Philip Roth died today. It is incredibly sad to think I will never read another of his books. Philip Roth was the novelist of my lifetime. I read everything he wrote, as it came out--from Goodbye Columbus to Nemesis. I was glad to have read then all, but of course I had favorites: Portnoy's Complaint, The Ghost Writer, The Counterlife, Deception, Operation Shylock, American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Dying Animal, The Plot Against America--acually I loved each of his books in a different way.
Philip Roth wrote books that were based in his life, but they were not autobiographies. This is something I think a lot of his readers misssed. He was able to create characters and inhabit them. The most beautiful example of this is the trilogy, American Pastoral, I Married a Ghost, and The Human Stain. In each one he imagined himself into a completely different American identity: three ways of being an American in the twentieth century.
One of Roth's late novels borrows Yeats's phrase the "dying animal." Like Yeats, Roth continued to both write and grow as a writer throughout his life. There is early Roth, middle Roth, and late Roth (as is true for Yeats--or even Shakespeare). They are connected but different, and it was exciting to follow him as he found new ways to make a novel.
Roth was, to my mind, the greatest living American writer. I don't know who will take his place.
#PhilipRoth
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