Why Write? Collected Non-Fiction 1960-2013

Resumen del libro

Philip Roth returns with a definitive edition of his essential statements on literature, his controversial novels, and the writing life, including six pieces published here for the first time and many others newly revised

Tracing the full span of Philip Roths career'from the early controversies surrounding the stories in Goodbye, Columbus to his recent assessments of his work and corrections of the record'this retrospective summation of his essays and interviews shows at every turn the vigor, acuity, and persuasive power of our most celebrated living novelist. Divided into three sections, with many of the essays newly revised, Why Write? begins with Roths selection of the indispensable core of Reading Myself and Others, including the essays and interviews given in the wake of the explosive release of Portnoys Complaint. The volumes second section presents in its entirety the 2001 book Shop Talk, a series of conversations with writers such as Aharon Appelfeld, Primo Levi, and Edna OBrien. The concluding section, 'Explanations,' comprises fourteen later pieces collected here for the first time, six never before publshed. Among the essays gathered are 'My Uchronia,' an account of the genesis of The Plot Against America, a novel grounded in the insight that 'all the assurances are provisional, even here in a two-hundred-year-old democracy'; 'Errata,' the unabridged version of the 'Open Letter to Wikipedia' published on The New Yorkers website in 2012 to counter the online encyclopedias egregious errors about his life and work; 'Forty-Five Years On,' Roths absolute last word on Portnoy; and 'The Ruthless Intimacy of Fiction,' a speech delivered on the occasion of his eightieth birthday that celebrates the 'refractory way of living' of Sabbath Theaters Mickey Sabbath. Also included are two lengthy interviews given after Roths retirement, which take stock of a lifetime of work.

Biografía del autor

Philip Milton Roth (born March 19, 1933) 1 is an American novelist.<br><br>He first gained attention with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of American-Jewish life for which he received the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, 2 3 Roth's fiction, regularly set in Newark, New Jersey, is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "supple, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of Jewish and American identity. 4 His profile rose significantly in 1969 after the publication of the controversial Portnoy's Complaint, the humorous and sexually explicit psychoanalytical monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor," filled with "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language." 3 5 <br><br>Roth is one of the most awarded U.S. writers of his generation: his books have twice received the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and three times the PEN/Faulkner Award. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1997 novel, American Pastoral, which featured one of his best-known characters, Nathan Zuckerman, the subject of many other of Roth's novels. The Human Stain (2000), another Zuckerman novel, was awarded the United Kingdom's WH Smith Literary Award for the best book of the year. In 2001, Roth received the inaugural Franz Kafka Prize and, in 2012.<br><br>