Philip Roth, RIP

Roth at 80--from Wall Street Journal

I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise. He was ... older (85). And, a few years ago (2012), he had announced his "retirement" from writing. (Link to story.) An odd thing for a writer: Many of them keep at it until they just can't. Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) was editing his final book while he lay dying in New York Hospital; John Updike (1932-2008) did the same. Many writers would consider it a Good Death to fall over while typing at the keyboard. (I would, and I'm not Philip Roth nor was meant to be.)

I first read Roth (1933-2018) back in the late 1960s. I'd already heard of him (Goodbye, Columbus--story and movie, 1969), but had not read him. But then I saw a provocative paperback cover "speaking" to me ... can't remember where. Some display. Somewhere. It was his novel When She Was Good (1967). I had no choice. I had to buy it. Read it. Love it. The image you see is that book that "spoke" to me.

Okay, perhaps the blurb at the bottom of the cover got me: A stunning portrait of the all-American bitch. Now there's a blurb you're not likely to see on a book cover in 2018!

I'm pretty sure I read all of his books--not necessarily when they came out. Sometimes they just accumulated, and I would eventually read several to kind of "catch up." Later in his career, this was easier, for as the decades rolled on, he was writing more and more novellas.

As the obits will tell you, he was one of our most celebrated/honored writers--won about everything (sans Nobel). (Link to today's New York Times obit.) Among the biggest honors? He was a living writer who nonetheless had his works collected in the Library of America--a publishing venture generally dedicated to the works of the Dead and Gone (Hawthorne, Jack London, Henry James, etc.). (Link to LOA's Roth books.)

I couldn't always relate to some of Roth's concerns: I am not a Jewish American (he was; his characters often were). But to many of his others, I could--passion, error, excess, obsession--and on and on. He knew what human beings were like--he knew, especially, what men were like. And he exposed them (and himself) with stark, brutal honesty. If you read Roth--if you're a guy--you're not always ... comfortable.

But since when are novelists supposed to make us comfortable? Discomfort is a necessary antecedent for learning.

And so ... thank you, Philip Roth. For all you wrote, for all that discomfort, for all you taught.