Philip
Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 19, 1933. He was the second child
of Bess and Herman Roth, first generation of Jew immigrants. He graduated from Newark's Weequahic High School in 1950.
Roth’s
writing is rich and very diversified. One of the recurring themes in his works
is the burden of the Jewish heritage and the inability to distance oneself from
it, a torn between Jewish and American culture, (thus the problem of identity),
protagonists’ various longings, desires and inhibitions. The best examples of
such works are the collection of stories Goodbye,
Columbus (1959)- his literary debut- and the novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1969). Roth also includes strong semi-autobiographical
themes: in some of his works, the main protagonists, for example, Nathan
Zuckerman or David Kepesh, become author’s alter egos. In one of his last novels,
Plot against America (2004), narrated
by young Philip Roth, the author serves the alternative history in which Charles Lindbergh is elected President and where “a
fascistic US government suspends civil liberties and persecutes minorities”
(The Guardian).
Roth is
acknowledged as one of the most talented authors of his generation and has won
numerous awards; he has received the National Book Award National and Book
Critics Circle Award twice, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction three times.
The Pulitzer Prize figures on the long list as well.
Isn’t
it high time Philip Roth was awarded the Nobel Prize for his genius at last?
by Marta MakoĊ
Selected
sources
