death that revisits literary professor David Kepesh, protagonist of two 1970s works, ''[[The Breast]]'' and ''[[The Professor of Desire]]'' (1977). In ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' (2004), Roth imagines an [[Alternate history|alternative American history]] in which [[Charles Lindbergh]], aviator hero and isolationist, is elected [[President of the United States|U.S. President]] in 1940, and the U.S. negotiates an understanding with Hitler's [[Nazi Germany]] and embarks on its own program of [[antisemitism]].

Roth's novel ''[[Everyman (novel)|Everyman]]'', a meditation on illness, aging, desire, and death, was published in May 2006. It was Roth's third book to win the [[PEN/Faulkner Award]], making him the only person so honored. ''[[Exit Ghost]]'', which again features Nathan Zuckerman, was released in October 2007. It was the last Zuckerman novel.<ref>"{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/books/30roth.html|title=Zuckerman's Last Hurrah|work=[[The New York Times]]|first=Julie|last=Bosman|date=November 30, 2006|access-date=July 19, 2023}}</ref> ''[[Indignation (novel)|Indignation]]'', Roth's 29th book, was published on September 16, 2008. Set in 1951, during the [[Korean War]], it follows Marcus Messner's departure from Newark to Ohio's Winesburg College, where he begins his sophomore year. In 2009, Roth's 30th book, ''[[The Humbling]]'', was published. It tells the story of the last performances of Simon Axler, a celebrated stage actor. Roth's 31st book, ''[[Nemesis (Philip Roth novel)|Nemesis]]'', was published on October 5, 2010. According to the book's notes, ''Nemesis'' is the last in a series of four "short novels", after ''Everyman'', ''Indignation'' and ''The Humbling''. In October 2009, during an interview with [[Tina Brown]] of ''The Daily Beast'' to promote ''The Humbling'', Roth considered the future of literature and its place in society, stating his belief that within 25 years the reading of novels will be regarded as a "cultic" activity:<ref name="guardian.co.uk">{{cite news |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |title= Philip Roth predicts novel will be minority cult within 25 years |date=October 26, 2009 |first=Alison |last=Flood |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/26/philip-roth-novel-minority-cult}}</ref>

<blockquote>I was being optimistic about 25 years really. I think it's going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them but it will be a small group of people. Maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range. ... To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don't read the novel really. So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by—it's hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities[.]</blockquote>

When asked about the prospects for printed versus digital books, Roth was equally downbeat:<ref>{{cite news |title=Philip Roth Unbound: The Full Interview |first=Tina |last=Brown |work=The Daily Beast |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-21/philip-roth-unbound-the-full-interview |date=October 21, 2009 |access-date=March 2, 2010}}</ref>

<blockquote>The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen, and it can't compete with the computer screen. ... Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn't measure up.</blockquote>

[[File:Philip Roth (September 2017).jpg|thumb|Roth in 2017]]
This was not the first time Roth had expressed pessimism about the future of the novel and its significance in recent years. Talking to ''[[The Observer]]''{{'}}s [[Robert McCrum]] in 2001, he said, "I'm not good at finding 'encouraging' features in American culture. I doubt that aesthetic literacy has much of a future here."<ref name="guardian.co.uk" /> In an October 2012 interview with the French magazine ''[[Les Inrockuptibles]]'', Roth announced that he would be retiring from writing<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/philip-roth-retires-from-novels.html|title=Philip Roth retires from novels|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|first=David|last=Remnick|date=November 9, 2012|access-date=July 19, 2023}}</ref> and confirmed subsequently in ''[[Le Monde]]'' that he would no longer publish fiction.<ref>Josyane Savigneau, Josyane (February 14, 2013), [http://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2013/02/14/philip-roth-i-don-t-wish-to-be-a-slave-any-longer-to-the-stringent-exigencies-of-literature_1831662_3260.html "Philip Roth: 'I don't wish to be a slave any longer to the stringent exigencies of literature'"], ''[[Le Monde]]''.</ref> In a May 2014 interview with [[Alan Yentob]] for the [[BBC]], Roth said, "this is my last appearance on television, my absolutely last appearance on any stage anywhere."<ref>McCrum, Robert (May 17, 2014), [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/17/philip-roth-retires-imagine-interview "Bye-bye ... Philip Roth talks of fame, sex and growing old in last interview"], ''The Observer''.</ref>

Reflecting on his writing career, in an afterword written on the 25th anniversary of the publication of ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'', Roth wrote, "I wished to dazzle in my very own way and to dazzle myself no less than anyone else."<ref name=":2">{{Cite news |last=Cohen |first=Roger |date=2018-05-23 |title=Opinion {{!}} The Liberation in Roth's American Berserk |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/opinion/philip-roth-jewish-identity.html |access-date=2024-03-16 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> To inspire himself to write, he recalled thinking, "All you have to do is sit down and work!"<ref name=":2" />

==Influences and themes==
Much of Roth's fiction revolves around semi-autobiographical themes, while self-consciously and playfully addressing the perils of establishing connections between Roth and his fictional lives and voices.<ref name = "Berlinerblau">{{Cite news|issn=0009-5982|last=Berlinerblau|first=Jacques|title=Do We Know Philip Roth?|work=The Chronicle of Higher Education|access-date=April 7, 2014|date=April 7, 2014|url=http://chronicle.com/article/Do-We-Know-Philip-Roth-/145671/}}</ref> Examples of this close relationship between the author's life and his characters' include narrators and protagonists such as David Kepesh and [[Nathan Zuckerman]] as well as the character "Philip Roth", who appears in ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' and of whom there are two in ''[[Operation Shylock]]''. Critic Jacques Berlinerblau noted in ''[[The Chronicle of Higher Education]]'' that these fictional voices create a complex and tricky experience for readers, deceiving them into believing they "know" Roth.<ref name = "Berlinerblau"/>

In Roth's fiction the question of authorship is intertwined with the theme of the idealistic, secular Jewish son who attempts to distance himself from Jewish customs and traditions, and from what he perceives as the sometimes suffocating influence of parents, rabbis, and other community leaders.<ref name ="GreenbergP11" /> Roth's fiction has been described by critics as pervaded by "a kind of alienation that is enlivened and exacerbated by what binds it".<ref name="GreenbergP11">Greenberg, Robert M. (Winter 1997) [https://web.archive.org/web/20150904132552/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v43/ai_20614549/pg_11/ "Transgression in the Fiction of Philip Roth".] ''Twentieth Century Literature''. Archived March 20, 2008.</ref>

Roth's first work, ''[[Goodbye, Columbus]]'', was an irreverently humorous depiction of the life of middle-class Jewish Americans and received highly polarized reviews;<ref name="Brauner"/> one reviewer found it infused with self-loathing. In response, Roth, in his 1963 essay "Writing About Jews" (collected in ''Reading Myself and Others''), maintained that he wanted to explore the conflict between the call to Jewish solidarity and his desire to be free to question the values and morals of middle-class Jewish Americans uncertain of their identities in an era of cultural assimilation and upward social mobility:<ref>{{cite journal |last=Roth |first=Philip |date=December 1963 |title=Writing About Jews |journal=[[Commentary (magazine)|Commentary]]}}</ref>
<blockquote>The cry 'Watch out for the goyim!' at times seems more the expression of an unconscious wish than of a warning: Oh that they were out there, so that we could be together here! A rumor of persecution, a taste of exile, might even bring with it the old world of feelings and habits—something to replace the new world of social accessibility and moral indifference, the world which tempts all our promiscuous instincts, and where one cannot always figure out what a Jew is that a Christian is not.</blockquote>

In Roth's fiction the exploration of "promiscuous instincts" within the context of Jewish lives, mainly from a male viewpoint, plays an important role. In the words of critic [[Hermione Lee]]:<ref name="Lee">Lee, Hermione (1982). ''Philip Roth''. New York: Methuen & Co.</ref>
<blockquote>Philip Roth's fiction strains to shed the burden of Jewish traditions and proscriptions. ... The liberated Jewish consciousness, let loose into the disintegration of the American Dream, finds itself deracinated and homeless. American society and politics, by the late sixties, are a grotesque travesty of what Jewish immigrants had traveled towards: liberty, peace, security, a decent liberal democracy.</blockquote>

While Roth's fiction has strong autobiographical influences, it also incorporates social commentary and political satire, most obviously in ''[[Our Gang (novel)|Our Gang]]'' and ''[[Operation Shylock]]''. From the 1990s on, Roth's fiction often combined autobiographical elements with retrospective dramatizations of postwar American life. Roth described ''[[American Pastoral]]'' and the two following novels as a loosely connected "American trilogy". Each of these novels treats aspects of the postwar era against the backdrop of the nostalgically remembered Jewish American childhood of Nathan Zuckerman, in which the experience of life on [[United States home front during World War II|the American home front during the Second World War]] features prominently.{{Citation needed|date=October 2009}} ''American Pastoral'' looks at the legacy of the 1960s, as Swede Levov's daughter becomes an antiwar terrorist. ''[[I Married a Communist]]'' (1998), in which radio actor Ira Ringold is revealed as a communist sympathizer, is set in the [[McCarthyism|McCarthy]] era''. [[The Human Stain]]'', in which classics professor Coleman Silk's secret history is revealed, explores [[identity politics]] in the late 1990s.

In much of Roth's fiction, the 1940s, comprising Roth's and Zuckerman's childhood, mark a high point of American idealism and social cohesion. A more satirical treatment of the patriotism and idealism of the war years is evident in Roth's comic novels, such as ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'' and ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]''. In ''[[The Plot Against America]]'', the [[alternate history]] of the war years dramatizes the prevalence of [[antisemitism]] and racism in America at the time, despite the promotion of increasingly influential anti-racist ideals during the war. In his fiction, Roth portrayed the 1940s, and the [[New Deal]] era of the 1930s that preceded it, as a heroic phase in American history. A sense of frustration with social and political developments in the United States since the 1940s is palpable in the American trilogy and ''[[Exit Ghost]]'', but had already been present in Roth's earlier works that contained political and social satire, such as ''[[Our Gang (novel)|Our Gang]]'' and ''[[The Great American Novel (Roth)|The Great American Novel]]''. Writing about the latter, Hermione Lee points to the sense of disillusionment with "the American Dream" in Roth's fiction: "The mythic words on which Roth's generation was brought up—winning, patriotism, gamesmanship—are desanctified; greed, fear, racism, and political ambition are disclosed as the motive forces behind the 'all-American ideals'."<ref name="Lee" /> Although Roth's writings often explored the Jewish experience in America, Roth rejected being labeled a [[American Jews|Jewish American]] writer. "It's not a question that interests me. I know exactly what it means to be Jewish and it's really not interesting," he told the [[The Guardian|''Guardian'' newspaper]] in 2005. "I'm an American."<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-philiproth/pulitzer-winning-author-philip-roth-dies-at-85-says-agent-idUSKCN1IO0CM|title=Pulitzer-winning author Philip Roth dies at 85, says agent|agency=Reuters|date=May 23, 2018|access-date=May 26, 2018|language=en-US}}</ref>

Roth was a [[baseball]] fan, and credited the game with shaping his literary sensibility. In an essay published in ''[[The New York Times]]'' on [[Opening Day]], 1973, Roth wrote that "baseball, with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategy, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefulness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its 'characters,' its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate, was the literature of my boyhood.{{nbsp}}... Of course, as time passed neither the flavor and suggestiveness of [[Red Barber]]'s narration, nor specific details, vivid and revealing even as [[Rex Barney]]'s pre-game hot dog, could continue to satisfy a developing literary appetite; there is no doubt, however, that they helped sustain me until I was old enough and literate enough to begin to respond to the great inventors of narrative detail and masters of narrative voice and perspective, like [[Henry James|James]] and [[Joseph Conrad|Conrad]] and [[Dostoyevsky]] and [[Saul Bellow|Bellow]]."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Roth |first=Philip |date=April 2, 1973 |title=My Baseball Years |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/02/archives/my-baseball-years.html}}</ref> Baseball features in several of Roth's novels; the hero of ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'' dreams of playing like [[Duke Snider]], and [[Nicholas Dawidoff]] called ''[[The Great American Novel (Roth novel)|The Great American Novel]]'' "one of the most eccentric baseball novels ever written".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Baseball: A Literary Anthology |publisher=[[Library of America]] |year=2002 |editor-last=Dawidoff |editor-first=Nicholas |pages=386}}</ref> ''[[American Pastoral]]'' alludes to [[John R. Tunis]]'s baseball novel ''The Kid from Tomkinsville''.

In a speech on his 80th birthday, Roth emphasized the importance of realistic detail in American literature:<blockquote>the passion for specificity, the hypnotic materiality of the world one is in, is all but at the heart of the task to which every American novelist has been enjoined since [[Herman Melville]] and his whale and [[Mark Twain]] and his river: to discover the most arresting, evocative verbal depiction of every last American thing. Without strong representation of the thing—animate or inanimate—without the crucial representation of what is real, there is nothing. Its concreteness, its unabashed focus on all the particulars, a fervor for the singular and a profound aversion to generalities is fiction's lifeblood. It is from a scrupulous fidelity to the blizzard of specific data that is a personal life, it is from the force of its uncompromising particularity, from its physicalness, that the realistic novel, the insatiable realistic novel with its multitude of realities, derives its ruthless intimacy. And its mission: to portray humanity in its particularity.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Philip Roth at 80: A Celebration |publisher=[[Library of America]] |year=2014 |pages=54}}</ref></blockquote>

==Personal life==
While at [[University of Chicago|Chicago]] in 1956, Roth met Margaret Martinson, who became his first wife in 1959. Their separation in 1963, and Martinson's subsequent death in a car crash in 1968, left a lasting mark on Roth's literary output. Martinson was the inspiration for female characters in several of Roth's novels, including Lucy Nelson in ''[[When She Was Good]]'' and Maureen Tarnopol in ''[[My Life as a Man]]''.<ref>Roth, Philip. ''[[The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography]]''. New York, 1988.  Roth discusses Martinson's portrait in this memoir. He calls her "Josie" in ''[[When She Was Good]]'' on pp. 149 and 175. He discusses her as an inspiration for ''[[My Life as a Man]]'' throughout the book's second half, most completely in the chapter "Girl of My Dreams," which includes this on p. 110: "Why should I have tried to make up anything better? How could I?" Her influence upon ''Portnoy's Complaint'' is seen in ''The Facts'' as more diffuse, a kind of loosening-up for the author:  "It took time and it took blood, and not, really, until I began ''Portnoy's Complaint'' would I be able to cut loose with anything approaching her gift for flabbergasting boldness." (p. 149)</ref>

Roth was an [[atheist]] who once said, "When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place."<ref name="Ulysses Press">{{cite book|title=The Wit and Blasphemy of Atheists: 500 Greatest Quips and Quotes from Freethinkers, Non-Believers and the Happily Damned|year=2011|publisher=Ulysses Press|isbn=978-1569759707|page=190|quote=When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place. – Philip Roth}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Philip Roth on Fame, Sex and God|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philip-roth-on-fame-sex-and-god/|publisher=CBS Interactive Inc.|access-date=May 5, 2014|first=Rita|last= Braver|date=October 3, 2010 |quote='Do you consider yourself a religious person?'  'No, I don't have a religious bone in my body,' Roth said. 'You don't?'  'No.'  'So, do you feel like there's a God out there?' Braver asked. 'I'm afraid there isn't, no,' Roth said. 'You know that telling the whole world that you don't believe in God is going to, you know, have people say, "Oh my goodness, you know, that's a terrible thing for him to say,"' Braver said. Roth replied, 'When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place.'}}</ref> He also said during an interview with ''[[The Guardian]]'': "I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie ... It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it. It's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me."<ref>{{cite news |last=Krasnik |first=Martin |date=14 December 2005 |title=Philip Roth: 'It no longer feels a great injustice that I have to die' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/14/fiction.philiproth |work=[[The Guardian]] |location=London |issn=1756-3224 |oclc=60623878 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141108003646/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/dec/14/fiction.philiproth |archive-date=8 November 2014 |access-date=20 June 2025 |quote="I'm exactly the opposite of religious," he says. "I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie." [...] "I have such a huge dislike. It's not a neurotic thing, but the miserable record of religion—I don't even want to talk about it. It's not interesting to talk about the sheep referred to as believers. When I write, I'm alone. It's filled with fear and loneliness and anxiety—and I never needed religion to save me."}}</ref>

In 1990, Roth married his longtime companion, English actress [[Claire Bloom]], with whom he had been living since 1976. According to Bloom, when she asked him to marry her, he agreed on the condition that she sign a prenuptial agreement that would give her very little in the event of a divorce; he requested one in 1993 and made her a settlement of $100,000.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/13/books/goodbye-connecticut.html | work=[[The New York Times]] | title=Goodbye, Connecticut | first=Patricia | last=Bosworth | author-link=Patricia Bosworth | date=13 October 1996 | access-date=20 July 2025}}</ref> He also stipulated that Bloom's daughter [[Anna Steiger]]—from her marriage to [[Rod Steiger]]—not live with them.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/claire-bloom-a-star-who-lives-up-to-her-name-1.430246 | title=Claire Bloom - a star who lives up to her name | date=January 6, 2017 }}</ref> They divorced in 1994, and Bloom published a 1996 memoir, ''[[Leaving a Doll's House: A Memoir|Leaving a Doll's House]]'', that depicted Roth as a [[misogynist]] and control freak. Some critics have detected parallels between Bloom and the character Eve Frame in Roth's ''[[I Married a Communist]]'' (1998).<ref name=":0" />

The novel ''[[Operation Shylock]]'' (1993) and other works draw on a [[post-operative]] [[nervous breakdown|breakdown]],<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=j6a0IJjWYe4C&pg=PA5 p. 5], Philip Roth, ''The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography'', Random House, 2011: "I'm talking about a breakdown. Although there's no need to delve into particulars ... what was to have been minor surgery ... led to an extreme depression that carried me right to the edge of emotional and mental dissolution. It was in the period of post-crack-up medication, with the clarity attending the remission of an illness ..."</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=hH3obsqzRvUC&pg=PA79 p. 79], Timothy Parrish (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth'', Cambridge University Press, 2007: "In point of fact, Roth's surgeries (one the knee surgery, which is followed by a nervous breakdown, the other heart surgery) span the period ..."</ref><ref>pp. 108–09, Harold Bloom, ''Philip Roth'', Infobase Publishing, 2003</ref> as well as Roth's experience of the temporary [[side effect]]s of the [[sedative]] Halcion ([[triazolam]]), prescribed post-operatively in the 1980s.<ref>{{cite news|last=Stoeffel|first=Kat|title=Roth on 'Roth v. Roth v. Roth'|url=http://observer.com/2012/05/roth-on-roth-v-roth-v-roth/|access-date=September 13, 2012|newspaper=[[New York Observer]]|date=May 24, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=McCrum|first=Robert|title=The story of my lives|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/21/philiproth.fiction|access-date=September 13, 2012|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=August 21, 2008|location=London}}</ref>

==Death and burial==
Roth died at a [[Manhattan]] hospital of [[heart failure]] on May 22, 2018, at the age of 85.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44220189|title=Author Philip Roth dies aged 85|date=May 23, 2018|work=BBC News|access-date=May 23, 2018|language=en-GB}}</ref><ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44220189|title=American literary giant Philip Roth dies|work=BBC News|date=May 23, 2018|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref> Roth was buried at the [[Bard College]] Cemetery in [[Annandale-on-Hudson]], New York, where in 1999 he taught a class. He had originally planned to be buried next to his parents at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery in Newark, but changed his mind about 15 years before his death, in order to be buried close to where his friend [[Norman Manea]] is writer in residence,<ref>[https://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/details/?id=560 Norman Manea: Writer in residence at Bard College].</ref> and near other Jews "to whom he could talk".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/philip-roth-who-forbade-having-jewish-funeral-to-be-buried-monday-1.6117234|title=Philip Roth, Who 'Forbade' Jewish Rituals at His Funeral, to Be Buried Monday|last=JTA|date=May 26, 2018|access-date=June 24, 2018|newspaper=Haaretz}}</ref> Roth expressly banned any religious rituals from his funeral service, though it was noted that, the day after his burial, a pebble had been placed on top of his tombstone in accordance with [[Visitation stones|Jewish tradition]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2018/05/29/philip-roth-is-laid-to-rest-in-annandale/|title=Philip Roth is laid to rest in Annandale|work=Hudson Valley One|first=Mikhail|last=Horowitz|date=May 29, 2018|access-date=June 24, 2018}}</ref>

==List of works==
{{Main|Philip Roth bibliography}}

{{Col-begin}}
{{Col-break}}

=== "Zuckerman" novels ===
* ''[[Zuckerman Bound]]'' (1979–1985)
** ''[[The Ghost Writer]]'' (1979)
** ''[[Zuckerman Unbound]]'' (1981)
** ''[[The Anatomy Lesson (1983 novel)|The Anatomy Lesson]]'' (1983)
** ''[[The Prague Orgy]]'' (1985)
* ''[[The Counterlife]]'' (1986)
* ''[[American Pastoral]]'' (1997)
* ''[[I Married a Communist]]'' (1998)
* ''[[The Human Stain]]'' (2000)
* ''[[Exit Ghost]]'' (2007)

=== "Roth" novels and memoirs ===
* ''[[The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography]]'' (1988)
* ''[[Deception: A Novel]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Patrimony: A True Story]]'' (1991)
* ''[[Operation Shylock|Operation Shylock: A Confession]]'' (1993)
* ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' (2004)
{{Col-break}}

=== "Kepesh" novels ===
* ''[[The Breast]]'' (1972)
* ''[[The Professor of Desire]]'' (1977)
* ''[[The Dying Animal]]'' (2001)

=== "Nemeses" novels ===
* ''[[Everyman (novel)|Everyman]]'' (2006)
* ''[[Indignation (novel)|Indignation]]'' (2008)
* ''[[The Humbling]]'' (2009)
* ''[[Nemesis (Philip Roth novel)|Nemesis]]'' (2010)

=== Fiction with other protagonists ===
* ''[[Goodbye, Columbus|Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories]]'' (1959)
* ''[[Letting Go (novel)|Letting Go]]'' (1962)
* ''[[When She Was Good]]'' (1967)
* ''[[Portnoy's Complaint]]'' (1969)
* ''[[Our Gang (novel)|Our Gang]]'' (1971)
* ''[[The Great American Novel (Roth)|The Great American Novel]]'' (1973)
* ''[[My Life as a Man]]'' (1974)
* ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'' (1995)
{{col-end}}

==Awards and nominations==
Two of Roth's works won the [[National Book Award for Fiction]]; four others were finalists.<!-- source is the linked article, easily countable --> Two won [[National Book Critics Circle]] awards; another five were finalists. Roth won three [[PEN/Faulkner Award]]s (for ''[[Operation Shylock]],'' ''[[The Human Stain]],'' and ''[[Everyman (novel)|Everyman]]'') and a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel ''[[American Pastoral]]''.<ref name="pulitzer" />

In 2001, ''The Human Stain'' was awarded the United Kingdom's [[WH Smith Literary Award]] for the best book of the year, as well as France's [[Prix Médicis étranger|Prix Médicis Étranger]]. Also in 2001, the [[MacDowell Colony]] awarded Roth the 42nd [[Edward MacDowell Medal]].<ref>[http://www.macdowellcolony.org/events-MedalDay-History.html Medal Day History] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101007044147/http://www.macdowellcolony.org/events-MedalDay-History.html|date=October 7, 2010}} The MacDowell Colony.</ref> In 2002, Roth was awarded the [[National Book Foundation]] [[National Book Award#Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters|Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.]]<ref name="medal" />

In 2003, literary critic [[Harold Bloom]] named Roth one of the four major American novelists still at work, along with [[Cormac McCarthy]], [[Thomas Pynchon]], and [[Don DeLillo]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bloom |first=Harold |date=November 24, 2003 |title=Dumbing down American readers |url=http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/ |access-date=2023-03-23 |website=www.boston.com |language=en}}</ref> ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' (2004) won the [[Sidewise Award for Alternate History]] in 2005 and the Society of American Historians' [[James Fenimore Cooper Prize]]. Roth was also awarded the United Kingdom's [[WH Smith Literary Award]] for the best book of the year, an award he received twice.<ref>[http://facstaff.unca.edu/moseley/smith.html WH Smith Award<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120619000818/http://facstaff.unca.edu/moseley/smith.html |date=June 19, 2012 }}</ref>

In October 2005, Roth was honored in his hometown when then-mayor [[Sharpe James]] presided over the unveiling of a street sign in Roth's name on the corner of Summit and Keer Avenues, where Roth lived for much of his childhood, a setting prominent in ''The Plot Against America''. A plaque on the house where the Roths lived was unveiled. In May 2006, he received the [[PEN/Nabokov Award]], and in 2007 he received the PEN/Faulkner award for ''Everyman,'' making him the award's only three-time winner. In April 2007, he received the first [[PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction]].<ref>[[PEN American Center]]. [http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1406/prmID/1331 "Philip Roth Wins Inaugural PEN/Saul Bellow Award"]. April 2, 2007. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004134927/http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1406/prmID/1331 |date=October 4, 2012 }}</ref>

The May 21, 2006, issue of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' announced the results of a letter that was sent to what the publication described as "a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to identify 'the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years'". ''[[American Pastoral]]'' tied for fifth, and ''[[The Counterlife]]'', ''[[Operation Shylock]]'', ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'', ''[[The Human Stain]]'' and ''[[The Plot Against America]]'' received multiple votes. In the accompanying essay, [[A.O. Scott|A. O. Scott]] wrote: "Over the past 15 years, Roth's output has been so steady, so various and (mostly) so excellent that his vote has been, inevitably, split. If we had asked for the single best writer of fiction of the past 25 years, he would have won." Scott notes that "The Roth whose primary concern is the past—the elegiac, summarizing, conservative Roth—is preferred over his more aesthetically radical, restless, present-minded doppelgänger by a narrow but decisive margin."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Scott |first=A. O. |date=2006-05-21 |title=In Search of the Best |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/review/scott-essay.html |access-date=2023-03-23 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> In 2009, Roth received the German newspaper ''[[Die Welt]]''<nowiki/>'s [[Welt-Literaturpreis|''Welt''-Literaturpreis]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.morgenpost.de/kultur/article1182773/Philip-Roth-erhaelt-WELT-Literaturpreis-2009.html |title=Philip Roth erhält WELT-Literaturpreis 2009 |work=[[Berliner Morgenpost]] |language=de |date=October 1, 2009 |access-date=November 11, 2012}}</ref>

President [[Barack Obama]] awarded Roth the 2010 [[National Humanities Medal]] in the [[East Room]] of the White House on March 2, 2011.<ref>Trescott, Jacqueline, [https://web.archive.org/web/20140104203914/http://voices.washingtonpost.com/arts-post/2011/03/white_house_salutes.html "President Obama talks about the influence of art and words"], ''The Washington Post'', March 2, 2011.</ref><ref>[https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/03/02/2010-national-medal-arts-and-national-humanities-medal-ceremony The 2010 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Ceremony] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200808021735/https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/03/02/2010-national-medal-arts-and-national-humanities-medal-ceremony |date=August 8, 2020 }} The White House, March 2, 2011.</ref>

In May 2011, Roth was awarded the [[Man Booker International Prize]] for lifetime achievement in fiction on the world stage, the fourth winner of the biennial prize.<ref name="booker" /> One of the judges, [[Carmen Callil]], a publisher of the feminist Virago house, withdrew in protest, referring to Roth's work as "[[The Emperor's New Clothes|Emperor's clothes]]". She said "he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe ... I don't rate him as a writer at all ...".<ref name="NewYorkerBooker" /> Observers noted that Callil had a conflict of interest, having published a book by [[Claire Bloom]] (Roth's ex-wife) that criticized Roth and lambasted their marriage.<ref name="NewYorkerBooker">{{cite magazine|last=Halford|first=Macy|title=Philip Roth and the Booker Judge|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|date=May 18, 2011|url=http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/05/philip-roth-and-the-booker-judge.html|access-date=September 8, 2012}}</ref> In response, one of the two other Booker judges, Rick Gekoski, remarked:
<blockquote>In 1959 he writes ''Goodbye, Columbus'' and it's a masterpiece, magnificent. Fifty-one years later he's 78 years old and he writes ''Nemesis'' and it is so wonderful, such a terrific novel ... Tell me one other writer who 50 years apart writes masterpieces ... If you look at the trajectory of the average novel writer, there is a learning period, then a period of high achievement, then the talent runs out and in middle age they start slowly to decline. People say why aren't Martin [Amis] and Julian [Barnes] getting on the Booker prize shortlist, but that's what happens in middle age. Philip Roth, though, gets better and better in middle age. In the 1990s he was almost incapable of not writing a masterpiece—''The Human Stain'', ''The Plot Against America'', ''I Married a Communist''. He was 65–70 years old, what the hell's he doing writing that well?<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/18/judge-quits-philip-roth-booker | location=London | work=The Guardian | first=Alison | last=Flood | title=Judge withdraws over Philip Roth's Booker win | date=May 18, 2011}}</ref></blockquote> In 2012 Roth received the [[Prince of Asturias Award]] for literature.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.eitb.com/en/news/entertainment/detail/900803/prince-asturias--philip-roth-wins-asturias-prize-literature/|title=US author Philip Roth wins Prince of Asturias prize for literature|last=EiTB|access-date=June 6, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120803201451/http://www.eitb.com/en/news/entertainment/detail/900803/prince-asturias--philip-roth-wins-asturias-prize-literature/|archive-date=August 3, 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> On March 19, 2013, his 80th birthday was celebrated in public ceremonies at the Newark Museum.<ref>''Philip Roth at 80: A Celebration: Remarks delivered on the occasion of Philip Roth's 80th birthday'', The Library of America, New York, 2014. Contributors to the book are Jonathan Lethem, Hermione Lee, Alain Finkielkraut, Claudia Roth Pierpont, Edna O'Brien, and Philip Roth.</ref>

One prize that eluded Roth was the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]], though he was nominated for the prize as early as 1972<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mehlin |first=Hans |date=2024-05-21 |title=Nomination Archive: Philip Milton Roth |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=16463 |access-date=2025-08-31 |website=NobelPrize.org |language=en-US}}</ref> and was a favorite of bookmakers and critics for decades.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/mourning-philip-roth-fans-bitter-over-long-standing-nobel-snub/|title=Mourning Philip Roth fans bitter over long-standing Nobel snub|website=[[The Times of Israel]]|first1=Gaël|last1=Branchereau|first2=Ilgin|last2=Karlidag|date=May 24, 2018|access-date=July 6, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://time.com/3481586/murakami-adonis-nobel-prize-literature-odds-ladbrokes/|title = Don't Bother Betting on the Nobel Prize for Literature|magazine=Time|first=Daniel|last=D'Addario| date=October 8, 2014|access-date=July 6, 2023}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/emma-brockes-column/2014/oct/09/patrick-modiano-nobel-prize-literature-prize-philip-roth-loser|title = The real scandal of Patrick Modiano's Nobel win is that Philip Roth is a huge loser – again|first=Emma|last=Brockes|work=The Guardian|date = October 9, 2014|access-date=July 6, 2023}}</ref> [[Ron Charles (critic)|Ron Charles]] of ''[[The Washington Post]]'' wrote that "thundering obituaries" around the world noted that "he won every other honor a writer could win", sometimes even two or three times, except the Nobel Prize.<ref>{{cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/philip-roth-died-before-he-could-win-a-nobel-prize-he-didnt-need-it/2018/05/23/7da4bd9c-5e81-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html| title = Philip Roth died before he could win a Nobel Prize. He didn't need it.| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]|last = Charles| first = Ron | date = May 23, 2018 | access-date= July 16, 2023}}</ref>

Roth worked hard to obtain his many awards, spending large amounts of time "networking, scratching people's backs, placing his people in positions, voting for them" in order to increase his chances of receiving awards.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/29/a-master-of-self-promotion-letters-reveal-how-philip-roth-hustled-for-prizes A master of self-promotion: letters reveal how Philip Roth ‘hustled’ for prizes]</ref>

===Films===
Eight of Roth's novels and short stories have been adapted as films: ''[[Goodbye, Columbus (film)|Goodbye, Columbus]]''; ''[[Portnoy's Complaint (film)|Portnoy's Complaint]]''; ''[[The Human Stain (film)|The Human Stain]]''; ''[[The Dying Animal]],'' adapted as ''[[Elegy (film)|Elegy]]''; ''[[The Humbling (film)|The Humbling]]''; ''[[Indignation (film)|Indignation]]''; and ''[[American Pastoral (film)|American Pastoral]]''. In addition, ''[[The Ghost Writer]]'' was adapted for television in 1984.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087331/combined|title=The Ghost Writer|date=January 17, 1984|via=IMDb}}</ref> In 2014 filmmaker [[Alex Ross Perry]] made ''[[Listen Up Philip]]'', which was influenced by Roth's work. HBO dramatized Roth's ''The Plot Against America'' in 2020 as a [[The Plot Against America (miniseries)|six-part series]] starting [[Zoe Kazan]], [[Winona Ryder]], [[John Turturro]], and [[Morgan Spector]].

===Honors===
{{div col}}
* 1960 [[National Book Award]] for ''Goodbye, Columbus''<ref name=nba1960>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1960 "National Book Awards – 1960"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
<br />(With acceptance speech by Roth and essay by Larry Dark and others (five) from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>
* 1960 [[National Jewish Book Award]] for ''Goodbye, Columbus''<ref name="NJBA Past Winners">{{cite web |title=Past Winners - Fiction |url=https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/past-winners?category=30754 |website=National Jewish Book Award |publisher=Jewish Book Council |access-date=January 19, 2020}}</ref>
* 1975 National Book Award finalist for ''My Life as A Man''<ref name=nbf>{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalbook.org/people/philip-roth/#fullBio |title=Philip Roth |website=National Book Foundation}}</ref>
* 1978 NBCCA finalist for ''The Professor Of Desire''
* 1980 Pulitzer Prize finalist for ''The Ghost Writer''<ref name=pulitzer/>
* 1980 National Book Award finalist for ''The Ghost Writer''<ref name=nbf />
* 1980 NBCCA finalist for ''The Ghost Writer''
* 1984 National Book Award finalist for ''The Anatomy Lesson''<ref name=nbf />
* 1984 NBCCA finalist for ''The Anatomy Lesson''
* 1986 [[National Book Critics Circle Award]] (NBCCA) for ''The Counterlife''
* 1987 National Book Award finalist for ''The Counterlife''<ref name=nbf />
* 1988 [[National Jewish Book Award]] for ''The Counterlife''<ref name="NJBA Past Winners" />
* 1991 [[National Book Critics Circle Award]] (NBCCA) for ''Patrimony''<ref name=nbf />
* 1994 [[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] for ''Operation Shylock''
* 1994 Pulitzer Prize finalist for ''Operation Shylock''<ref name=pulitzer/>
* 1995 [[National Book Award]] for ''Sabbath's Theater''<ref name=nba1995>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1995 "National Book Awards – 1995"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
<br />(With essay by Ed Porter from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>
* 1996 Pulitzer Prize finalist for ''Sabbath's Theater''<ref name=pulitzer/>
* 1997 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] longlist for ''Sabbath's Theater''
* 1998 [[Pulitzer Prize]] for ''American Pastoral''<ref name=pulitzer>
[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction "Fiction"]. ''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 27, 2012.</ref>
* 1998 NBCCA finalist for ''American Pastoral''
* 1998 [[Ambassador Book Award]] of the [[English-Speaking Union]] for ''I Married a Communist''<ref name=nbf />
* 1998 [[National Medal of Arts]]<ref name=nbf />
* 1999 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] longlist for ''American Pastoral''
* 2000 [[Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger]] (France) for ''American Pastoral''
* 2000 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] shortlist for ''I Married a Communist''
* 2000 [[National Jewish Book Award]] for ''The Human Stain''<ref name="NJBA Past Winners" />
* 2001 [[Franz Kafka Prize]]
* 2001 [[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] for ''The Human Stain''
* 2001 Gold Medal In Fiction from [[The American Academy of Arts and Letters]]<ref name=nbf />
* 2001 42nd [[Edward MacDowell Medal]] from the [[MacDowell Colony]]
* 2001 [[WH Smith Literary Award]] for ''The Human Stain''
* 2002 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] longlist for ''The Human Stain''
* 2002 [[National Book Award#Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters|Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters]] from the [[National Book Foundation]]<ref name=medal>
[http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters.html "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters"]. National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 11, 2012. (With introduction by Steve Martin; acceptance speech not available from NBF.)</ref>
* 2002 [[Prix Médicis|Prix Médicis Étranger]] (France) for ''The Human Stain''
* 2005 NBCCA finalist for ''The Plot Against America''
* 2005 [[Sidewise Award for Alternate History]] for ''The Plot Against America''
* 2005 [[James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction]] for ''The Plot Against America''
* 2005 Nominee for [[Man Booker International Prize]]
* 2005 [[WH Smith Literary Award]] for ''The Plot Against America''
* 2006 [[PEN/Nabokov Award]] for lifetime achievement
* 2007 [[PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction|PEN/Faulkner Award]] for ''Everyman''<ref name=nbf />
* 2007 [[PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction]]
* 2008 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] longlist for ''Everyman''
* 2009 [[International Dublin Literary Award]] longlist for ''Exit Ghost''
* 2010 ''[[The Paris Review]]'' Hadada Prize
* 2011 [[National Humanities Medal]] for 2010
* 2011 [[Man Booker International Prize]]
* 2012 [[Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction]]
* 2012 [[Prince of Asturias Awards]] for literature<ref name=booker>{{cite web |title=Literary giant wins fourth Man Booker International Prize|url=http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1502|publisher=themanbookerprize.com|access-date=May 18, 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110525215042/http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1502|archive-date=May 25, 2011}}</ref>
* 2013 [[PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award]] for lifetime achievement and advocacy.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/pen-gala-philip-roth-rece_n_3192452.html | work=The Huffington Post | title=PEN Gala: Philip Roth Receives 'Literary Service' Award | date=May 1, 2013 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130530142314/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/pen-gala-philip-roth-rece_n_3192452.html | archive-date=May 30, 2013 | df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/05/01/philip-roth-honored-at-pen-gala.html|title=Philip Roth Honored at PEN Gala|website=[[The Daily Beast]]|date=May 1, 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award: Philip Roth|date=May 20, 2013|url=http://www.pen.org/video/penallen-foundation-literary-service-award-philip-roth|publisher=PEN American Center|access-date=December 6, 2014}}</ref>
* 2013 Commander of the Legion of Honor by the Republic of France.<ref>See ''The New York Times'', Monday, September 30, 2013, p. C4. Congratulations Philip Roth on being named Commander of the Legion of Honor by the Republic of France. Vintage/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.</ref>
{{end div col}}

==Honorary degrees==
{{Incomplete list|date=May 2018}}
{| class="wikitable"
! style="width:20%;" | Location
! style="width:20%;" | Date
! style="width:40%;" | School
! style="width:20%;" | Degree
|-
| {{Flagu|Pennsylvania}} || '''1979''' || [[Bucknell University]] || Doctorate
|-
| {{Flagu|New York}} || '''1985''' || [[Bard College]] || [[Doctor of Letters]] (D.Litt.)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bard.edu/catalogue/index.php?aid=1204639&sid=670325|title=Bard College Catalogue|first=Bard|last=College|website=www.bard.edu|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|New York}} || '''May 20, 1987''' || [[Columbia University]] || [[Doctor of Humane Letters]] (DHL)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19870520-01.1.6&e=-------en-20--8753--txt-txIN-Ferris+Booth-----|title=Columbia Daily Spectator 20 May 1987 |website=spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|New Jersey}} || '''May 21, 1987''' || [[Rutgers University]] || [[Doctor of Humane Letters]] (DHL)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://universitysecretary.rutgers.edu/degrees?page=10|title=Past Rutgers University Honorary Degree Recipients – Office of the Secretary of the University|website=universitysecretary.rutgers.edu|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://universitysecretary.rutgers.edu/sites/universitysecretary/files/roth.jpg |title=Archived copy |access-date=May 27, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019004408/http://universitysecretary.rutgers.edu/sites/universitysecretary/files/roth.jpg |archive-date=October 19, 2015 |url-status=dead  }}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|Rhode Island}} || '''2001''' || [[Brown University]] || [[Doctor of Letters]] (D.Litt.)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/corporation/honoraries|title=Honorary Degrees – The Corporation of Brown University|website=www.brown.edu|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|Pennsylvania}} || '''2003''' || [[University of Pennsylvania]] || [[Doctor of Humane Letters]] (DHL)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://secure.www.upenn.edu/secretary/hondegchron.html#2003|title=Penn: Office of the University Secretary: Chronological Listing of Honorary Degrees|website=secure.www.upenn.edu|access-date=May 28, 2018|archive-date=November 16, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116082112/https://secure.www.upenn.edu/secretary/hondegchron.html#2003|url-status=dead}}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|Massachusetts}} || '''June 5, 2003''' || [[Harvard University]] || [[Doctor of Humane Letters]] (DHL)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2003/06/11-awarded-honorary-degrees/|title=11 awarded honorary degrees|date=June 5, 2003|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref>
|-
| {{Flagu|New York}} || '''May 22, 2014''' || [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America]] || Doctorate<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jta.org/2014/05/23/life-religion/sacred-and-profane-philip-roth-onetime-enfant-terrible-gets-seminary-honor-2|title=Philip Roth, onetime 'enfant terrible,' gets JTS honor|website=www.jta.org|date=May 23, 2014|access-date=May 28, 2018}}</ref>
|-
|}

==Legacy==
[[John Updike]], considered by many Roth's chief literary rival, said in 2008, "He's scarily devoted to the novelist's craft... [he] seems more dedicated in a way to the act of writing as a means of really reshaping the world to your liking. But he's been very good to have around as far as goading me to become a better writer." Roth spoke at Updike's memorial service, saying, "He is and always will be no less a national treasure than his 19th-century precursor, [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=2009-01-28 |title=John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html |access-date=2023-04-07 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> After Updike's memorial at the [[New York Public Library]], Roth told [[Charles McGrath (critic)|Charles McGrath]], "I dream about John sometimes. He's standing behind me, watching me write." Asked who was better, Roth said, "John had more talent, but I think maybe I got more out of the talent I had." McGrath agreed with that assessment, adding that Updike might be the better stylist, but Roth's work was more consistent and "much funnier". McGrath added that in the 1990s Roth "underwent a kind of sea change and, borne aloft by that extraordinary second wind, produced some of his very best work": ''[[Sabbath's Theater]]'' and the American Trilogy (''[[American Pastoral]]'', ''[[I Married a Communist]]'', and ''[[The Human Stain]]'').<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McGrath |first=Charles |date=2019 |title=Roth/Updike |url=https://hudsonreview.com/2019/10/roth-updike/#.ZDAtOfbMK00 |journal=[[Hudson Review]]}}</ref> Another admirer of Roth's work is [[Bruce Springsteen]]. Roth read Springsteen's autobiography, ''[[Born to Run (autobiography)|Born to Run]]'', and Springsteen praised Roth's American Trilogy: "I'll tell you, those three recent books by Philip Roth just knocked me on my ass.... To be in his sixties making work that is so strong, so full of revelations about love and emotional pain, that's the way to live your artistic life. Sustain, sustain, sustain."<ref>{{cite web |last=O'Hagan |first=Sean |date=September 25, 2004 |title=Philip Roth: One angry man |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/sep/26/fiction.philiproth |access-date=May 31, 2018 |website=the Guardian}}</ref>

Roth left his book collection and more than $2 million to the [[Newark Public Library]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Taylor |first=Candace |date=October 30, 2019 |title=Philip Roth Left More Than $2 Million to His Hometown Library in Newark, N.J. |work=The Wall Street Journal |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/philip-roth-left-more-than-2-million-to-his-hometown-library-in-newark-n-j-11572467686 |access-date=April 30, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last1=Harris |first1=Elizabeth A. |last2=Tullo |first2=Vincent |date=2021-06-07 |title=Look Inside Philip Roth's Personal Library |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/books/philip-roth-newark-library.html |access-date=2023-04-02 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> In 2021, the Philip Roth Personal Library opened for public viewing in the Newark Public Library.<ref>[https://www.prpl.npl.org/ Philip Roth Personal Library]</ref> In April 2021, [[W. W. Norton & Company]] published [[Blake Bailey]]'s authorized biography of Roth, ''[[Philip Roth: The Biography]]''. Publication was halted two weeks after release due to sexual assault allegations against Bailey.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Parker |first=James |date=March 13, 2021 |title=The Relentless Philip Roth |work=[[The Atlantic]] |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/the-relentless-philip-roth/618081/ |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Sehgal |first=Parul |author-link=Parul Sehgal |date=March 29, 2021 |title=In 'Philip Roth,' a Life of the Literary Master as Aggrieved Playboy |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/books/review-philip-roth-biography-blake-bailey.html |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Riefe |first=Jordan |date=March 31, 2021 |title='That was harsh': Philip Roth's biographer defends his book and his subject |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-03-31/blake-bailey-discusses-controversial-biography-of-philip-roth |access-date=April 14, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Alter |first=Alexandra |date=April 21, 2021 |title=Philip Roth's Biographer Is Accused of Sexual Assault W.W. Norton, citing the allegations that the author, Blake Bailey, faces, said it would stop shipping and promoting his new, best-selling book. |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/books/philip-roth-blake-bailey.html |access-date=April 22, 2021}}</ref> Three weeks later, in May 2021, [[Skyhorse Publishing]] announced that it would release a paperback, ebook, and audiobook versions of the biography.<ref>"Philip Roth Biography Finds a New Publisher", ''The New York Times'', May 17, 2021 [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/books/blake-bailey-philip-roth-biography.html]</ref> Roth had asked his executors "to destroy many of his personal papers after the publication of the semi-authorized biography on which Blake Bailey had recently begun work.... Roth wanted to ensure that Bailey, who was producing exactly the type of biography he wanted, would be the only person outside a small circle of intimates permitted to access personal, sensitive manuscripts, including the unpublished ''Notes for My Biographer'' (a 295-page rebuttal to his ex-wife's memoir) and ''Notes on a Slander-Monger'' (another rebuttal, this time to a biographical effort from Bailey's predecessor). 'I don't want my personal papers dragged all over the place,' Roth said. The fate of Roth's personal papers took on new urgency in the wake of Norton's decision to halt distribution of the biography. In May 2021, the Philip Roth Society published an open letter<ref>"Statement on the Possible Destruction of Essential Materials Pertaining to Philip Roth" [https://www.philiprothsociety.org/single-post/statement-on-the-possible-destruction-of-essential-materials-pertaining-to-philip-roth]</ref> imploring Roth's executors 'to preserve these documents and make them readily available to researchers.'"<ref>Alex Shephard, "Blake Bailey Had Exclusive Access to Philip Roth’s Personal Papers. Roth’s Estate Plans on Destroying Them." ''The New Republic'', May 21, 2021 [https://newrepublic.com/article/162475/philip-roth-blake-bailey-documents-biography]</ref><ref>Copies of ''Notes for My Biographer'', ''Notes on a Slander-Monger'', and other "typescripts and manuscripts" were "deeded" by Benjamin Taylor, to whom Roth had given them, "to the Manuscripts Division of Princeton's Firestone Library." Benjamin Taylor, "Even in His Retirement, Philip Roth Wrote Thousands of Pages", ''Literary Hub'', May 19, 2020 [https://lithub.com/even-in-his-retirement-philip-roth-wrote-thousands-of-pages/]. The text of this article was included in Benjamin Taylor, ''Here We Are: My Friendship With Philip Roth'' (Penguin Books, 2020).</ref><ref name=":1">"What Happens to Philip Roth's Legacy Now?", ''The New York Times'', June 4, 2021 [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/books/philip-roth-biography-blake-bailey.html]</ref>

After Roth's death, [[Harold Bloom]] told the [[Library of America]]: "Philip Roth's departure is a dark day for me and for many others. His two greatest novels, ''American Pastoral'' and ''Sabbath's Theater'', have a controlled frenzy, a high imaginative ferocity, and a deep perception of America in the days of its decline. The [[Zuckerman Bound|Zuckerman tetralogy]] remains fully alive and relevant, and I should mention too the extraordinary invention of ''[[Operation Shylock]]'', the astonishing achievement of ''[[The Counterlife]]'', and the pungency of ''[[The Plot Against America]]''. His ''[[My Life as a Man]]'' still haunts me. In one sense Philip Roth is the culmination of the unsolved riddle of Jewish literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The complex influences of [[Kafka]] and [[Freud]] and the malaise of American Jewish life produced in Philip a new kind of synthesis. [[Thomas Pynchon|Pynchon]] aside, he must be estimated as the major American novelist since [[Faulkner]]."<ref>{{Cite web |date=June 11, 2018 |title=Megan Abbott, Jonathan Lethem and other writers pay tribute to Philip Roth |url=https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1417-megan-abbott-jonathan-lethem-and-other-writers-pay-tribute-to-philip-roth}}</ref>

''[[The New York Times]]'' asked several prominent authors to name their favorite work by Roth. The responses were varied; [[Jonathan Safran Foer]] chose ''[[Patrimony: A True Story|Patrimony]]'', Roth's memoir of his father's illness: "Much has been written about Roth since he died. In keeping with the unseemliness of our profession, we all have something to say. The responses have overflowed with a kind of blunt adoration that would be perfectly un-Rothlike if they weren't the efforts of children agonizing over the right way to bury our father. None of it feels right, perhaps because nothing could. Roth's words dressed his father for death, and they dressed so many of us for life. How does one properly acknowledge that? How does one say thank you for the thousand almost-invisible preparations? This morning, as I was getting my children dressed for school, I felt the profound gratitude of a 'little son.'"<ref>{{Cite news |title=What is Philip Roth's Best Book? |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=May 25, 2018 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/books/philip-roths-best-book.html#link-570d528e|last1=Beckerman |first1=Gal }}</ref>

[[Joyce Carol Oates]] told ''[[The Guardian]]'': "Philip Roth was a slightly older contemporary of mine. We had come of age in more or less the same repressive 50s era in America—formalist, ironic, 'Jamesian', a time of literary indirection and understatement, above all impersonality—as the high priest [[TS Eliot]] had preached: 'Poetry is an escape from personality.' Boldly, brilliantly, at times furiously, and with an unsparing sense of the ridiculous, Philip repudiated all that. He did revere Kafka—but [[Lenny Bruce]] as well. (In fact, the essential Roth is just that anomaly: Kafka riotously interpreted by Lenny Bruce.) But there was much more to Philip than furious rebellion. For at heart he was a true moralist, fired to root out hypocrisy and mendacity in public life as well as private. Few saw ''The Plot Against America'' as actual prophecy, but here we are. He will abide."<ref>{{Cite news |date=May 23, 2018 |title='An astonishing force field': Philip Roth, as remembered by authors and friends |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/23/philip-roth-remembered-authors-friends}}</ref>

==References==
===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Sources===
* Brauner, David (1969) ''Getting in Your Retaliation First: Narrative Strategies in Portnoy's Complaint'' in Royal, Derek Parker (2005) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=bDwtIqaWessC Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author]'', chapter 3
* {{cite journal|last=Greenberg |first=Robert |date=Winter 1997 |title=Transgression in the Fiction of Philip Roth |journal=Twentieth Century Literature |url=https://dx.doi.org/10.2307%2F441747 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070309112703/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_n4_v43/ai_20614549 |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 9, 2007 |doi=10.2307/441747 |volume=43 |jstor=441747 |issue=4 |pages=487–506 |publisher=Hofstra University |url-access=subscription }}
* Saxton, Martha (1974) ''Philip Roth Talks about His Own Work'' ''[[Literary Guild]]'' June 1974, n.2. Also published in Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=6Vbc4K3wqUYC Conversations with Philip Roth]'' p.&nbsp;78

==Further reading and literary criticism==
* Balint, Benjamin, "[http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Philip-Roth-s-Counterlives.html Philip Roth's Counterlives]," ''Books & Ideas'', May 5, 2014.
* Bloom, Harold, ed., ''Modern Critical Views of Philip Roth'', Chelsea House, New York, 2003.
* Bloom, Harold and Welsch, Gabe, eds., ''Modern Critical Interpretations of Philip Roth's'' Portnoy's Complaint. Broomall, Penn.: Chelsea House, 2003.
* Cooper, Alan, ''Philip Roth and the Jews'' (SUNY Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture). Albany: SUNY Press, 1996.
* Dean, Andrew. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=z7klEAAAQBAJ Metafiction and the Postwar Novel: Foes, Ghosts, and Faces in the Water]'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021.
* [[Alain Finkielkraut|Finkielkraut]], Alain, "La plaisanterie" [on ''[[The Human Stain]]''], in ''Un coeur intelligent''. Paris: Stock/Flammarion, 2009.
* [[Alain Finkielkraut|Finkielkraut]], Alain, "La complainte du désamour" (on ''[[The Professor of Desire]]''), in ''Et si l'amour durait''. Paris: Stock, 2011.
* Hayes, Patrick. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_uO4AwAAQBAJ Philip Roth: Fiction and Power]'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.
* Kinzel, Till, ''Die Tragödie und Komödie des amerikanischen Lebens. Eine Studie zu Zuckermans Amerika in Philip Roths Amerika-Trilogie'' (American Studies Monograph Series). Heidelberg: Universitaetsverlag Winter, 2006.
* Miceli, Barbara, 'Escape from the Corpus: The Pain of Writing and Illness in Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson' in Bootheina Majoul and Hanen Baroumi, The Poetics and Hermeuetics of Pain and Pleasure, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022: 55–62.
* Milowitz, Steven, ''Philip Roth Considered: The Concentrationary Universe of the American Writer''. New York: Routledge, 2000.
* Morley, Catherine, ''The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Literature''. New York: Routledge, 2008.
* Parrish, Timothy, ed., ''The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
* [[Claudia Roth Pierpont|Pierpont, Claudia Roth]] ''Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
* Podhoretz, Norman, "The Adventures of Philip Roth," ''Commentary'' (October 1998), reprinted as "Philip Roth, Then and Now" in ''The Norman Podhoretz Reader''. New York: Free Press, 2004.
* Posnock, Ross, ''Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
* Royal, Derek Parker, ''Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author''. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2005.
* Safer, Elaine B., ''Mocking the Age: The Later Novels of Philip Roth'' (SUNY Series in Modern Jewish Literature and Culture). Albany: SUNY Press, 2006.
* Schmitt, Sebastian, ''Fifties Nostalgia in Selected Novels of Philip Roth'' (MOSAIC: Studien und Texte zur amerikanischen Kultur und Geschichte, Vol. 60). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2017 (Open Access: https://www.wvt-online.com/media/9783868217407.pdf).
* Searles, George J., ed., ''Conversations With Philip Roth''. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1992.
* Searles, George J., ''The Fiction of Philip Roth and John Updike''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
* Shostak, Debra B., ''Philip Roth: Countertexts, Counterlives''. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
* [[Charles Simic|Simic, Charles]], "[https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/10/09/the-nicest-boy-in-the-world/ The Nicest Boy in the World]," ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' 55, no. 15 (October 9, 2008): 4–7.
* Swirski, Peter, "It Can't Happen Here, or Politics, Emotions, and Philip Roth's ''The Plot Against America''." ''American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History''. New York, Routledge, 2011.
* [[Benjamin Taylor (author)|Taylor, Benjamin]]. ''Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth''. New York: Penguin Random House, 2020.
* [[James Wolcott|Wolcott, James]], "Sisyphus at the Selectric" (review of [[Blake Bailey]], ''Philip Roth: The Biography'', Cape, April 2021, 898 pp., {{ISBN|978-0-224-09817-5}}; [[Ira Nadel]], ''Philip Roth: A Counterlife'', Oxford, May 2021, 546 pp., {{ISBN|978-0-19-984610-8}}; and [[Benjamin Taylor (author)|Benjamin Taylor]], ''Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth'', Penguin, May 2020, 192 pp., {{ISBN|978-0-525-50524-2}}), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 43, no. 10 (May 20, 2021), pp.&nbsp;3, 5–10. Wolcott: "He's a great writer but is he a ''great'' writer? And what does 'great writer' mean now anyhow?" (p.&nbsp;10.)
* Wöltje, Wiebke-Maria, ''My finger on the pulse of the nation: Intellektuelle Protagonisten im Romanwerk Philip Roths'' (Mosaic, 26). Trier: WVT, 2006.
* [[Steven Zipperstein|Zipperstein, Steven]], ''Philip Roth: Stung by Life''. Yale University Press, 2025.

==External links==
{{sister project links|d=Q187019|n=no|b=no|v=no|voy=no|m=no|mw=no|wikt=no|s=no|c=Category:Philip Roth}}
* [https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_516-fq9q23rx97 Philip Roth interview in ''USA: Writers'' (NET) in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Televised July 10, 1966]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4939 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
* [http://www.philiprothsociety.org/ The Philip Roth Society]
* [https://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/print/2008/sep/18/long-haul/ Philip Roth looks back on a legendary career, and forward to his final act]
* [https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/philip-roth-documentary/6056/ American Master's Philip Roth: Unmasked.]
* {{OL author|id=OL21808A}}
* {{Library resources by}}
* [http://www.webofstories.com/people/philip.roth Web of Stories online video archive: Roth talks about his life and work in great depth and detail. Recorded in NYC, March 2011]
* {{C-SPAN|1003778}}
* {{IBDB name}}
* {{IMDb name}}
* {{Find a Grave|189965414}}
* [https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.JPERZIGIAN Guide to the Jerome Perzigian Collection of Philip Roth 1958-1987] at the [https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/ University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center]
{{Philip Roth}}
{{Navboxes
| title = Awards for Philip Roth
| list =
{{PulitzerPrize Fiction 1976–2000}}
{{NBA for Fiction 1950–1974}}
{{NBA for Fiction 1975–1999}}
{{National Medal of Arts recipients 1990s}}
{{Prince of Asturias Award for Literature}}
{{International Booker Prize}}
}}
{{Portal bar|Literature|New York City}}
{{Authority control}}

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