Roth, Philip (Vol. 2) - Roth, Philip 1933–
Roth, Philip 1933–
An American novelist and short story writer, Roth is the author of Portnoy's Complaint, The Breast, and The Great American Novel. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
[While] the American-Jewish novelist has … had a subject,… he has been searching diligently, questing imaginatively, [but] he has lacked an ideal form. Now, with "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth ("Goodbye Columbus," "Letting Go," "When She Was Good") has finally come up with the existentially quintessential form for any American-Jewish tale bearing—or baring—guilt. He has done so by simply but brilliantly casting his American Jewish hero—so obviously long in need of therapy—upon a psychoanalyst's couch (the current American-Jewish equivalent of the confessional box) and one of those bullseye hits in the ever-darkening field of humor, a novel that is playfully and painfully moving, but also a work that is certainly...
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