Understanding Philip Roth

Matthew A Shipe

ISBN 10: 1643363093 / ISBN 13: 9781643363097

Published by University Of South Carolina Press Apr 2022, 2022

About this Item

Neuware - 'Philip Roth (1933-2018) was one of the most prolific, prominent, and controversial writers of his generation. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle awards, three PEN/Faulkner awards, and many others; his work is the subject of Philip Roth Studies, a journal published by Purdue UP in cooperation with the Philip Roth Society since 2005; his novels are frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew Shipe offers one of the first single-authored critical overviews of Roth's complete oeuvre, aimed at undergraduates and general readers of Roth's works. By emphasizing the connections between Roth's early and later work, Shipe aims to offer a more complete portrait of how Roth's fiction evolved over the course of his career and how it engaged its historical moment(s). Seven chapters cover Roth's biography and major themes (Jewish identity, male sexual desire, American exceptionalism) and his novels in thematic, roughly chronological groups (the first fifteen years; the Nathan Zuckerman novels, writing, and identity; the Kepesh trilogy and intersections between art, sex, and gender politics; Roth as a character in his own work; Roth's exploration of American history; later works and essays)'.

Seller Inventory # 9781643363097

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Understanding Philip Roth
• Publisher: University Of South Carolina Press Apr 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1643363093
• ISBN 13: 9781643363097
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 231W x 152H x 15D millimeters 231 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 15 millimeters depth
• Weight: 259 grams

About this title

Synopsis

A panoramic and accessible guide to one of the most celebrated―and controversial―authors of the twentieth century

Philip Roth was one of the most prominent, controversial, and prolific American writers of his generation. By the time of his death in 2018, he had won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, and three PEN/Faulkner Awards. In Understanding Philip Roth, Matthew A. Shipe provides a brief biographical sketch followed by an illuminating and accessible reading of Roth's novels, illustrating how the writer constructed one of the richest bodies of work in American letters, capturing the absurdities, contradictions, and turmoil that shaped the United States in the six decades following the Second World War.

Questions of Jewish American identity, the irrationality of male sexual desire, the nature of the American experiment―these are a few of the central concerns that run throughout Roth's oeuvre, and across which his early and late novels speak to one another. Moreover, Shipe considers how Roth's fiction engaged with its historical moment, providing a broader context for understanding how his novels address the changes that transformed American culture during his lifetime.

About the Author

Matthew Shipe, senior lecturer and director of advanced writing in the English Department at Washington University in St. Louis, serves as the president of the Philip Roth Society.