Roth, Philip

Roth, Philip

▪ American author
in full  Philip Milton Roth  
born March 19, 1933, Newark, N.J., U.S.

      American novelist and short-story writer whose works are characterized by an acute ear for dialogue, a concern with Jewish middle-class life, and the painful entanglements of sexual and familial love. Other of his works deal satirically with political and sexual themes.

      Roth received an M.A. from the University of Chicago and taught there and elsewhere. He first achieved fame with Goodbye Columbus (1959; film 1969), whose title story candidly depicts the boorish materialism of a Jewish middle-class suburban family. Roth's first novel, Letting Go (1962), was followed in 1967 by When She Was Good, but he did not recapture the success of his first book until Portnoy's Complaint (1969; film 1972), an audacious satirical portrait of a contemporary Jewish male at odds with his domineering mother and obsessed with sexual experience. Several minor works, including The Breast (1972), My Life As a Man (1974), and The Professor of Desire (1977), were followed by one of Roth's most important novels, The Ghost Writer (1979), which introduced an aspiring young writer named Nathan Zuckerman. Roth's two subsequent novels, Zuckerman Unbound (1981) and The Anatomy Lesson (1983), trace his writer-protagonist's subsequent life and career and constitute Roth's first Zuckerman trilogy. These three novels were republished together with the novella The Prague Orgy under the title Zuckerman Bound (1985). A fourth Zuckerman novel, The Counterlife, appeared in 1993.

      Roth was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral (1997), a novel about a middle-class couple whose daughter becomes a terrorist. It is the first novel of a second Zuckerman trilogy, completed by I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000; film 2003). In The Dying Animal (2001; filmed as Elegy, 2008), an aging literary professor reflects on a life of emotional isolation. The Plot Against America (2004) tells a counterhistorical story of fascism in the United States during World War II. With Everyman (2006), a novel that explores illness and death, Roth became the first three-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, which he had won previously for Operation Shylock (1993) and The Human Stain. Exit Ghost (2007) revisits Zuckerman, who has been reawoken to life's possibilities after more than a decade of self-imposed exile in the Berkshire Mountains. Indignation (2008) is narrated from the afterlife by a man who died at age 19.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • ROTH, PHILIP MILTON — (1933– ), U.S. novelist. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Roth was educated at Rutgers, Bucknell, and Chicago universities, and taught English at the last from 1955 to 1958. He later took a teaching post in Iowa and was writer in residence at… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Roth,Philip Milton — Roth (rôth), Philip Milton. Born 1933. American writer whose witty and ironic fiction, including the novel Portnoy s Complaint (1969), concerns middle class Jewish life. * * * …   Universalium

  • Roth, Philip — (b. 1933)    American writer. Roth grew up in New Jersey and is best known for his novels and short stories of American Jewish life. These include Goodbye Columbus (1959), which won a National Book Award and which introduced the Jewish American… …   Who’s Who in Jewish History after the period of the Old Testament

  • Roth, Philip (Milton) — born March 19, 1933, Newark, N.J.,U.S. U.S. writer. Roth attended the University of Chicago and first achieved fame with Goodbye Columbus (1959), whose title story concerns the boorish materialism of a suburban family. His works are characterized …   Universalium

  • Roth, Philip (Milton) — (19 mar. 1933, Newark, N.J., EE.UU.). Escritor estadounidense. Roth estudió en la Universidad de Chicago. Su fama se inició con Adiós Columbus (1959), una novela breve sobre el tedioso materialismo de una familia de los suburbios. Sus obras se… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Roth, Philip — (b. 1933)    American novelist. He was born in New Jersey. Many of his novels and short stories depict the struggle of American Jewish men, especially the conflict between their Jewish background and the attractions of American Christian culture …   Dictionary of Jewish Biography

  • Roth, Philip — ► (n. 1933) Escritor estadounidense de origen judío. Entre sus novelas destacan: Adiós, Colón (1959), El escritor fantasma (1979), Pastoral americana (1998), La mancha humana (2001), El animal moribundo (novela corta, 2001) y La conjura contra… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Roth, Philip —    см. Рот, Филип …   Писатели США. Краткие творческие биографии

  • Philip Roth — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda Archivo:Philip Roth.jpg Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (Newark, Nueva Jersey, 19 de marzo de 1933) es un escritor estadounidense de origen judío, conocido sobre todo por sus novelas, aunque también ha escrito cuentos …   Wikipedia Español

  • Philip Milton Roth — [ɹɑːθ] (* 19. März 1933 in Newark, New Jersey) ist ein US amerikanischer Romancier und gilt als einer der wichtigsten Schriftsteller der Gegenwart. Er lebt auf einer Farm in Connecticut. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Leben 2 Werke 2.1 …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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