PHILIP ROTH SET: "ROTH UNBOUND: A WRITER AND HIS BOOKS" AND "PHILIP ROTH UNMASKED" - Rare Fine Set: Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing With Copy of The PBS DVD: Both Uniquely Signed by Philip Roth - ONLY SUCH SIGNED SET ONLINE

Roth, Philip (Author/Subject) & Pierpont, Claudia Roth (Author/Co-Signatory)

ISBN 10: 0374280517 / ISBN 13: 9780374280512

Published by New York City, NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014, 2013

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 355 pages. Published in 2014. Rare Philip Roth set: A fine copy of "Roth Unbound: A Writer And His Books", signed by both Claudia Roth Pierpont and Philip Roth, with "Philip Roth Unmasked" DVD, signed by the author. The best such "summing-up" accounts on the life and spectacular achievement of Philip Roth, both released towards the end of his life. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Claudia Roth Pierpont's "Roth Unbound: A Writer And His Books". An immersive and illuminating experience, the only account of its kind published while the author was still alive. While she anticipates the massive biography by the masterly Roth biographer Blake Bailey, published posthumously, her book deserves to be read - and savored - on its own. Also, Claudia is NOT related to Philip, who granted her a few interviews, but did not otherwise have an active role whereas Blake's biography was "authorized" by him. This despite his prescient awareness that it may be - and indeed turned out to be - the only book-length critical appraisal of his work that has both depth and authority: "Insightful close readings of his entire oeuvre, Pierpont offers a dazzling chronicle that traces moments from the author's life and explores the life of his art. Develops the story of Roth's writing chronologically, summarizing the plots and critical reception of each of his novels, from 'Goodbye, Columbus' (1959) to 'Nemesis' (2010). Pierpont declares 'Sabbath's Theater' a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature: Coursing with life, dense with character and wisdom, it gives us the deepest experiences we face: Dying, remembering, holding on to each other. Her luminous and graceful study achieves what all great criticism should and does: It drives us to read and re-read Roth's work anew" (Robert Cornfield). While the (often dull and boring) life of many other writers does not drive their writing, Roth Pierpont shows us how in the case of the greatest American writer of our time, his life has had an almost deterministic effect on his work: It is the subject, not just the source of inspiration, of his oeuvre. Both the verisimilitude (in all of its concrete detail) and fabulism (in all of its imaginative-ness) of the Rothian universe come from Roth's ordinary and extraordinary life. Comes with a brand-new copy of the DVD of the PBS award-winning "Philip Roth Unmasked", which, for all intents and purposes, is THE film documentary on Roth, and a neat "companion volume" to Claudia's book, with marvelous appearances by Roth and Creative Others. An absolute "must-have" set for Philip Roth and Claudia Roth Pierpont collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Claudia Roth Pierpont. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It is also very boldly and beautifully imprimatur-signed in black pen-marker on the title page (underneath Roth Pierpont's signature) by Philip Roth. It comes with a brand-new copy of "Philip Roth Unmasked", also very boldly and beautifully signed in metallic-silver pen-marker on the disc itself by the author. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such double-signed copy (with signed DVD) of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Philip Roth signed very few copies of the book and DVD towards the end of his illness-plagued life. A rare signed set thus. Six of Philip Roth's novels were selected as among the Top 20 works of American fiction of the last 25 years: "American Pastoral", "The Counterlife", "Operation Shylock", "Sabbath's Theater", "The Human Stain", and "The Plot Against America". One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectib.

Seller Inventory # 23593

Bibliographic Details

• Title: PHILIP ROTH SET: "ROTH UNBOUND: A WRITER AND HIS BOOKS" AND "PHILIP ROTH UNMASKED" - Rare Fine Set: Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing With Copy of The PBS DVD: Both Uniquely Signed by Philip Roth - ONLY SUCH SIGNED SET ONLINE
• Publisher: New York City, NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374280517
• ISBN 13: 9780374280512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author

About this title

Synopsis

A critical evaluation of Philip Roth—the first of its kind—that takes on the man, the myth, and the work

Philip Roth is one of the most renowned writers of our time. From his debut, Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award in 1960, and the explosion of Portnoy's Complaint in 1969 to his haunting reimagining of Anne Frank's story in The Ghost Writer ten years later and the series of masterworks starting in the mid-eighties—The Counterlife, Patrimony, Operation Shylock, Sabbath's Theater, American Pastoral, The Human Stain—Roth has produced some of the great American literature of the modern era. And yet there has been no major critical work about him until now.
Here, at last, is the story of Roth's creative life. Roth Unbound is not a biography—though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material—but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art.
Claudia Roth Pierpont, a staff writer for The New Yorker, has known Roth for nearly a decade. Her carefully researched and gracefully written account is filled with remarks from Roth himself, drawn from their ongoing conversations. Here are insights and anecdotes that will change the way many readers perceive this most controversial and galvanizing writer: a young and unhappily married Roth struggling to write; a wildly successful Roth, after the uproar over Portnoy, working to help writers from Eastern Europe and to get their books known in the West; Roth responding to the early, Jewish—and the later, feminist—attacks on his work. Here are Roth's family, his inspirations, his critics, the full range of his fiction, and his friendships with such figures as Saul Bellow and John Updike. Here is Roth at work and at play.
Roth Unbound is a major achievement—a highly readable story that helps us make sense of one of the most vital literary careers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

About the Author

Claudia Roth Pierpont is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has written about the arts for more than twenty years. The subjects of her articles have ranged from James Baldwin to Katharine Hepburn, from Machiavelli to Mae West. A collection of Pierpont's essays on women writers, Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World, was published in 2000 and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Pierpont has been the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. She has a PhD in Italian Renaissance art history from New York University. She lives in New York City.