My Life as a Man

by Philip Roth, Dan John Miller (Read by)

Overview

A fiction-within-a-fiction, a labyrinthine edifice of funny, mournful, and harrowing meditations on the fatal impasse between a man and a woman, My Life as a Man is Roth's most blistering novel.
At its heart lies the marriage of Peter and Maureen Tarnopol, a gifted young writer and the woman who wants to be his muse but who instead is his nemesis. Their union is based on fraud and shored up by moral blackmail, but it is so perversely durable that, long after Maureen's death, Peter is still trying—and failing—to write his way free of it. Out of desperate inventions and cauterizing truths, acts of weakness, tenderheartedness, and shocking cruelty, Philip Roth creates a work worthy of Strindberg—a fierce tragedy of sexual need and blindness.

Author Biography: In the 1990s Philip Roth won America's four major literary awards in succession: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Patrimony (1991), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Operation Shylock (1993), the National Book Award for Sabbath's Theater (1995), and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for American Pastoral (1997). He won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union for I Married a Communist (1998); in the same year he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. Previously he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Counterlife (1986) and the National Book Award for his first book, Goodbye, Columbus (1959). In 2000 he published The Human Stain, concluding a trilogy that depicts the ideological ethos of postwar America. For The Human Stain Roth received his second PEN/Faulkner Award as well as Britain's W. H. Smith Award for the Best Book of the Year. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in fiction, given every six years "for the entire work of the recipient."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798212383561
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Philip Roth (1933–2018) was one of the most decorated writers in American history, having won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner Award three times, the National Book Award, and many more. He also won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and in the same year received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years “for the entire work of the recipient.”

Dan John Miller is an American actor and musician. In the Oscar-winning Walk the Line, he starred as Johnny Cash’s guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins, and has also appeared in George Clooney’s Leatherheads and My One and Only, with Renée Zellweger. An award-winning audiobook narrator, he has garnered multiple Audie Award nominations, has twice been named a Best Voice by AudioFile magazine, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a Listen-Up Award from Publishers Weekly.

Hometown:

Connecticut

Date of Birth:

March 19, 1933

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

B.A. in English, Bucknell University, 1954; M.A. in English, University of Chicago, 1955

Editorial Reviews

Roth’s best…No writer alive can sustain a full-length novel at as high a decibel level as Philip Roth.”

Newsweek

"Roth's best.... No writer alive can sustain a full-length novel at as high a decibel level as Philip Roth." —Newsweek

"[My Life as a Man is] a scalding, unique addition to the lasting literature about men and women." —Newsday

"A very grand work ... in invention, in perception ... in coming to grips with the wild inconsistencies of life and art." —New York Times

From the Publisher

Roth's seventh novel, first published in 1974, introduces Peter Tarnopol and Nathan Zuckerman, characters who persist in Roth's subsequent works recounting middle age in midcentury American Jewish life. Here, two short stories foreshadowing some of Tarnopol's life issues are followed by a lengthier feature fleshing out these concerns. Tricked into an unhappy marriage to Maureen Ketterer, Peter pursues an affair with charming, rich, devoted Susan Seabury McCall. His conflicted ambivalence between the two consumes him emotionally until Maureen's accidental death. In this first commercial audio recording of My Life, actor/musician Dan John Miller sounds just as one imagines Peter would in telling his story; Maureen's and Susan's characters come across equally as well. Recommended as a classic of American literature.—Sandy Glover, Camas P.L., WA

Library Journal

Roth’s 1974 work—finally available on audio—bursts into life with Dan John Miller’s exceptional performance. The first section, “Useful Fictions,” consists of two entertaining short stories, which Miller performs well. The second section, the majority of the work, “My True Story,” is Peter Tarnopol’s first-person “memoir” of his rocky, emotionally wrought marriage to Maureen. Miller’s performance of this portion of the book is scintillating. His depictions of the battles and other emotionally charged moments between this couple are so vivid and realistic that listeners will feel as though they’re spying on their conflicted lives. The scene in which Peter’s unbridled hatred of Maureen erupts, leading to Maureen’s emotional and physical responses, is an audiobook triumph. D.J.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2011 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

MAY 2010 - AudioFile