Roth, Philip (Vol. 4) - Roth, Philip 1933–
Roth, Philip 1933–
Roth, a major Jewish-American novelist and short story writer, has often been accused of expressing "unfocused hostility" in his fiction. At the same time, he is said to have produced some of the best fiction of Jewish life in America. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
Roth's first novel, Letting Go (1962), is perhaps the first genuine attempt to write a Jewish novel of manners. The intricacies of Jewish family custom and sentimentality are combined with a species of person that needs a much more careful and astute study: the academic lower-class, the Lucky Jims of the American non-tenure rank, whose lives reveal a mixture of pride and fear, and an occasional nobility. The book's value comes from its weaving in and out of a Jewish situation comblée, its adapting Jewish manners to a comic and pathetic plot. Though there is much confusion, much hurrying about, the novel returns repeatedly to...
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