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Understanding Philip Roth

A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated—and controversial—authors of the twentieth century

Philip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.

Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment—these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.

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Understanding Philip Roth

A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated—and controversial—authors of the twentieth century

Philip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.

Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment—these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.

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Understanding Philip Roth

Understanding Philip Roth

by Matthew A. Shipe
Understanding Philip Roth
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Understanding Philip Roth

Understanding Philip Roth

by Matthew A. Shipe

Overview

A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated—and controversial—authors of the twentieth century

Philip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.

Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment—these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781643363110
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Publication date: 04/14/2022
Series: Understanding Contemporary American Literature
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 152
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Matthew A. Shipe is a senior lecturer and director of advanced writing in the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the editor, with Scott Dill, of Updike and Politics: New Considerations, and his work has appeared in Philip Roth Studies, The John Updike Review, and numerous edited collections. He is president of the Philip Roth Society and serves on the executive board of the John Updike Society.

Table of Contents

Series Editor's Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Chapter 1 Understanding Philip Roth 1

Chapter 2 Early Works: From Goodbye, Columbus to My Life as a Man 20

Chapter 3 The Writing Life: Zuckerman Bound, The Counterlife, and Exit Ghost 39

Chapter 4 Sex and the Serious Life: The Kepesh Trilogy 59

Chapter 5 Personality Crisis: The "Roth" Tetralogy 75

Chapter 6 Back in the USA: Sabbath's Theater and the American Trilogy 84

Chapter 7 Late Works: The Plot Against America and the Nemeses Tetralogy 105

Notes 121

Bibliography 129

Index 135

What People are Saying About This

Steven J. Zipperstein

Never has there been a greater need for a brisk, open-minded exploration as to why Philip Roth matters. A first-rate survey of contemporary American literature's most astute and provocative novelist

Ira Nadel

Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth pushes our understanding of Roth further, incorporating Roth's personal history with American life and trauma through original and stylized fictions matched by formal inventiveness. With concision, example and detail, Shipe shows how and why it matters.

James Schiff

Matthew Shipe has done something extraordinary, rendering the breadth of Philip Roth's oeuvre in a mere 120 pages. Even more astonishing, his critical study is both accessible and sophisticated; bright undergraduates, along with seasoned Roth scholars, will be engaged. This is an important and deft introduction to one of the major writers and voices of our time.

Aimee Pozorski

Matthew Shipe's Understanding Philip Roth engages the key word—'understanding'—in two distinctive ways: by helping readers understand the author and by revealing Roth's own understanding of such important contemporary issues as the role of the writer, the vagaries of history, the origins of the American project, and the pleasure and pain at the heart of the human condition.

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Related Subjects

Literature
Literary Criticism
General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism
Modern Literature
Literature, Modern->20th century->History and criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
General & Miscellaneous Literary Criticism
Modern Literature
Literature, Modern->20th century->History and criticism

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